Bend, Don't Break

by Skye Callahan

  I gunned my car on the empty back roads, running parallel to Ninth Street until I caught a glimpse of their car. Then, I shot ahead and turned on the next street, and pulled on to Ninth behind Corell.

  We kept driving until we hit the edge of town—a popular overlook for the river, but the only place I could think of nearby was the old motorcycle club building. “I think they’re heading to the MC building. Take Front Street and hang back until they’re in.”

  The building was surrounded by overgrown lots, and hadn’t been used regularly in a couple of decades. It was isolated, yet convenient for anyone who wanted to use it for private activities that they might not want interrupted by passersby.

  Trent and Corell agreed, and when the road branched off, I went up to the overlook, while they followed the curve around to Front Street.

  “They’re heading your way,” I said.

  Before I could back out, a black SUV passed behind me, heading in the same direction. My nerves grated under my skin, sending impulses of panic to my muscles. “How long before backup gets here?”

  “Three minutes,” Trent said.

  “Well, they’ve got backup too, it appears. An SUV just passed. I’m changing over to my ear piece, are we good on the primary channel?”

  “Yeah,” Trent said, then the radio went silent, but I heard quiet voices on the receiver from Fiona’s mic, and then Kirk’s voice rose. “Get out of the car.”

  “What’s wrong?” Fiona asked. Her voice was so light I could barely pick up the tremble of fear—but it was there.

  Fuck. I jammed my car into park and left it to go on foot. A huge red car was going to be obvious to anyone standing around. At least I could hide behind the bushes. When I was just around the corner from the building, I drew my gun from the holster around my ankle and peeked through the bushes.

  Kirk pushed Fiona toward Drisco, who led her inside.

  Bastards. We were going to owe her hugely for this.

  Then, Kirk approached the passenger side of the SUV. He nodded and opened the back door, pulling out a brunette girl bound at the hands and feet.

  My heart stopped. God, no.

  “They have Rose,” I growled into my mic. “How the fuck do they have Rose?”

  Chapter 21

  No Room

  “Stay back,” Trent warned me.

  Kirk sat Rose down on her feet and she bucked against him, elbowing him in the side. The man from the passenger side of the SUV stepped out and they pinned her, one grabbing her feet while the other carried her upper body.

  “What the hell is going on with Fiona?” I asked, assuming that one of them was still in a car listening, but all I got was silence.

  I grunted and ducked through the bushes, working my way up to the side of the building where I hoped I could hear something.

  “Keep your distance,” Trent said. “Backup will be here soon—they’re coming in silent so as not to spook them.”

  I tried to keep an eye on everything as the radio chatter filled my ear. I pressed my back to the wall of the clubhouse inching my way toward the window and hoping to hear something through the walls.

  A muffled scream contracted all of my muscles and sent my heart into a tailspin.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, but the only one I had on me was the one that very few people had the number to—Rose, Fiona, and Trent.

  I fished it out and squatted against the wall. Trent’s name flashed on the screen, so I assumed it was something he didn’t want everyone else on the radio hearing. I pressed accept but didn’t speak.

  “No one can find Richards. He used his bank card at an ATM near the safe house forty minutes ago. Apparently he got suspicious when neither of us came in today.”

  I shouldn’t have left her there alone.

  “Libby had a couple of cops watching the safe house. They’re both dead. I’m assuming you’re close to the building and not chancing it by talking, but so far both girls are okay.”

  I disconnected the phone, leaned my head back, and took a long deep breath.

  A slap and a thud echoed through the building. I could rip their appendages off for touching her.

  Sliding along the building, I risked a peek through the window. Rose was on her knees—her lip bloodied and shirt torn, with Fiona next to her. A total of five men stood around them.

  That was easy, except for the hostage situation.

  I ducked down and focused on the radio again. Backup had arrived and they were getting into formation to approach. I moved farther along the wall to check out the back of the building and heard a vehicle pull up and the engine cut out. The back door to the building creaked open.

  “He’s been taken care of. We made it look like he ran,” an unfamiliar voice reported.

  I assumed he was talking about Richards.

  “Good,” Kirk said. “Any sign of our other cop friends?”

  “No,” another man said. “Wasn’t anywhere near their useless safe house.”

  “We have the girls,” Kirk said. “So, the rest of our loose ends should be tied up shortly. He couldn’t help risking his life for them before, I doubt he’ll be able to resist now.”

  “We could have some fun with them in the meantime.” The men chuckled, and I barely held back my growl.

  Keep it under control, I told myself. If I blew this and didn’t get myself killed, Trent would finish me off—especially if the girls got hurt. I knew backup was closing in, so all I had to do was wait a few more minutes. Rose would be able to keep them distracted at least that long.

  At least they didn’t seem to know about our plan. When the noise ceased and the back door closed again. I finished walking the perimeter of the building, sliding under the windows. I crouched under the final window and waited, listening to the voices inside. There were seven, maybe eight people now, but creaking floorboards dominated much of their hushed conversation.

  “We’re coming up on the East side,” Trent reported. “You better damn well not have done something stupid.”

  I laughed silently. The team moved up through the bushes coming toward me, and I slipped away from the window to meet them while they were still undetected.

  “Seven men—at least,” I reported. “And they have two girls. Didn’t notice guns, but I didn’t get a good look.”

  The Sergeant leading the team nodded, keeping his eyes on the building.

  I noticed movement in the building, and we ducked into the weeds. “There’s a back door that might be less noticeable—no windows back there, and it leads to a back room that might give us some cover if we can get inside, but we’d have to get around.”

  “Until then, we’ll stick to the bushes,” he said. He held up his hand and motioned for one group to get in position to watch the front door. Corell joined that group, while Trent and I followed Sergeant Dales and a group of six other men around to the back.

  I joined the ranks next to Trent as we moved around the building.

  “She’ll be fine,” Trent whispered.

  It seemed like we had this conversation on a nearly daily basis—and yet, she always was fine, just like he said. “I know.”

  Sergeant Dales tried the handle, and the door opened freely, so one by one, we slowly slipped in. The back room was cut off from the room where I’d seen the men and girls. Once it was cleared we moved into the main room. Dales and four of his men went first, but the room was empty. The boards under my foot squeaked as I crossed the threshold.

  They weren’t magicians—they still had to be here. I looked down again, catching a shaft of light from between the boards, if I could see between the thick floor boards, so could they if they were watching from below.

  I froze in place and put up my hand. When I had Dales’ attention, I pointed toward the floor. He glared at me and shook his head, but before he could take another step, the floor erupted with bullets. Trent and I ducked back into the back room where the floor seemed to be solid.

  “Officers down,” the voice ca
me over my earpiece, but I was too lost in the scene to know who said it. “We have six officers down. We need paramedics and backup.”

  Blood soaked the hole-riddled floor. Bullets and floor had both shattered on impact, leaving the room—and the men within it looking more like a grenade had gone off.

  The front door burst open, the rest of the group ready to move in, but Trent motioned for them to stay back. A lone bullet came through the floor, shattering the wood into tiny fragments that pierced the group leader’s skin. He fell back, the others pulling him away from the doorway.

  No one in the main room moved, not a flinch, not a breath that I could see. Maybe they did know our plan—certainly enough to set us up with a death trap. We couldn’t even move around the room to check on our men.

  How the hell were we supposed to fight back? We couldn’t fire blindly when they had the girls.

  Trent and I held our position with two other men, all four of us hugging the floor so they wouldn’t be able to shoot toward our shadows. The front group fell back.

  A message came over the radios. “We’re gearing up for tear gas. There’s a duct to the basement at the corner of the house.”

  Trent and I didn’t have masks, so we pulled back while the other two men suited up and prepared. I stared at the back door, running my hand through my hair, then doubling over, putting my hands to my knees.

  “What the hell were we thinking?”

  I heard them launch the tear gas and we backed farther away from the house as it came up through the floor and was carried in wisps through every opening. I charged toward the open door, but Trent grabbed my vest and whipped me around.

  I twisted and broke free, but another pair of hands caught me before I made it to the door. Together, Trent and Corell held be back, my feet sliding in the slick gravel as I tried to get into the house.

  “Rose is in there.”

  “And they’ll get her out,” Trent said. “She’ll also be shaken up and she’d probably prefer you to be in working order to take care of her.”

  I still shook with anger as they released me, but I gave in to Trent’s point. I could barely make out what was going on through the cloud of thick yellow smoke that now permeated the ground floor too.

  “We’ve got four men detained,” the report came over the radio.

  There were more than that.

  “Make that five. We’ve covered the room. There’s no one else here.”

  No, there had to be.

  “Prohibition,” I said.

  Trent and Corell both gave me looks like I had lost my mind. “The motorcycle club was here during the prohibition. They might have a secret passage or secret warehouse. If they didn’t who would?”

  I held my sleeve over my face and headed back inside, searching the back room. There was a small closet that we’d cleared on our way through, but unlike the rest of the room, the floor boards felt loose. Trent and I managed to pry up one end using the edge of a curtain rod while Corell radioed the others for backup. We moved slowly down into the dark passage, trying to be as quiet as possible despite the old wooden stairs.

  Five up front left us with at least two men to deal with. I led the way through the tunnel until we came toward a lighted opening. I crouched, sliding along the wall while Trent took the wall opposite me.

  A muffled scream vibrated the air in the tunnel, and I squeezed the handle of my gun even tighter.

  A thud and a series of scraping sounds followed.

  “Don’t even think about it.” It sounded like Drisco’s voice.

  My feet moved faster than my brain. Training and precaution thrown to the wind as I moved closer to the opening.

  Drisco stood at the back of the room, holding Rose in front of him, the gun to her head. “Not too shabby.”

  Fiona was crouched in the middle of the room, motionless, with her back to the opening.

  “How about you all drop your weapons and get out of here,” Drisco said.

  Rose closed her eyes and shoved the arm around her neck upward, throwing him off balance long enough for her to dodge to the side. The arm holding the gun straightened, first aimed at her, then he swiveled around toward us.

  I fired before he could regain his balance, and he slumped against the wall.

  Rose huddled with Fiona in the middle of the room, while I kicked the gun away from Drisco and the team swept the rest of the enclosure. Once the room was secure, one of the officers following us tended to Drisco, while we got the girls to their feet.

  “Where’s Kirk?” I asked.

  Fiona looked up at me in shock, but Rose pointed toward another door in the ceiling—Kirk would have needed a boost to get up there.

  Damn paranoid people and all their secret passages....

  I heard gunshots above us.

  “Suspect down.”

  “That makes seven,” I said, tucking away my gun and cutting free the cord tied around Rose’s wrists.

  She nodded. “That’s all of them.” Her voice was throaty and horse.

  I lifted her off her feet into a hug.

  “Ow,” she moaned, even though she squeezed her arms around my neck just as tightly as I held her. “I’m a little bruised.”

  “You look a lot bruised, Sugar.”

  Next to us, Corell tended to Fiona, while Trent reported in.

  By the time we surfaced, the paramedics had already arrived and the main building was being cleared. We directed the girls through the back door, blocking their view of the bloody mess through the other doorway. A group of officers stood off to the back—I assumed that’s where they caught Kirk.

  “What about the rest of the operation?” Rose asked, clinging to my side. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “We have five guys, so we convince one of them to roll before the other four do. The only reason they seemed so tidy is because they had help from within the department.” And Kirk’s men had taken care of that problem—though I would have preferred to take Richards alive and find out what the hell he was thinking.

  My wants didn’t really matter to the bigger picture. Lives were lost, the grotesque scene embedded into the collection of nightmarish images in my head. I hugged Rose closer. The smell of her hair, feeling of her warm body pressed against mine, and her arms around my waist where the only things keeping me grounded.

  I still had her—the rest I could deal with. And I felt selfish for thinking that, considering the lives that we’d lost—the men who wouldn’t go back to hug their families or friends.

  The sounds and movements of the scene around me faded into a dull roar. I stepped back from Rose, keeping my hands on her arms as I assessed her injuries. Something that happened far too often for us.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Just a bunch of bruises and a few cuts. I got the worst of it when they barged in on the safe house. I heard them talking though, I think they followed Richards out there, but I never saw him.”

  One of the paramedics rounded the building and approached us. “We’re ready to take the girls. It shouldn’t take long to get them checked out.”

  But it was going to take far longer for me to get cleared. “Officer Corell is staying with them.”

  Corell’s eyes widened, but he nodded. “Sure.”

  Rose’s reaction wasn’t quite so easy, her grasp digging into the edge of my vest.

  “I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” I explained. “I fired my weapon. I’m going to be navigating bureaucracy for a while.”

  I walked her up front and got her securely to the ambulance with Fiona and Corell. I felt antsy watching her leave, stepping back and running my hands through my hair as the ambulance pulled away. But she was safe, and had thoroughly proven once again that she was quite capable of handling whatever anyone threw at her.

  Once we cleared the area, it was time to head back to the station to finish the administrative portion of events. After I turned over my weapon, I had a short lull and called Katie to see if she’d go over and sit wi
th Rose, since she’d probably be discharged from the hospital long before I got to go anywhere.

  Chapter 22

  All That’s Left

  I felt like I’d aged a few years by the time I got done retelling everything I knew and fielding questions for the second time. I sat back in my chair, rubbing my temples and relished in the momentary quiet while a group of people stood outside the room debating my fate.

  I knew it was a good shoot—Trent knew it was a good shoot, and everyone would probably agree, but it was the whole procedure that wore down my nerves even further.

  The door opened and Libby stepped in. She wore a perfectly tailored skirt, with a matching suit jacket over a pink blouse—and her long blonde hair was twisted up in a formal looking style. Even before she took the role of deputy chief over our department, she usually looked the part—now she had the power to go with her look and abilities.

  “Please tell me you’re here to say I can go.”

  She smiled. “Your girlfriend was discharged from the hospital a while ago, along with the other girl, Fiona. They’re both fine aside from minor injuries. I don’t even know what to say to you all.”

  Shaking her head, she closed the door and took a seat across from me. “It worked, I’ll give you that, so I’m not even going to ask what you would have done if I hadn’t agreed to support your little coup.”

  “It wasn’t technically a coup. We weren’t trying to take power, just finish this—” Charade, farce... a dozen words sprinted through my head, none the exact one I wanted to say in front of Libby.

  “Maybe not,” she snorted, “But we still need to find a new leader for the department. We found a bottle of pills in his desk after he disappeared. Capsules of Zanaflex—your instincts were dead on.”

  “Why? I just want to know why Richards would go through all of this.”

  Libby glanced at the door. “I have a theory, but for now it can’t go beyond us. He had no retirement left. Nothing. His wife had been sick for the last couple of years—he kept it a complete secret. I only know because of his dealings with the insurance company. Regular treatments weren’t working. They had some benefits from some experimental stuff, but insurance wouldn’t cover it. He spent everything he had, and then some.”