Brixton seemed almost happy as he looked down at his notepad and began to read. “Amphetamines, most of the social drugs, including Ecstasy, and the biggest bag of cocaine we’ve seen in a long time. Good quality stuff, too. Injectable, water-soluble high-grade cut. Then there’s the heroin. Pure white and uncut. A half-pound of the stuff, we figure. That right there will get you ten years at least, because that amount will be seen as possession with intent to distribute.”
Taylor stared at Brixton, astonished at the righteous fury in the man’s face. He was enjoying himself with this vicious taunting.
Brody was breathing hard, his hands fisted.
Veris leaned close to Brody’s ear. “Do not say a single word,” he murmured, his tone hard.
Brixton shut his notebook with a snap. “Of course, we’ll have all the official weights and measures properly listed on your arrest sheet for you,” he finished as he put the notebook away again.
“What has Brody ever done to you, Lieutenant, to deserve your malice?” Taylor asked.
Brixton sneered. “People like you, with your undeserved wealth and fame and your superior holier-than-thou attitudes…you think you live above the law, that you can get away with anything you want because of who you are. Well, you can’t.” He clicked his fingers. “Brody Gallagher, you’re under arrest for the possession of illegal substances, with intent to distribute. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”
“This is bullshit,” Brody growled as two of the uniformed cops stepped forward.
“We’ll sort it out,” Veris promised.
“Do you understand your rights as they have been explained to you?” Brixton demanded as the cops shoved between Taylor and Veris and yanked Brody’s arms back.
“Daddy!” Taylor heard, muffled, from the limousine. There was a pounding on the windows.
“Oh, god,” Brody moaned. “She can see me.”
The cuffs were ratcheted onto his wrists with a loud, horrible sound of metal against metal. Brody drew in a sharp, harsh breath, his gaze focusing inward. “Veris…” he breathed.
Veris gripped his shoulder, his expression alarmed. “Stay focused.”
Taylor glanced from one to the other man, her heart hammering. There was something happening to Brody that she didn’t understand, that Veris knew and she didn’t. After so many years, there was something they had failed to share with her and it was threatening Brody now.
The uniforms were dragging Brody toward a marked sedan. Another one opened the back door. The inside of the door had no handles and was lined with wire caging. There was more caging between the front seat and the back. The back window was also caged in. The back seat was slashed and stained. So was the floor.
One of the cops with his hand on Brody’s arm used his other hand to push down on the back of Brody’s head to make him duck as they tried to fold him into the back of the car.
Taylor drew in a shuddering breath.
Abruptly Brody threw himself backwards, out of the grip of the cops. He pushed on the side of the sedan with his boot and shoved harder, giving himself impetus. “I’m not going into that.” He was breathing raggedly. Hyperventilating.
Brody, who had faced down Saracens, Fatamids, French, Germans and more across a dozen wars and even more battles, looked like he was having a full-on panic attack.
“Oh yes, you are,” Brixton declared and waved.
Three more police surrounded him. Brody stood half-a-head higher than most of them, but they had numbers on their side. They hustled him with sheer body-weight toward the car.
Veris cupped his face in his hands briefly, then pushed his hands through his hair. Taylor saw that his hands were trembling, but other than those telling signs, he looked utterly unmoved. He shifted on his feet, a subtle movement that put him close to the nose of the sedan, a strategic position from where he could help Brody if he had to. But for years Brody and Veris had chosen to move inside the rules of human society. Veris could not act now unless he broke with that decision.
Brody was staring at the inside of the police cruiser, his black eyes wild and glittering with an emotion Taylor had never seen in them before. Fear.
The cops got him within two feet of the cruiser before Brody reacted again. He reared back with a roar, the back of his head connecting squarely with the nose of the detective who had a grip on Brody’s neck. The detective squealed and fell backwards, blood streaming from his broken nose, temporarily blinded by pain.
Brody wrenched himself sideways, pulling himself out of the grip of the man on his right. He kicked him in the stomach, sending him staggering back five or six tottering steps, past where Veris stood at the hood of the cruiser, to turn and drop to his knees, his hands to his stomach, noisily trying to breathe.
The third cop was staggering backwards as Brody had unexpectedly rammed into him with his lunge sideways. Brody turned and kept moving into him, until the cop tripped over and fell onto his back. His head rapped painfully onto the concrete. Brody landed on his chest with one knee, driving the wind out of him.
Then Brody stood and wrenched at the cuffs on his wrists, twisting them and pulling them apart with his arms. A normal human wouldn’t be able to break them, but Brody wasn’t normal, or human. He growled deep in his throat, straining at the twisted chains. They gave with a low shriek of stressed metal and gave way.
Brody turned his head, questing, looking for escape. His hair had escaped the band he normally wore it pulled back in and now it spilled over his shoulders and back in long black wavy locks, completing the wild, angry man impression.
Taylor kept still. She didn’t know if the beast in Brody was loose or not. She didn’t know what was happening. For the first time in eight years, she didn’t know Brody at all and she was touched by fear.
“Now,” Brixton yelled.
Guns fired. But not normal guns. Taylor saw red darts shoot towards Brody. But they had wires attached to them. She realized her perceptions had been stepped up. Events were moving very fast, but she was processing them fast enough to see them happen almost in slow motion.
The Taser darts, four of them – Four! her mind whispered in shocked wonder – hit Brody in the chest and abdomen, burying through his tee-shirt, deep into his flesh. He jerked, but didn’t start shaking like she had imagined Taser victims might. He looked down at the darts, his brows rushing together.
“Right,” he declared. He reached for the darts and plucked them out, two at a time and tossed them away. Then he rushed at Brixton, his bloody hands out.
“Brody, no!” Veris yelled.
Taylor’s voice wouldn’t work. The fear had her by the throat.
Brixton’s eyes widened.
But the fact that Brody was going for Brixton protected him. The cops wouldn’t try to shoot him because they feared they might get Brixton.
Instead, they simply piled themselves on top of Brody. It took nine of them and three night sticks wielded with fierce determination before Brody was subdued. The only way they subdued him was to render him unconscious.
But Taylor stopped watching long before they reached that point. She rushed to Veris and deliberately turned her face into his chest. There was no comfort to be found in Veris’ arms for he trembled as badly as Taylor did.
“He will survive this,” Veris told her under the sound of the shouting and the cries. “He will survive and we will put him back together again. As long as he survives, that is all we need.”
* * * * *
Alexander tapped on the scarred duty officer’s door and waited.
When a feminine voice called out “Come in,” instead of the masculine tones he’d been expecting, he instantly adjusted his expectations and stepped through the door and shut it.
“You asked for a word with me, Lieuten
ant Stevens?” he said and tried not to stare. Lieutenant Sydney Stevens was beautiful. Not just pretty. Not just attractive. Not just sexy in a twenty-first century, applied and studied way. She was bone-deep, genetically-gifted, glowing with perfection beautiful.
Alexander had grown up in a land famed for beautiful women—doe-eyed creatures with silky black hair, thick black lashes and allure in their eyes so potent a man could drown in their power. Poets had written songs and books about the fame of the women of the east and the temptation they represented. Theirs was a dark attraction. Spice and honey. An addiction that could kill a man with its potency, for the women of the east had spent centuries honing their charms.
But Sydney Stevens was light and ethereal flame against the centuries of charm that Alexander had steeled himself against. She slid past his shield and the impact was like a blow to the chest. Not just the chest; his groin stirred—for a human. This one wore a gun strapped across her shirt.
Alexander shoved the touch of confusion and arousal deep into the back recesses of his mind and painted a polite expression of enquiry on his face as the blonde, classically beautiful detective Sydney Stevens looked up from her computer screen. Her arched brows came together. “You’re not the Nordic giant that was with the perpetrator, earlier,” she said, standing up.
She was tall for a woman and slender. The tailored pants and business shirt hid most of her feminine charms, but couldn’t hide the width of her hips, or the fullness of her breasts. It made the gun belt strapped over her shoulders look all the more alien.
“If you are referring to Dr. Gerhardsson, he is attending Mr. Gallagher in a professional capacity, in the lock-up’s aid station. I am representing the family’s interests at this moment.”
Detective Steven’s eyes narrowed. “They must trust you a great deal, Mr...?”
“Dr. Alexander Karim,” he told her. “And yes, they do. Is there a reason you wanted to see us, detective? Are you in charge of Mr. Gallagher’s case now?”
“As it happens, yes. Lieutenant Brixton has been….” She frowned again. “Temporarily reassigned.”
“That sounds dangerously close to an admission that the lieutenant was overzealous and has been slapped back into place and off the case,” Alexander said, probing.
Her expression didn’t change by a millimeter. “If you try to get me to agree I said so in court I will lie my face off, Dr. Karim, but yes, he was.”
Alexander hid his surprise. “Is that why you asked to speak to us?”
“No.” She moved back around to her side of the desk. “I’ve been speaking to detectives on the scene of the arrest and I’ve read a couple of early transcripts of reports from the scene. I was going to tell you to get yourself as good a lawyer as you could afford and fight the arrest, but that was before I heard that Gallagher had made bail.” She looked up at Alexander. “So then I wanted to speak to the people who could scrape together over seven hundred thousand on a Sunday evening. I have an idea that good lawyers aren’t going to be a problem for you.”
“Probably not.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. “You wanted to speak to us to…what? Measure the opposition?”
“I was merely curious,” the detective said. She sat back in her chair. “I’ve spoken to every detective and officer that was part of the arresting party and nothing adds up properly. Gallagher didn’t resist arrest until they tried to put him into the cruiser, but he had no history of claustrophobia that he admits to and there’s nothing on record.”
“If you’re asking me for insight, you know I will answer none of your questions, detective,” Alexander told her gently.
She smiled ruefully. “I know,” she said. “Although I wish it were possible.”
“That’s an odd notion, coming from a detective,” Alexander returned. “What about your fine ideas about due process?”
Sydney Stevens sat back in her chair. “Due process doesn’t always give a detective the full story. It just gives facts. I like the connective tissue behind the facts. The emotions that join the facts together. The tendons.”
“A remarkable idea for a police officer.”
“A forward idea, certainly,” she agreed coolly. “One that often gets results.”
“It’s a brave idea to promote, especially for a woman detective to try to champion.”
She smiled and her face lit up with joy. “Yes, I’ve been told that. Frequently.”
Alexander found he was holding his breath as the warmth from her smile washed over him and left his skin tingling in its wake. “What other revolutionary and shocking ideas do you have up your sleeve?” he asked, fighting for a calm countenance.
She stood up once more, giving him another look at her long legs as she came around the desk. She reached for the handle of her office door behind him and he understood that the interview was over.
But she didn’t open the door.
“Where were you born, Dr. Karim?”
“I…er…Israel,” he said truthfully, giving the modern name for his place of birth.
Detective Stevens reached out and gently pushed aside the opening of his casual collarless white shirt, to reveal the heavy, stylized gold fish symbol charm hanging from the chain on his neck. “The secret symbol of persecuted Christians, yet you have the look of a Muslim.”
“I was born into the Muslim world,” he told her.
“You converted?”
“Yes.”
“Yours has not been an easy road, then.” She gave him a small smile. “I know something about battling odds, Dr. Karim. I daily have to fight to be taken seriously, just to begin. As for getting ahead, well…” She gave him an impish grin. “I tend to side with the underdog as a result.” She opened the door. “I have a feeling that there are dynamics…facets to your friends well worth exploring.” Her face and expression took on a dreamy, distant expression. “The reports drop such interesting hints.” Then she blinked and the professional was back in place. All levity was gone. “They’re the underdogs, Dr. Karim, and all their money and influence is worth spit this time. Tell them that. Tell them they need the best lawyer in the world because even though the department fucked up royally on this, the heat coming down from elsewhere will make all that go away. Memories will get hazy, reports will get lost or misinterpreted or completely fabricated. Tell them to cover their asses, or just plain take cover.”
Alexander stepped out the door and turned to face her. “But you’re the lead detective on this,” he pointed out.
“I’ll be doing my professional duty on this, Karim. I won’t drop the ball. But I won’t be throwing it so hard it leaves bruises, either. I’m not Brixton.” She started to close the door. “And we never had this conversation.”
“That’s a pity,” Alexander replied.
“Why?”
“I have a feeling that there are dynamics and facets to you well worth exploring…if only we had ever had a chance to meet and talk.”
She shut the door without responding. But not before Alexander caught a glimpse of her gorgeous green eyes widening in surprise.
Alexander rested his hand flat on the glass a moment before moving on. It was a promise.
* * * * *
“I’m fine, I tell you,” Brody said tiredly, his head rolled back against the back of the big chair. His hands were resting loosely on his thighs. It was about three in the morning and Taylor’s energy was flagging. She could feel sleep trying to claim her despite the crisis, but the fact that Brody looked tired bothered her enough to stop her from simply relaxing and letting sleep take her.
The room was the main one of a small suite of a major mid-priced hotel chain on the outskirts of L.A. The furniture was anonymous, but comfortable. Mia and Marit were asleep in the small bedroom next door.
Veris let go of Brody’s wrist, where he had been monitoring his heart rate and got to his feet. “Taser burns healed?”
“Yes,” Brody said flatly. He wore one of the hotel’s toweling robes and was still sligh
tly damp from the shower. They could no longer see the angry red marks through the blood-stained holes of his tee-shirt, for which Taylor was grateful.
Alexander pressed his hands together. He was sitting cross-legged on the end of the smaller queen-sized bed. A king-sized bed sat empty, next to it. “You were in deep distress, my friend. We are concerned.”
“Yup,” Brody said, not moving.
Taylor sat up from the curled up ball she had been in on the padded luggage rack. She knew what she had to do. Injecting all the disgust and scorn she could conjure into her voice, she said loudly: “Oh leave him stew in his own self-pity party. He’s just being an egotistical princess.”
But Brody still didn’t move.
Taylor bit her lip, looking at Veris. He looked as concerned as she felt as he looked down at Brody.
Alexander sat opposite Brody, frowning, his rolled up sleeves pushed back past his elbows, looking like he could pull a medical answer from thin air if he just concentrated hard enough.
Taylor realized that both Veris and Alexander hoped the answer was physical. They both wanted Brody to be fixed with a pill or a treatment. They wanted to make him better without having to dip inside the black pool they’d glimpsed inside him earlier tonight.
So it was up to her.
She rose to her feet, feeling the pull of tiredness across her back and behind her eyes and in the strain of holding her head up. She walked over to Brody’s chair, picked up his hands and put them on the arms of the chair. Then she straddled his hips with her knees. It put her head at almost the same height as Brody’s—or would, when Brody was sitting up straight.
Taylor slid her hands into his hair and under his head, feeling the soft locks between her fingers. She lifted his head, forcing him to look at her. His black eyes, with the thick lashes and brows, focused on her.
“I don’t know what happened there tonight, Brody,” she told him softly. “Veris knows some of it, clearly. Enough to try to protect you. But there’s something in your past you haven’t told me about. Something big—”
Brody’s eyes blanked out on her. She saw it happen. His gaze turned inwards and fear washed over him.
Kiss Across Chains Page 3