The Line of Duty

by Nichole Severn

  Struggling to his feet, he ignored the slight drag of his right leg and the throbbing in his shoulder as he patted down one of the men he’d taken down. He unholstered an extra weapon, checked the magazine, and loaded a round into the chamber. Numbness had worked through his fingers and toes, but oddly, the rest of his body was slick with sweat. These bastards had taken her, and he was going to get her back. Then he’d hunt down the SOB who’d ordered Grillo and his team to take him out. “Hold on for me, Shea.”

  He followed the droplets of blood until the trees thinned, every cell in his body screaming in protest. The faster his heart pumped, the more blood he’d lose, but he wouldn’t stop because his body was tired. Only when the job was done. The trail ended at the bank of a frozen lake nestled between two mountains, but there was nothing but open views and thick ice out here. Pops and cracks echoed in his ears. Grillo wouldn’t have crossed the lake with a hostage in tow. Not with these open sight lines and the chance of falling through the ice. Too risky. Realization hit as strong as another shot to the chest as he turned to study the trail. “The bastard must’ve doubled back.”

  He’d been following a dummy trail, made to look as though the corrupt SOBs who’d taken Shea had come this way. Puffs of air crystalized in front of his mouth. Damn it. He had to stay dry. Any hint of moisture led to hypothermia, and Shea was already running out of time.

  Movement caught his attention from behind, and Vincent swung around, gun at the ready. Grillo’s partner—the one who’d taken Shea at gunpoint—latched onto his wrist and slammed Vincent into the nearest tree. The bastard went for the weapon, and Vincent let him as he swung a hard left directly into his attacker’s face, followed by a kick to the gut. The partner stumbled back with a groan, but recovered fast, trying to deliver the same kick. Only he missed. One hit to the kidneys knocked the guy off-balance, but the next to the cop’s collarbone resulted in a sickening crack of bone. The attacker’s scream pierced the silence as snow fell from the sky. Threading his fingers between Grillo’s partner’s, he twisted the bastard’s hand backward and brought the cop to his knees. “Where is she?”

  Laughter mixed with a pain-filled moan. The dirty cop spit blood into the snow a few feet away. “Interrogate me all you want, Kalani. I’m not giving you a damn thing.”

  Light from the auroras above glinted off a hint of steel a moment before pain seared across Vincent’s leg. He released his hold on the SOB but closed the space between them fast. Dodging the next swipe, he pushed the man’s arm away with one hand and slammed his palm into the bastard’s broken clavicle with the other. Grillo’s partner dropped to one knee. Swiping the gun from the snow, Vincent crouched, pressing the barrel to the cop’s temple. Just as he’d done to Shea before Vincent had been knocked unconscious. He ripped the badge off the man’s waistband, the nickel silver heavy in his hand. City of New York Police. Detective. A humorless laugh escaped Vincent’s bruised chest, resurrecting the ache from the two rounds Grillo had shot into the vest. He’d had a shield almost exactly like this. Before he’d lost everything.

  Vincent tossed the detective’s badge into the snow. “You know, back in New York, my forensic team and I were called out on a handful of homicides that made us believe the perps had to have knowledge of crime scenes. Everything had been wiped down. The bodies had been moved from one location to the other, which made it nearly impossible to identify the original crime scene, or we couldn’t even identify the victims because there was barely anything left to identify. Evidence connected to the cases even started going missing from lockup, which led me to believe the killer had to be law enforcement.”

  Vincent studied the deep laceration on the side of the cop’s head, right where Shea had knocked the jerk out cold, and a rush of satisfaction washed over him. “Of course, I couldn’t prove it. You and your buddies back there in that clearing had done too good a job, and nobody up the chain of command wanted to hear that their own officers were involved in the very homicides we were trying to solve.” He crouched beside Grillo’s partner. “So I took my theory to Internal Affairs. I’m guessing when Officer Walter got too close to identifying the cops involved, your boss had him killed, right? But not before someone tortured him to the point he gave up the source of his intel. Me. That’s why you tried to have me killed, isn’t it? Only there’s something you and your buddies here are forgetting, Detective.”

  He lowered his voice as the rage he’d caged all these months started to break through the cracks. “I was one of the best forensic investigators in the country, and I know exactly how to dispose of your body without leaving any evidence behind. Your family won’t ever know what happened to you when I’m done.” A flash of fear contorted the detective’s face as Vincent released the safety on the weapon. “So I’m only going to ask you one more time before I pull this trigger. Where is Shea Ramsey?”

  “Grillo didn’t tell me where he was taking her.” Panic outlined the tendons between the cop’s neck and shoulders as though he expected the bullet to come next. “He left me here to take care of you in case you came after us again, but I swear I don’t know where she is now. Said the less I know, the less could be tied back to us in case Blackhawk Security or Anchorage PD started looking for her. We had orders...that’s all. None of this was personal, Kalani. I swear.” The guy closed his eyes as Vincent increased the pressure of the gun against his head, hands raised in surrender. The bastard had to know something—anything—that could get him to Shea. “Go on, do it. If you don’t kill me, if they think I gave you anything, they’ll go after my kid.”

  The inferno burning through him cooled in an instant, and the gun’s barrel slipped down a few centimeters as he processed each word out of his attacker’s mouth. “What’d you say?”

  His expression smoothed as he opened one eye, then the other, to stare up at Vincent. “The people I work for, they’ll go after my kid if you don’t kill me.”

  The same way they’d go after Shea’s son if she didn’t walk away. Grillo had been in touch with the men watching Wells back in New York. Which meant his team had to have a satellite phone or radio that worked out here between the mountains. If he could get his hands on it, he and Shea had a chance to call in backup and send one of Blackhawk’s operatives to intercept the men sitting on the boy. The scent of smoke clung to his coat and hair as he forced himself to breathe evenly. Vincent adjusted his grip around the gun, finger positioned alongside the trigger. “Which direction did Grillo take her?”

  “Out there.” He motioned with his chin out across the lake.

  The pops and cracks he’d heard before... They hadn’t been the lake naturally settling. They’d been initiated by the extra weight of two adults moving across the surface of the ice. Vincent lowered the weapon to his side. What exactly had been Grillo’s plan? Kill her, then drop her body beneath the ice? Despite popular belief that water washed away evidence, the freezing temperatures would only preserve it out here. Only no one would know where to look for her. Not even the most aggressive district attorney would be able to charge Grillo with first-degree murder without a body. No. He couldn’t think like that. Because if he lost her... If he didn’t get the chance to tell her what he’d been afraid to admit over the past few months—how she’d been the source of his need to finally solve this case—he feared he’d never stop hunting the SOBs who’d started this war in the first place. He refocused on the detective at his feet. “You’re going to want to take some pain medication when you wake up.”

  Confusion contorted the cop’s expression. “What—”

  Vincent slammed the butt of the gun into the base of his attacker’s neck and let him collapse forward. The bastard would wake up with a hell of a headache, but he’d live long enough to get his kid to safety. He trusted the guy could find his way back to the city. Right now, he had to get to Shea. Holstering the weapon at the small of his back, he put his weight back into his heels as he descended toward the lake’s
shoreline and stepped onto the ice.

  * * *

  ONE MORE STEP.

  The ice groaned and snapped under her weight, dendritic patterns spreading out from where her boots landed. An ache flared as Grillo pressed the gun into her back. They must’ve walked at least half a mile by now. How much farther did he expect her to go with a gunshot in her side? If he didn’t kill her soon, the blood loss from her wound or hypothermia settling in would do the job for him. Maybe that was his plan. Other than the bullet lodged inside her, not even the best forensic investigator in the world would be able to tie her death back to him or his ring of dirty cops, but he could remove the slug easily enough. When she wasn’t able to fight back. Shea blinked to clear the haze clouding her vision. One more step. She only had to make it one more step.

  “How much farther?” She dared a glance over her shoulder, back toward her attacker as her boot skidded across the surface of the lake. Throwing her bloodied hands out for balance, she held her breath until the world righted. Her body ached, her head hurt, and her heart...she’d just watched it take two bullets to the chest in her defense. Vincent. She cleared the tears—the memories of blood and gunpowder and pain—and forced herself to keep moving forward. The hole she’d struggled to patch over the last nine months after losing her son had ripped wider and more violently than she’d expected when Grillo had pulled that trigger. And now... Now she was being led across a frozen lake threatening to engulf her at any moment with a gunman at her back.

  “Until I say stop.” Grillo knocked her forward, and her palms hit the ice hard.

  She skidded to a stop, exhales ricocheting back into her face. Cold burned the exposed skin of her palms, but she didn’t have the energy to move. In the past two days her plane had gone down, she’d barely survived an avalanche and she’d been knocked unconscious and shot. How much more was she expected to endure before her body shut down completely?

  “Get up.” His boot nudged at her injured side.

  Shea bit her tongue against the agony tearing through her, fingertips melting through the thin layer of snow that’d built between her and mere inches of ice. If Grillo pulled that trigger again, would the bullet break through? Could she force him beneath the hardened layer in a last-ditch effort to make it out of here alive? The thought penetrated through the cloudiness clinging to her brain. The effects of hypothermia had already started settling in. Confusion, slurred speech, lethargy, but the idea she could survive the organization that’d killed Vincent long enough to bring them down on her own brought clarity. In a sea of family and friends whose faces had drained of color in her fight against the postpartum depression, his had stood out in full hues. Working cases with Vincent had been a lifeline when she’d needed it the most, his challenging yet easygoing nature the only thing she’d been able to hold on to during her fight for mental health. Bringing her in on the joint investigations had saved her life in more ways than one. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. She owed him this.

  A gust of wind kicked up snow and dead foliage around her, and the hint of something clean, masculine even. She breathed it in a bit deeper, reminded of the way Vincent had so easily closed the distance between them back at the ranger station. How he’d grazed her jawline with his knuckles, resurrecting pulses of desire she’d never thought she’d feel again after her divorce. The memory of his kiss chased back the tremors racking her body now. Vincent had given his life to ensure she survived. She couldn’t let it be for nothing.

  “I said get up, Ramsey.” Grillo fisted her hair, pulling her upper body off the ice, and her hands shot to relieve the pressure—to no avail. He was stronger than her, faster than her, but Shea wasn’t going to give up. “Unless you’re perfectly happy dying here. I was planning on burying you in a nice spot up here a ways, but—”

  Launching her heel into his shin, she braced for impact as Grillo lost his balance and slammed down on top of her. The air crushed from her lungs, but she forced herself to her feet as his gun slid across the ice. She clawed for it, Grillo catching her ankle before she was able to reach the weapon and hit the ice again. Pain receded to the back of her mind as her fight-or-flight response focused her attention on getting free. She rocketed her heel into his nose, heard the sickening crunch, and he released his hold on her.

  The ice underneath her dipped with a loud, echoing crack. Her heart rate spiked into dangerous territory as water flooded up through the crevices around her. Shea scrambled back, kicking at the ice for purchase, but it only broke apart faster.

  “Shea!” Recognition flared.

  In an instant, she locked on the figure running across the ice toward her. Vincent. He was alive. Fear and relief battled for supremacy as she flipped onto her stomach and dug her fingernails into the ice. A sob built in her throat, but she couldn’t let the emotions tearing through her free. Not until she confirmed he was real and not some construct her mind had created in an effort for survival.

  But with one more gut-wrenching crack, the surface of the lake broke. Both she and Grillo fell through, their screams cut off by ice-cold water. Every nerve ending in her body shrieked in shock as the subzero temperature paralyzed her limbs. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Strands of her hair blocked the view of the dim light of the auroras filtering down through the hole above, and of her attacker.

  Grillo tugged her into his body, squeezing what precious oxygen she’d held on to from her chest. The bubbles tickled her overexposed skin as they raced to the surface. She targeted the gunshot in his shoulder, digging her finger into the wound, and twisted as hard as she could. His muffled scream barely reached her ears, blood spreading around them fast. She wrestled for freedom, but he only held her tighter.

  The brilliant dance of lights above the surface diminished. Without air, they were sinking in a violent battle for dominance to the bottom of the lake. There were no guarantees the hole they’d fallen through would still be there when she came back up. Grillo maneuvered behind her, locking her neck in the crease of his elbow. She jerked her knee toward his head as hard as she could, but the water only slowed her momentum. Her body was growing heavier by the second, her movements rigid. This man was a corrupt cop, following someone else’s orders. Was he really willing to risk his life to ensure she lost hers? Blackness clouded the corners of her vision, the cold and lack of air leaching her strength faster now, but she wouldn’t give up. Couldn’t. Not when she’d just started to explore the possibility of getting her son back, of moving on with her life. Of seeing if the connection between her and Vincent was real.

  A shadow passed above them.

  Grillo jerked behind her. His grip loosened from her neck as the water in front of her face turned red with blood.

  She was still sinking, limbs refusing to respond to her brain’s commands. Muscled, tattooed arms surrounded her, and her head sank back into a wall of familiar ridges and valleys. Gravity warred with the lightness overtaking her as they shot toward the opening in the ice. Below, the dark outline of her attacker faded into the deep. Her head broke through the surface, lungs automatically gasping for oxygen.

  “I’ve got you.” His voice penetrated through the erratic pounding of her heartbeat in her ears, but she couldn’t win the fight against the sinking sensation taking over. Her head fell back against one muscled shoulder as he struggled to get them onto solid ice. “You’re safe now.”

  “Where...is your...coat?” Her words slurred, her tongue too heavy in her mouth. Shouldn’t he be wearing more clothes out here in the open? He was going to freeze to death. A low thumping filled her ears. Shea fought the exhaustion, the pain, the heaviness, but it was all too much.

  “Don’t worry about me. Help is coming. Focus on staying awake, you hear me?” Vincent increased the pressure around her middle. Sounds of dripping water overwhelmed the thumping in the distance as he slid her onto the ice, but she didn’t have the energy to do anything more than close her eyes. Her
body was shutting down, she knew that, but at least she wasn’t alone this time. A hint of warmth bled into her face as Vincent framed her chin with one hand. “Shea, look at me. Open your eyes.”

  She wanted to. With every fiber of her being, she wanted to commit his face to memory. Wanted to thank him for saving her life. Wanted to tell him how working with him had given her a reason to keep going when she had nothing left to lose over these last few months. Putting the remnants of her strength into following orders, Shea narrowed on dark brown eyes tinted with a hint of green in the middle. She’d never noticed that before, the green. She’d spent so long trying to tamp down the way he made her feel when they were in the field together, she hadn’t taken the time to really appreciate the man above her. But right now, her body was making the choice for her. She had all the time in the world. Water clung to his beard and hair, the tips already crusted with ice. His normally smooth, tanned skin had lost a bit of color, but the fire in his gaze pierced straight through her.

  The pounding grew louder, vibrating up through her legs and into her chest. They’d taken down Grillo and his team—together—but the job wasn’t done. Her attacker had contacts back in New York, people he’d ordered to surveil her ex-husband and her son. The organization that’d sent him, it was bigger than she and Vincent could’ve imagined, but she couldn’t protect them anymore. “Find... Wells.”

  Vincent engulfed her hand in his, pressing the backs of her fingers to his mouth. “We’re going to find him, Shea. Together. Just hang on.”

  The steady thumping pulsed at the base of her neck as rotors and a chopper’s frame moved into her vision, but she couldn’t win this war anymore.

  “Shea,” he said. “Shea!”

  Chapter Nine

  “You look like hell,” a familiar voice said.

  Vincent breathed through the relentless pain around two cracked ribs, a gunshot wound and the beginning of infection in his thigh, then focused on the woman beside the hospital bed. His stomach dropped. Not Shea. Although he wasn’t disappointed to see Kate Monroe—the team’s resident psychologist—hers wasn’t the face he needed right now. Fluorescent lighting reflected off her blond-streaked hair pulled back in a low knot. She looked good, considering she and her thought-to-be-dead husband had barely survived a serial killer’s hunt less than two months ago. Now here she was, her skin almost glowing, but maybe that was a side effect of the pregnancy. Vincent leveraged his weight into the mattress with his uninjured hand, careful of the new sling around his arm, and positioned himself higher in the bed. His head throbbed at the base of his skull, the lights too bright. “You say the nicest things, Doc.” He couldn’t stop the groan rumbling through his chest as he moved to throw off one of the hospital’s heavy blankets. “Where’s Shea?”