Hers to Protect

by Nicole Disney

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s a fantastic idea, Sorano. I thought you wanted to be in the Gang Unit.”

  “I did.” She sighed. “I do. But, I don’t know, this isn’t an opportunity to me. It’s personal.”

  “Can’t it be both?”

  Kaia paused. She wasn’t sure if it could be. “Isn’t it a conflict of interest?”

  “They’re shooting at cops, Kaia. What if you can help? And if it gets you your promotion and gets your ex’s crazy girlfriend put in jail isn’t that a win, win, and more win?”

  “Well, when you put it like that.”

  “I’ll tell him you’ll come by. Ask for Davis.”

  “Okay, Reid. Thanks.”

  “Everything okay?” Carli padded in, barefoot and still groggy. Her wavy brunette hair was tousled. She’d thrown on a T-shirt that swallowed her small frame.

  “Yeah, sorry. I was trying not to wake you.”

  Carli threaded her arms through Kaia’s and kissed her collarbone.

  “Breakfast?” she asked.

  “No, I have to go to work. Someone shot at an officer last night.”

  “Everyone okay?”

  “They missed. He’s fine. I just have to go. Might be related to that domestic from the other night.”

  “Your foot chase?” Carli was plainly distressed. “That means they could have shot you.”

  Kaia hadn’t thought of it that way. “I guess so, but I could always be shot.”

  “Comforting.”

  “I didn’t know you needed comforting.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s not like I don’t know what your job is like. You just scared me. Reid sounded panicked when he called it out, and he kept saying ‘she’s in the alley, she’s going eastbound,’ and I knew he meant you, not the suspect. Like he was losing you. I know it’s not fair, but I was mad at him he wasn’t doing more.”

  “Reid is top-notch. I wouldn’t take the same risks I do if he wasn’t.”

  “I know Reid is great. It was just in the moment. And then you weren’t texting me back.”

  “If I was hurt, you’d know.” Kaia had only been in the dispatch center a few times, which was more than a lot of officers could say but not enough in her opinion. She did know enough about the way it worked to know an officer injury was a big deal and sent the place into chaos.

  “I know. I just…” she paused. “Never mind. It’s stupid, you’re right.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that,” Kaia said. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re just acting different.”

  “Different?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have to explain. I just wanted to make sure you’re really okay.”

  “I’m okay.”

  She thought about just telling the truth, filling her in on Adrienne. They weren’t committed enough for Carli to get jealous. They’d always been more friends than anything else, and the sex was casual, though she sensed now that somewhere along the way that line had become blurry for Carli.

  “I have to get going,” Kaia said.

  “Okay.”

  She knew she left Carli feeling empty, falling far short of the reassurances she’d wanted. All she could think as she took the stairs down was that it was about time to break things off with her, at least take a breather from the sex long enough for things to fall solidly in the friend category again. She didn’t even know why. Would it be the end of the world to have a proper relationship? Carli was beautiful, smart, certainly not anti-cop, and as a dispatcher she knew enough about the job to understand, while not really being a coworker. There was a reason dispatchers and cops always dated. It worked. She’d just never been able to stomach the idea of a girlfriend after Adrienne. She’d bounced from flirtations to flings to one-night stands without ever questioning why she liked it that way. Why not try real dating? Adrienne had figured it out, and she’d had to battle a much more homophobic upbringing, had a harder road. But even as she tried to entertain it, Kaia knew she didn’t want to be with Carli beyond their wild nights together.

  When Kaia got to the gang unit building, she asked for Davis. They sent her back to a man with a military buzz cut, sunglasses, and a hard, round, beer gut.

  “You must be Kaia Sorano,” he said.

  “I am. And you’re Davis?”

  “Jackson Davis. Parents forgot to give me a first name, gave me two last ones.” He chuckled at his own joke and opened a door to a conference room. The walls presented pictures of felons and known gang affiliations.

  “So, Sorano. I hear you ran into a friend of ours last week?”

  “Yes.” Kaia spotted Gianna’s mug shot and pointed to it. “This charmer.”

  “Gianna Hernandez. She’s your ex girlfriend?”

  “Oh, no, I arrested her. She’s dating my ex.”

  “Right, sorry. I’m sure Castillo said that. I’m swamped right now. Everything is getting a little fuzzy. So that would make Adrienne Contreras your ex?”

  Kaia nodded and spotted her picture, not a mug shot but a snap obviously taken during a surveillance outing. Kaia stopped in front of it, fighting her eyes as they tried to wander to Adrienne’s long, slender legs. Then the picture next to it grabbed her eye, a snap of Adrienne from when they responded a few nights ago. Murray must have taken the pictures for the report. She hadn’t even registered it was Adrienne until she looked directly at it. The bumps and discoloration hid her features. A lump formed in Kaia’s throat, and a stone of anger fell into her gut as she absorbed the image.

  “Okay, I’m with you.” Davis picked up a stack of papers and started flipping through them. “Adrienne Contreras.” He settled on a page and scanned it. “Don’t have much. Dating Gianna Hernandez, who is on her way to quite a reputation. We can’t even tell if Adrienne is a member or just a lover. She’s been spotted at some shady events, but seems mostly social, and no identifying tats.”

  “Adrienne isn’t a member,” Kaia said.

  “You sure?”

  “She talked about not being able to leave because of Gianna, but she never said anything about being tied to the gang.”

  “Would she tell you that?”

  “They usually kind of advertise it, right? No big secret. They tattoo this shit on their necks.”

  “True enough, but not always. Not the ones with brains.”

  Kaia almost blurted out that she was sure, that there was no way, but she knew she couldn’t promise that. Adrienne had directly warned Kaia that she didn’t know Adrienne anymore. Could it really be that Gianna was the least of her worries? That it was the gang she was committed to?

  “It’s been a long time since I was close to Adrienne,” she admitted. “I don’t think she’s a member, I highly doubt it, but I guess I don’t know for sure.”

  “Can you find out?”

  This was exactly what she’d been afraid of when Reid suggested she come in. She did want to reach out to Adrienne again, find these things out, but she didn’t want to spy, or trick her, or stumble into an obligation to send her to prison if that’s what it came to.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably not. I don’t matter to her anymore like I did, and she knows I’m a cop.”

  “But she trusts you?”

  “I don’t know.” She doubted it. Adrienne could hate her for all she knew. Between the way they’d ended, Adrienne’s distaste for police, and the fact that she hadn’t shown any interest in finding Kaia for the last ten years, she doubted she meant much to her. She didn’t want to say that, though. It hurt to think about it too much, and she wanted on this case. She wanted to help.

  “I know you’ve been looking at promoting over here,” Davis said. “When Reid brought you up I looked through your application. It’s been on ice for months, but it looks good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to, but if you want on this, I do need the help. I think you can hel
p. We can treat it like a trial run, a working interview. A really intense one.” He chuckled and sat in a heavily reclined office chair, interlacing his fingers. “Let me know.”

  Kaia glanced back at the faces spread across the wall, back at Adrienne. It felt like a betrayal. It felt two-faced. But Reid was right, putting Gianna away helped Adrienne, not hurt her. Adrienne seemed fine with Gianna being arrested; she was just afraid to be the one responsible for it. What if Kaia could take it out of her hands?

  “I’m in.”

  “Excellent. I’ll let your sergeant know I’m stealing you. Have a look at these. They seem to be the players closest to Contreras. These will be the ones you can get the most intel on. He slid the papers across the table. When he left the room, Kaia sat and picked them up. It was strange hearing Adrienne referred to as “Contreras.” It brought the reality that Adrienne was a suspect crashing down. She didn’t want to investigate Adrienne; she wanted to investigate Gianna and put her away.

  Kaia studied the first picture. Celeste Romero. Light skin, dark curly hair, sweet smile. Like Adrienne, she didn’t quite seem to belong, but her criminal history included drug charges and an assault.

  Marco Woods. Spiky black hair, deep set eyes, an assault rifle tattooed on the side of his face. Recognizable enough. He looked like a baby but was really thirty-five, an age most in his line of work didn’t see. His history was surprisingly light. Still, usually people had to kill their way to power in the gang world. She hoped his cleanish record was more luck than intelligence.

  Anna Fields. White girl, very thin, almost gaunt. She was pictured both in a mug shot and a surveillance snap holding an assault rifle in one hand, pointed to the sky. The other hand was flashing what had to be a WAK sign. There were notes describing a very close relationship with Gianna. Kaia hated her on sight. Her rap sheet went on and on, assaults, drugs, weapons, eluding, resisting arrest, breaking and entering. It was unbelievable to Kaia that these people could build such a résumé so young. It should be a physical impossibility, as any one of these crimes should have put them away past their current age. How did they keep getting out of jail so fast?

  Christina Vickers was next. There were notes that she was ambitious and actively looking to climb the ladder. She was one to be aware of as she was liable to do anything to gain the street cred she needed. Like the others, she had dark hair and numerous identifying tattoos.

  The last page was Gianna. Strong features but still feminine, wide jaw, broad shoulders, six feet tall according to her description. Good, she hadn’t imagined it. Dark hair, large wide set eyes, tattoos just about everywhere, the very bold, legible “WAK” stamped on her neck the most prominent. Her history looked like a duplicate of Anna’s. They’d probably done most of it together. Kaia spotted a scar from a bullet just center body of her right shoulder. Jesus, Adrienne, what’d you get into?

  Davis walked back in. “All right, we’re squared away. See any friendly faces?”

  “Are they in the gun world?”

  “Oh, yeah. They’ve got big guns and lots of them. Modified, fully auto, you name it. Weird part is we have an undercover with Los Hijos de la Santa Muerte. They’re the big players in that game, and they aren’t dealing to these guys. They’re friendly, but not in business. We don’t know where they’re getting the ghost guns, but they’re selling them all over town. My undercovers think they might have something worked out with someone over the border. That seems a bit over their heads to me, but whatever it is it isn’t local and we haven’t been able to figure it out yet.”

  “I’ll work on that,” Kaia said.

  “All I need you focusing on right now is figuring Contreras out. Don’t ask her the big stuff too fast or it’ll just end up in Hernandez’s ear. We need to know if Contreras is a member, where her loyalty lies, does she want out, and can she be flipped? Gianna’s a big player; if we have someone cooperative in her house we could do a lot of damage.”

  Kaia’s stomach hurt, but she nodded. “Got it.”

  “Whenever you’re ready there’s a soft car in the lot for you. I’ll let you do this whatever way you want to do it. Just let me know what you need.”

  “I guess I’ll touch base with Adrienne for starts.”

  “Good. But don’t forget, Sorano, these are some real bastards. They know they’re going away for a long time if they get caught so they’re running and they’re fighting, and if all else fails they’ll just try to do as much damage as possible before they go down. They’re not afraid to shoot. Feel Contreras out, but do not trust her and do not forget who she has chosen to be close to.”

  Kaia nodded, but she still couldn’t bring herself to be remotely afraid of Adrienne. Gianna, on the other hand, she knew would absolutely kill her given the chance.

  “Reid said you think they were involved in the shots fired at an officer last night,” Kaia said. “Do we know that for sure?”

  “Can’t prove it. Carl started the unauthorized chase. Didn’t call it out so he didn’t have backup. He let them go when they fired. Came back and had to explain the shot up cruiser with his tail between his legs. So, no IDs and nothing solid enough to make an arrest. It wasn’t their turf either, but I just have that feeling. They fled in a gold Corolla. Wrong plates, but guess who has a gold Corolla.”

  “Gianna.”

  Chapter Six

  Adrienne’s stomach turned when a car she didn’t recognize lurched up beside her. She didn’t know who she was afraid of, but she’d never known a slow rolling car to be friendly. The window rolled down and the car stopped.

  “Kaia?”

  “Got a minute?”

  Adrienne looked over each shoulder. She’d come out alone, but the prospect of being seen chatting with a cop was horrifying.

  “I scoped it out,” Kaia said. “No one to worry about.”

  Adrienne looked back. Kaia’s face was half covered with dark sunglasses. She wasn’t in uniform. The car was a beater. If this wasn’t work, what did she want?

  “I don’t know.” Adrienne stepped back. Uniform or not, if a wayward glance from the bag boy could set Gianna off, this would make her insane.

  Kaia pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Please?”

  Damn it. Kaia had always known how to work her with those brilliant blue eyes.

  “Five minutes.” She practically jumped into the car, paranoia raging.

  Kaia seemed to realize she wasn’t going to be able to focus until they left the area and pulled away, leaving WAK territory in a hurry. Adrienne’s eyes wandered to Kaia’s toned tan arm as it rested on the steering wheel. She looked like herself again without the uniform, and Adrienne couldn’t stop her eyes from soaking the familiar Kaia in.

  “Going to church?” Kaia teased her.

  “Shopping. What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to make sure you’re okay, for starters.”

  “Of course I am. They’re just bruises.”

  “I know, but Gianna’s out.”

  “She’s been fine. Great, actually.”

  Something flashed across Kaia’s face that Adrienne couldn’t read. It felt so foreign not to know her. She became self-conscious, remembering how her swollen face looked and wondering if that’s what Kaia was thinking about.

  “You do want out, don’t you?” Kaia asked.

  Adrienne couldn’t look at her. She shifted. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I never promised you I was leaving.”

  “Are you serious right now? You’re smarter than this.”

  “This isn’t even your business.”

  “So you’re just going to let her smack you around whenever she has a bad day? I don’t get it, Adrienne. Talk to me.”

  “I don’t know how to talk to you right now, Kaia. Who are you? Are you a cop? Are you my friend? My ex?”

  “You know I can’t stop being any of those.” Kaia seemed to surprise herself and her cheeks flushed. Just witnessing the w
armth in her face felt intimate. A flash of herself kissing Kaia’s neck intruded into her mind with unsettling force and clarity. She knew if she entertained it, memories would overwhelm her.

  “Are you investigating me?” she asked.

  “I’m looking into the gang.”

  “So, yes?”

  “Are you a member?”

  “No.” Adrienne found herself eager to convince Kaia of that much even though she’d felt ready to commit to the gang just last night. Something about being with Kaia made her want to be the version of herself she’d spent so much time trying to bury. Kaia made the gang feel risky, violent, and stupid. Gianna made it feel like family, like unconditional love.

  “I’m looking at the gang,” Kaia said. “If that’s not you, then I’m not investigating you.”

  Adrienne’s heart fluttered. Why was Kaia being so direct? Why was she assuming Adrienne’s friendship, even loyalty?

  “I’m not going to help you, if that’s why you’re here.”

  Kaia nodded, seeming to be in deep thought. Her hair was pulled back, a few blond strands escaping.

  “Kaia, if you’re doing this for me, don’t. I’m okay. I’m not going to be a mole for you, and Gianna will…” she couldn’t finish.

  “What? Hurt you if you help?”

  “I don’t want to help. I don’t want them in trouble, okay? I know you think that’s stupid, but I don’t.”

  Yes, Gianna would hurt her if she helped, but what she’d really stopped short from saying was that Gianna would hurt Kaia, kill her if she had a chance. Adrienne thought of Anna shooting at the cop car last night. No hesitation. It wasn’t Kaia, she’d known the odds of that were astronomical, but if Kaia started snooping, following them, next time it could be.

  “Just leave it alone. Get back to your life.” Adrienne tried her best to sound cold. The less she seemed to care the better. If Kaia really knew who she’d become she wouldn’t care what happened to her. If she knew Adrienne had driven the getaway car while Anna shot at one of Kaia’s cop buddies, she’d throw her in jail and forget about her.