Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3)

by Jessica Gadziala

  "Another one bites the dust," Repo mumbled under his breath, shaking his head.

  "Janie..." Lo said, looking like she wanted to hug me or something equally as girly. Where was my badass leader when I needed her? Had loved turned her sappy too?

  "I need to hit or shoot something," I declared before she could say anything else.

  Lo looked at Cash and Cash looked to Reign, who shrugged.

  "Yes!" Summer said, jumping up. "Just us, none of the guys."

  "Summer..."

  "I won't shoot up the damn compound again, Reign," she said in a voice that had the effect of an eye-roll.

  "Look, I don't think..." Reign tried in a voice that suggested he was going to shut our idea down, making all three of us close ranks, Lo with her hands on her hips, me with my arms crossed over my chest, and Summer with a brow-raise any method actor would be envious of.

  "Oh shit..." Repo said, smiling as he sat back in his chair.

  "Bro, I think we both know you can try to fight this, but it's going to have the same result."

  "Three women who love weapons a little too much in my backyard with guns," Reign nodded.

  "Someone let me into the gun safe," Summer said, giving her man a smile that promised the kind of gratitude that came with nudity at a later time.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were out in the yard, facing the targets the men kept up at all times, the men themselves making no secret about them watching us from the safety of the picnic tables about twenty yards behind us.

  "I didn't know the AK would kick like that!" Summer insisted to us, referencing the time she accidentally shot the side of the compound.

  "He should have warned you," Lo agreed, loading her gun without looking. She could build, load, and shoot guns in her sleep.

  "I'm actually a good shot," Summer insisted.

  "Let's see it then," Lo urged.

  "First we need to talk about Janie's little admission," Summer said, giving me a look that suggested she would never let it go if we didn't.

  "Stupid fucking Matteo Grassi threw that at me when I was leaving."

  "He's one good looking guy," Lo added and I felt myself smiling. It was nice to talk to a woman again.

  "Yeah, well, he's an asshole for pointing that out."

  "Not to be the devil's advocate here, but... shouldn't you have known that without him pointing it out?" Summer asked.

  "I was a little busy!" I insisted, being the first to turn to the targets and squeezing off a few rounds.

  "Wow... you got better at that," Lo nodded.

  "Wolf taught me a trick," I admitted and even I could hear the dreaminess in my voice. Summer was right, I should have realized it before Matteo pointed it out.

  "So you guys have been shooting together," Lo said in a way that was begging for more information.

  "Yeah and covered up evidence together, bought washing machines together..."

  "And..." Summer pressed, her eyes dancing.

  "That too," I agreed, looking away from them.

  "Oh, Janie..." Lo's voice dipped.

  "It's not a big deal," I insisted, taking aim at another target.

  "I think we all know that it is a really big deal," Lo countered. She paused when I didn't respond. "Well... how was it?"

  I snorted, shaking my head. "I don't really have anything to compare it to, Lo."

  "So what? Doesn't mean you don't know."

  "Was he... good to you?" Summer asked hesitantly.

  "Oh my god, could this get any cheesier?" I asked, shaking my head.

  "Well... was he?" Lo pressed, starting to sound almost worried.

  "It was good. He was good. Everything was good. Moving on."

  "Babe," Lo said, sounding serious. "You're going to get him back. None of us will let this go much further. You've done a lot. And if it doesn't lose steam before it makes it to trial, I promise the judge and a few select members of the jury will be living well on Henchmen and Hailstorm money. Or we can tattoo an escape map on Repo's back and he can get himself locked up and bust them out ala Prison Break style," she added with a smile.

  I felt a laugh well up and burst out, swiping away the dark cloud I had felt hanging over me for two days. I acted on instinct and threw my arms around her. She stumbled back a foot and her hands paused, surprised, before going around me.

  "Hugging with loaded guns isn't the best idea, ladies!" Repo called and I could hear the frustration there.

  "Neither is yelling at people with loaded guns, jackass!" I shot back.

  That night, I didn't sleep.

  I wandered down the hall and into the common room, finding a shirtless Repo sitting on the couch across from the giant TV, two beers on the table in front of him, one on either side of a giant bowl of popcorn.

  "Figured you'd come eventually," he said, his eyes looking heavy. He was on his last leg of sleeplessness. He would crash eventually in the next twelve hours. I wondered if he was staying awake for my sake.

  "What are we watching?"

  "Car show."

  "Well that's one way to make me sleep."

  And, with the first lights of morning, I finally did.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Detective Collings

  Things were seriously screwed.

  Five years. All he needed was five more years of things going the status quo, no matter how messed up that status quo was. He wanted to handle the cases he could, overlook the cases he couldn't, and ignore the situations where the bad guys took out the worse guys because, well, alls well that ends with a shithead in the pen or the ground.

  He'd underestimated the new blood.

  When he'd said that flippant comment about a wolf in the morgue, he never thought the guy would put two and two together. As far as anyone knew, Wolf had no motive to take out Lex Keith. In general, their two organizations largely ignored each other. If Collings hadn't been on three other cases over the years, since Wolf was a young man, that had the same characteristics that Wolf did have a loose connection with, he never would have placed it himself.

  Then all of a sudden, he found out Marco was running the boot prints.

  And from there, it spiraled out of control, leading to an arrest and the most frustrating interrogation in his career.

  The evidence was shit. Normally, it would never stand.

  But Marco pitched a fit and the captain just waved a hand.

  Then Collings got a desk full of files from a clerk who said there was an order for them, an order he never placed. With it came the email.

  He'd actually smiled when he finished reading it for the second time. It didn't have to be signed for him to know who it was from. Janie. Hailstorm's favorite child. Lo's little prodigy.

  See... if Collings had learned one thing from the dissolution of his marriage twelve years before, it was that women will only take so much shit from their lives.

  Apparently Janie hit her max level of shit-taking and she was going to take down every mother fucker who had ever piled it on in the first place.

  That included him.

  Not because he had ever done anything to her, but because he had simply... not done anything at all. So he bunkered down and he got all of the rape kits sent out to the lab well before the first news story ever hit. The station had watched it in silence, the tension a palpable thing humming off of every crooked cop in the building.

  "Tell me there is something we can do to head this off," the captain yelled out, watching his men duck their heads. They were all fucked and they knew it. And, by extension, so was the captain.

  "Those rape kits are at the lab," Collings supplied, making all eyes, including his new blood's, fall on him.

  "Come again?"

  Collings shrugged. "I, ah, found them laying around. Figured there must have been some kind of mistake so I re-opened the cases, properly labeled everything, and sent them off to the lab."

  The captain exhaled a loud breath. "You ju
st saved your own ass at least Collings," he said with a shrug. "Time will tell if the rest of us will be so lucky."

  Up until that moment, he hadn't considered it an olive branch that Janie had sent him. She gave him the only thing she had that could have saved him his job when IA finally came in to investigate. That was why she asked him to bury the boot print evidence (which, in his humble opinion, was not much evidence at all to begin with. How it was going to actually go to trial was completely beyond him). She gave him his job security, the guarantee of his pension, by making it seem like he was the only detective on the force who was doing his job.

  But in exchange for that, she was asking him to do the exact opposite of his job.

  Collings sighed, powering down his computer and going home for the night. He needed to sleep on it.

  He woke up to the news of Marco getting his ass handed to him in a back alley.

  He deleted the boot print and hoped for the best.

  Nothing happened for a full day, making Collings do nothing but sit and sweat.

  And then he got the call...

  TWENTY-THREE

  Wolf

  I'd spent time in holding cells before. They weren't fun, but they weren't the worst places in the world either. I had mine to myself, giving me nothing but time to think.

  And those thoughts? Yeah, they were about Janie. As if anything else would occupy my mind.

  I'll never forget the raw panic on her face when she shoved me awake to the cruiser lights dancing off the walls. It was such a strange thing to see on her face until I realized it was there because of me. She wasn't the type of woman to worry about cops. Working at Hailstorm, she had had more than a few run-ins with them herself. She was freaking out because she didn't want me to get locked up.

  And fuck if that wasn't one of the nicest feelings in the world, to realize someone gave a damn enough about you to worry. Granted, I was pretty fucking sure she had no idea she cared, but she did. It was in the look of helplessness on her face when they put me in the cruiser. It was in the momentary relief I saw when I came out of interrogation before she realized I was cuffed. Then it was in the devastation and outrage when she charged across that station toward me and started hollering. It was in the momentary hopelessness I caught sight of before I was led away.

  She cared about me.

  And wasn't it some sad, sick, cruel twist of fate that I cared about her too and wouldn't see her again except through a pane of resistant glass?

  But it was okay.

  I was alright with that.

  I did what needed to be done.

  I got her safe.

  I slayed her demons.

  And in return, I got several days with the most unpredictable, frustrating, interesting, capable, headstrong, funny, and loyal woman I had ever met in my life.

  It was a fair trade.

  I was supposed to be transferred to county that day so when I heard the door open and footsteps coming toward me, I stood up and stretched out the sore muscles from sleeping on a bed meant for a man half my size.

  Collings came alone, standing outside the bars and looking at me for a minute.

  "I hope you have a clue what a lucky fuck you are," he said, shaking his head.

  "What?"

  "I had a good woman once. I constantly chose this job over her company until she couldn't take it any more and left my sorry ass like she should have years before. I know a thing or two about what it's like to lose a woman who did nothing but her best for you. So I hope to fuck you don't make the same mistakes I made."

  What the fuck was he talking about?

  "Collings..." I said, shrugging a shoulder.

  At that, he gave me a smile, unlocking the door and pulling it open. "Do you have any idea the kind of hell and headaches your woman has caused in the past forty-eight hours?"

  "Janie?" I asked, brows drawing together. I mean, 'hell and headaches' sure had her name written all over it, but I had no idea what he was talking about. Last I heard when I saw my lawyer, she was camping out at the compound. I figured Lo would drop in and drag her stubborn ass back to Hailstorm and help her get her life back on track.

  Collings laughed, the sound raspy like he hadn't made the sound in so long the vocal chords they required got dusty. "The one and only."

  "What'd she do?" I asked, feeling a pit settle in my stomach. Reign, Cash, and Repo better the fuck have not let her get herself into trouble because of me.

  "What hasn't she done?" Collings asked, shrugging a shoulder. "She uncovered unprocessed rape kits and leaked the news to the press about them sitting in storage, implying a police cover up I'm sure we all know has footing. She gave me an olive branch of letting me put my name on those cases and get them off to the lab before the story broke."

  "For?" I asked, knowing there was no way she did it just for the fuck of it. She was a logistical pro. That was what she did, next to hacking and making bombs and refusing to use a filter when she spoke.

  "A boot print disappearing. It's the only evidence we had on you and she knew it." Of course she did. That was my girl. "But that wasn't enough for Janie."

  I felt my lips twitching. "'Course not."

  "Now we can't prove any of this, but let's face it, we know who is behind this course of events. My partner, Marco, found himself jumped in an alley next to his apartment. Beat him unconscious. Janie is a strong fighter and all, but no way did she take him down. My money is on her getting one of the Mallicks in on it. Eli, judging by the sheer violence he inflicted. But she still wasn't done..."

  Jesus Christ. Had she slept at all?

  "She must have smelled something on Marco that didn't sit right with her because she did some digging. In that digging, she found something that the force missed when they accepted him. And that is a connection to the Abruzzo family. So naturally your little spitfire paid a visit to the Grassi family who paid a visit to Marco who suddenly signed out of the hospital and promptly went missing." Collings paused, shaking his head, a strange smile toying at his lips. "I've got to say, I knew women could bring a wrath that makes the plague of locusts look merciful, but Janie is in a league her own."

  "Telling me things I know," I shrugged, though inside my heart felt like it was going to bust free of the confines of my ribcage. She was on a tear. I should have known there was no way she was just laying low over at the compound painting her nails and challenging the guys to grappling contests.

  "Well let me tell you a bit more about the repercussions of your woman's little rampage. Such as IA coming in to investigate. Now I bet Marco is going to have a lot of blame fall onto his head. He's the perfect scapegoat. He's gone. He wasn't on the force for long. All of his open cases are being gone over by other detectives. And, well, it's the damndest thing..." he trailed off, brows lifted in confusion, but he was smiling.

  "Damdest thing?"

  "All the evidence in your case seems to have never existed in the first place."

  "You don't say," I said, feeling the smile spread.

  "Crazy, that. Marco must have been one crooked son of a bitch to frame a good, upstanding citizen such as yourself."

  "Damn straight," I agreed.

  "So needless to say, you're free to go with the full apologies of the NBPD for your unlawful detainment. We'll get you your clothes back and call someone to pick you up. Janie, I assume?"

  I felt my head shaking. "Reign," I corrected.

  "Now listen here, son..." Collings started, sounding almost agitated at the idea that Janie went through all she did for nothing. "Did you not hear a thing I said about good women? And Janie, lawlessness aside, is as good as it gets."

  "Know that," I agreed, nodding.

  "Then why the hell don't you want her to come and pick you up?"

  "What time is it?" I asked.

  Collings' brows drew together and he reached for his cell. "Six-fifteen."

  "Last time she caused chaos?"

  "Y
esterday afternoon," Collings supplied.

  "She's sleeping."

  Collings' head jerked back, brows drawing together. Then he considered me for a moment and nodded. "You know, Wolf, all lawlessness aside for you as well, I think you're probably a pretty decent man too." He paused. "When that news story broke, Wolf? There were pictures. The women's faces were blurred out but what was being done to them..." he shook his head. "But even masked, the resemblance was too strong to deny. One of those women was a very young, very brutalized Janie." I closed my eyes tight against that image, swallowing past the bile that rose up my throat. One day, I hoped that image would fade for me, just like I hoped it would fade for her. Until that day, I was okay with shouldering some of that with her.

  "Some men deserve to die, Wolf. That's why I believe in capital punishment. Some men shouldn't be given the luxury of breath after the shit they have done. But that shit can take twenty years. Twenty years sitting in a cell eating taxpayer money, wearing taxpayer money. If there's one thing this job gives you when you've done it as long as I have, it's perspective. I'd rather pieces of shit like Lex Keith meet a bloody end on the street then live large in a cell, still running an enterprise built on blood and pain from behind those bars. These streets are safer for women with that bastard good and dead. And if by making that happen, you bought your women a sense of security and closure she never would have had any other way, well then, I'm happy for you both."

  With that, he walked out, coming back a few minutes later with my clothes.

  Ten minutes later, Reign was walking into the station, trying his best to hold back a smile.

  "Thank fuck you're free, man. I got my hands full with my own woman. I can't be dealing with yours too. She had Summer and Lo doing target practice yesterday. I saw my life flash before my eyes."

  "She's a good shot," I objected as we walked out toward my waiting truck.

  "Someone must have taught her the coin trick," Reign said, giving me a look from the passenger side as I turned the truck over. "She's doing alright, Wolf. I know you were worried. Keeping busy kept her sane. And having Repo to keep her company when she couldn't sleep helped too. In fact, left the compound to find them both passed the fuck out on the couch in front of half-finished beer and a mostly full bowl of popcorn."