The Line of Duty

by Nichole Severn

  “Officer Ramsey is resting comfortably down the hall. The surgeon was able to retrieve the bullet in one piece without any complications. She’ll make a full recovery as long as she gets the rest she needs. But knowing what I do about her, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. That being the case, I’m having Braxton keep an eye on her.” Kate crossed one leg over the other and sat back in the chair, that all-too-knowing gaze weighing on him. “You want to talk about what happened out there? About why you used Blackhawk resources to investigate a case, but didn’t feel the need to involve the rest of your team?”

  “Elizabeth.” The network security analyst’s name was torn from his mouth. He’d asked her to run the fingerprint he’d recovered from the warehouse fire that night through IAFIS. He should’ve known she’d push it up the ladder, but he couldn’t blame her, either. Blackhawk’s founder, Sullivan Bishop, required honesty from all his operatives. It wasn’t fair of him to put that kind of pressure on one of his teammates. Or one of his closest friends.

  “Give her credit.” Kate crossed her arms and sat forward. “She didn’t brief Sullivan about the fingerprint until after Search and Rescue recovered you and Shea on that lake. I think she was honestly more worried she’d missed something than anything else.” Bright green eyes assessed him, as though she were trying to see inside his head. “We were all worried, Vincent. You’ve helped save every single one of your teammates’ lives in the field. Did you really think we weren’t going to do the same for you?”

  Nausea replaced the focus of pain. “Everyone I’ve involved has paid the price, Kate. I’ve already lost two of my best investigators in New York, and I almost lost Shea out there.” The thought spiked his blood pressure as acid climbed up his throat. This was on him. Everything—the plane crash, the bullet in her side, the fact that her son had been put in danger—it was all because of him. Her death would’ve been on his shoulders for the rest of his life. Just as IAB Officer Walter’s would be. “I’m not going to risk the team.”

  “It’s not over, is it? The people who shot you, whoever brought down your plane... They’re still out there,” Kate said. “They’re not done with you or Officer Ramsey.”

  She was right. Shea had become as much a part of this as he had the moment he’d requested her as his partner on the joint investigations between Blackhawk and Anchorage PD. Had those bastards been watching her all this time? Watching her son and ex-husband in New York? If he’d known whoever’d killed IAB Officer Ashton Walter would come for her, Vincent would’ve stayed the hell away, kept her out of danger. “I can’t tell you anything, Kate. Not without putting you and the baby, even Declan, at risk.”

  “We’re a team, Vincent. You were there for me when the Hunter started closing in on Declan and me. You’ve been there for every single one of us. No matter the personal cost. Now it’s time for us to be there for you.” Her shoulders sank away from her ears with a hard exhale. Kate produced a pale manila folder, those inquisitive green eyes centered on the name written on the tab. Even from this distance, he read the label easily: Shea Ramsey. “When Blackhawk and Anchorage PD partnered on investigations a few months ago, I was asked to vet the officers who’d be working with us and get permission for the department to share their psych evals with me. Including Shea Ramsey.”

  Vincent sat a bit higher in the bed, the pain in his shoulder and thigh forgotten. “Don’t do this, Kate.”

  “I can hear the difference in your voice when you talk about her, Vincent. I’ve seen the way you study her when you’re working together.” Kate ran her fingers over the edge of the folder. “I was there when the EMTs pushed you two through the emergency room doors. You were asking for her, even when your body was shutting down from diving into that lake. You’re already falling for her, but she owes you the truth—”

  “No, she doesn’t.” He bit back the anger in his voice as her head snapped up, shock evident in her expression. His pulse pounded hard behind his ears in perfect rhythm to the machines tracking his vitals, creating a tingling sensation beneath the skin of his face and neck. He understood the firm’s need to vet the officers involved in their joint cases, but nothing—not a damn thing—would change his feelings for Shea. Anything important enough he needed to know about, she had the right to tell him herself. Not some department shrink who’d spent less than sixty minutes with her and come to some half-baked conclusion. Tugging the IV from the inner crease of his elbow, Vincent swung his legs over the bed. Over two hundred stitches, a mild concussion from being knocked unconscious, beginning stages of hypothermia...none of it mattered. He needed to see her. “I understand you’re trying to look out for me, but this isn’t the way to do it, Kate. Not only would I be betraying her privacy, but you’re also putting yourself at risk by even thinking about telling me what’s in that eval. I know who Shea Ramsey is, and nothing in that file is going to convince me otherwise.”

  The profiler stood. Giving him room to maneuver to the end of the bed, she lowered her gaze to the floor, the file still clutched in her hand. “Even if it means she’s not in a position to love you back?”

  Vincent slowed. Cold worked up through his bare feet and deep into muscle. From the white tile floor or Kate’s question, he had no idea and didn’t care. Shea had stood by him when Grillo and his men had given her the chance to walk away. She’d prevented those bastards from throwing his body into the ranger station fire and given him something he’d lost a long time ago: hope. He wouldn’t have made it this far without her, would’ve never discovered the truth about that night in the warehouse. She’d given him that, and so much more. Whether she realized it or not, he owed her his life. In more ways than one. Kate wasn’t wrong. He’d started falling for Shea Ramsey a long time ago, and if she didn’t feel the same way because of some deep-seated secret spelled out in that file... The pain in his ribs flared on a slow inhale. He wanted to hear it from her. “That’s not your call to make.”

  “I don’t want to see you get hurt,” Kate said.

  “You’ve seen the scars on my back, the stitches in my shoulder and the bruises on my ribs, Doc. Seems all I’ve known lately is hurt.” Stillness enveloped him as he thought back to that moment between him and Shea in the ranger station, before Grillo’s men had burned the place to the ground. To the moment she’d blamed herself for her ex-husband cheating on her, for him filing for divorce and for the bastard taking her son from her. There were only a handful of reasons he could think of for a strong, determined woman like Shea not to fight back every step of the way, but for her to sever ties with her family and friends, for her to throw herself into her work more over the past few months than ever before, narrowed it considerably. Only one reason stood out from the rest, explained why she’d been able to show up for her city day after day as though nothing could break through that hardened exterior she was determined to hide behind despite the hardships going on in her personal life. And it’d all started after she’d given birth to Wells. Vincent met his teammate’s gaze as understanding hit. He hadn’t seen it until now, how much Shea had been suffering all this time. Afraid. Alone. How could he have been so blind? “Better than feeling nothing at all, right?”

  “Right.” Kate picked up a duffel from beside her chair he hadn’t noticed until now and handed it to him. “Just be careful. With yourself, and with her.”

  He nodded. Vincent took the bag, waiting for the profiler to leave before he dressed in the fresh set of clothes she’d brought, but he’d have to leave his boot laces untied on account of the bullet wound in his shoulder. He couldn’t wait any longer. Wrenching open the door with his free hand, he headed down the hall, to the door where Braxton Levitt—Elizabeth Dawson’s chosen partner and father of her child—stood armed and ready to protect Shea. Vincent acknowledged the former intelligence analyst, then knocked as Braxton stepped away from the door before pushing his way inside.

  The breath rushed out of him as he caught sight of her
at the end of the hospital bed. Long damp hair rested across her shoulders, revealing smooth hills of lean muscle along her back. He studied her wound beneath the bandage in nothing but a black lace bra and an unbuttoned pair of dirty jeans. Muscle and bruising. So much bruising his gut tightened. In an instant, fierce green eyes locked on him, and every cell in his body forgot the haziness of morphine he’d been under for the past few hours. She’d just gotten out of surgery. They both had. Now it looked like she was ready to run. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m going to New York.” Dropping her hands from the gauze taped at her side, she notched her chin level with the floor. “I’m going to get my son back.”

  Tension drained from him. Vincent tried crossing his arms over his chest, only to be reminded one of them was in a damn sling. She wanted to go to New York? Fine. He couldn’t stop her, but he wasn’t letting her get away that easily. Not after everything they’d survived together. “All right. When do we leave?”

  * * *

  “ANTHONY AND BENNETT have already made contact.” Vincent maneuvered into his seat beside her, his clean, masculine scent overriding stale circulated air and body odor. He was trying to distract her. They’d taken off from Ted Stevens International Airport a few minutes ago, along with a hundred other passengers, and right now, she didn’t want to focus on anything else other than him. Not the plane crash. Not the fact an organization of corrupt cops had gone after her son and nearly killed her in the process. And not about what her ex-husband would have to say the minute she showed her face at the safe house after he’d told her she’d never see Wells again unless she got herself help. “We’ll be meeting your ex-husband, his wife and Wells in a secure location in two days to avoid tipping off Grillo’s men. Until then, we’ll hole up at one of Blackhawk’s safe houses in Brooklyn.”

  “Two days.” Anthony Harris, Blackhawk’s weapons expert, and Bennett Spencer, the firm’s newest investigator Shea had never met, had both volunteered for the job to protect her son. If Vincent trusted them to protect Wells until she could reach him, then so did she, but her nerves still hadn’t settled. Had nothing to do with the chance the plane would go down, or that she’d nearly died in the exact same mountains they were flying over right now. It was Vincent. No matter how many times she’d tried, she couldn’t reconcile the vigilante operative she’d known with the man who’d risked his own life to dive into that lake and save her. The man who’d fought off almost a dozen armed corrupt cops to keep her safe. It’d been in those last few moments, with Grillo’s arm around her throat as freezing lake water had seeped past her lips, that’d she’d realized the truth. Vincent wasn’t who she’d believed. Not the secretive, infuriating know-it-all keen on breaking the rules whenever he got the chance, but more. He’d detached himself from everyone around him in order to protect them, kept them all in the dark about his personal investigation, including his team, but he’d trusted her. Why?

  The plane jerked downward, and she couldn’t stop the flood of memories crashing through the barrier she’d built as a distraction. The uncertainty, the fear, the terrifying thought she’d never see her son again. She closed her eyes against the incessant shriek of the plane’s engines, forced herself to breathe evenly as her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. It was just turbulence. She knew that, but—

  Warmth enveloped her hand clutched around the shared armrest, and everything inside her stilled. The thudding at the back of her skull faded, nothing but her own breathing filling her ears as she opened her eyes. Her wet hair had dampened the back of her T-shirt after she’d showered back at the hospital, but that had nothing to with the sensations running down her spine now.

  It was Vincent.

  He’d pulled his hair back, exposing the fresh bruises along his jaw where Grillo had left his mark—bruises similar to hers—but none of it took away from the gut-wrenching intensity in his expression. Sensations simmered low in her abdominals the longer he studied her, and she suddenly found herself incapable of pretending he hadn’t gotten to her these past few months. That he hadn’t broken through the haze she’d been hiding behind for so long. The edges of where his tattoos met the scars on his back peeked out from beneath his T-shirt, and in that moment, she wanted nothing more than to trace the flesh with her fingertips. Just as she’d wanted to do back in that cave, buried under all that snow. His exhale tickled the oversensitized skin of her neck, and she couldn’t fight back the shiver spreading across her shoulders.

  “Careful, Freckles.” His words practically vibrated through her, he was so close. “You keep looking at me like that and I might start to get ideas of finishing what we started back at the ranger station.”

  Heat surged through her. That kiss...it’d been everything she’d imagined and more between them. The desire, the rush of adrenaline, the familiarity despite the fact that they’d practically been strangers before getting on that plane. The backs of her knees tingled at the memory of his mountainous body pressed against hers, the feel of his heart beating hard beneath her palm. She’d done that to him. She’d spiked his pulse higher with desire, but with one kiss, he’d ripped her apart. Helped her remember who’d she’d been, and she never wanted to go back. Never wanted to be trapped in that lonely shell again. If anything, she wanted more. Because of him. What that meant for the future—if they had one—she didn’t know, but the idea didn’t seem impossible anymore. Not after everything they’d been through. His eyes glittered with brightness as though he could see the battle wreaking havoc inside her. “Thank you for what you did. For...getting me out of the plane, for sharing the food your mom packed, even when it meant you’d starve if I didn’t make it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, she packed more.” Vincent released her hand and hauled his bag from between his feet, showing her the row of food containers inside.

  “I’ll be sure to thank her.” A laugh burst from her chest, resurrecting the agony in her side. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d let go like this, but the hollowness in her chest still hurt, and her laugh died in a renewed drone from the plane’s engines. She set the crown of her head back against the headrest. Flittering her fingers over his forearm, Shea noted the rise of goose bumps across his skin where she touched him.

  “I haven’t felt like myself for a long time now, but you...” She forced a smile, the pressure of unshed tears building. The swirl of brown in his eyes warmed her straight to her core, drowning the uncertainty clawing through her. He deserved to know the truth after what he’d done for her, deserved to know that her path to healing wasn’t over, that anything that happened between them might not end the way they imagined. Not right now. But she would always be grateful for him demanding to be her partner, even if he and his team believed they were above the law. She breathed in his light hint of soap, held on to it as long as she could. Would he still view her as that strong, determined, independent woman he’d described back at the ranger station when he learned the truth? Would he still want to partner with her when all of this was over? Dread pooled in her stomach. Would he still trust her?

  “Shea?” he asked.

  Shea removed her hand from his arm. Her ex-husband hadn’t understood why there were days when she hadn’t been able to get out of bed, hadn’t been able to make love to him or to take care of Wells. Why she’d thrown herself into her work to the point she couldn’t keep the details of her cases straight from working double and triple shifts straight through. Tears prickled at her lower lash line, but she held on to them. The answer was clear. Nobody could understand the mental war she fought to stay present every day. Not even Vincent. “Working with you these past few months saved me. Thank you.”

  “You would’ve saved yourself sooner or later.” He maneuvered the duffel back onto the floor between his feet, the pain in his ribs evident as his expression contorted. He’d taken two bullets to the chest for her. If it weren’t for the Kevlar vest he’d retrieved fr
om one of Grillo’s men, she wouldn’t have made it back to the surface of the lake. She owed him her life, and she’d do whatever it took to pay him back. “I was just there to get the crap kicked out of me.”

  “Oh, that’s why you were following me down the mountain. It all makes sense now.” Stinging shot through her mouth as she forced another smile, and she set her hand against her lips. They’d fought off the men sent to kill them two days ago, but the pain of her injuries hadn’t lessened. “For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

  “Guess that makes us even.” He leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. Couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t gotten a whole lot of rest before she’d checked herself out of the hospital to get on the next flight to New York. Neither of them had, but she wasn’t going to sit around and wait for whoever’d sent Grillo and his men to take another run at her son. She’d already failed Wells once. She wouldn’t fail him again. “Blackhawk would be looking for my toasty remains if you hadn’t shot that bastard.”