The Line of Duty

by Nichole Severn

  His stomach shot into his throat, and he unholstered his weapon with as little contact with the metal as possible. He’d gone to Lara with his theories over a year ago, but she’d shut him down despite the evidence he’d handed over. Solid evidence. Was it possible she hadn’t been at the warehouse last night by chance? That’d she’d been waiting for him and Shea all along? That she’d been the one to send Grillo and his team to sabotage their plane? Vincent ran the same test on the barrel of his weapon as he had with the casing, the gun Lara had handed him back at the safe house. Once the dust had settled, the pieces of this murderous puzzle slammed into place. The second print, her middle finger. It was an exact visual match to the others he’d lifted.

  Lieutenant Lara Richards was part of the organization bent on killing him.

  “Damn it.” She’d inserted herself in the investigation to stay a step ahead of them. Now she had Shea in the vehicle with her. He extracted his phone once again and hit redial. The line connected instantly. He didn’t bother with small talk. He was running out of time to save the woman he loved and her son. “I know who kidnapped Shea’s son, and I know where she’s headed.”

  * * *

  A GROAN SLIPPED past her lips, waking her from a dreamless unconsciousness. How many times were people going to hit her over the head before her brain decided it’d had enough? Rolling onto her hands at the small of her back, Shea blinked up at the pattern of lights dancing over a white ceiling as the crevices in the floor rubbed against the newest addition to cuts on the back of her head. She’d been restrained in cuffs. Lara... The lieutenant had knocked her unconscious with the butt of her weapon. The floor jerked beneath her, and her entire body slid across the slick surface. Not a floor. The cargo space of a van. The pattern of lights on the ceiling was headlights from oncoming cars.

  She struggled against gravity in order to sit up. Keeping out of sight of the rearview mirror in case the driver spotted her through the thick metal mesh separating the driver’s cab from the cargo area, she leveraged her boots against one side of the van. She pressed her back against the other and positioned herself behind the driver’s seat. She’d always kept a spare handcuff key in her back pocket. If she could reach it, she—

  “I know you’re awake, Officer Ramsey. I can hear the change in your breathing.” That voice. No. It wasn’t possible. She’d watched him sink to the bottom of that lake. “Looking for something?” Officer Charlie Grillo held up a set of handcuff keys for her to see. “As long as you’re in those cuffs, I have the chance to pay you back for the damage you and your partner inflicted to my men.”

  “You couldn’t kill me back in Alaska.” Every instinct she owned screamed warning for her to get out of the van right then, but when she drove her hands into her back pockets, she only met denim. Shea searched for something—anything—she could use to pry her hands out of the cuffs or as a weapon, but the van had been emptied, presumably to keep her right where Grillo wanted her. She bit back the panic rising, forced herself to keep her voice even. “What makes you think this time will be any different?”

  “Because no one is coming to save you this time, Shea.” His use of her name—almost intimate—raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “I gave you the chance to walk away back in those woods. You should’ve taken it.”

  Those same words echoed in her mind as she thought back to her last moments with Vincent. He’d hurt her far more than Logan had when he’d left, almost as much as it’d hurt when she’d been served with custody papers for Wells. Blackhawk Security had knowingly gotten her psych eval without her knowledge and proven her assumptions about the way Vincent and his team worked. But the worst part? If she was being honest with herself, it wasn’t the fact that they’d skirted the law. Vincent alone brought down almost a dozen corrupt cops in those woods to save her life without hesitation and promised to do whatever it took to bring her son home. She hadn’t questioned the lengths he’d go to protect her for a single moment.

  No. The worst part was he no longer saw her as the woman he’d convinced himself existed, the one she’d desperately wanted to be for him. Strong, full of passion, valuable to their joint investigations, determined, worthy of a man like him. Happy. He’d made her feel as though she had become the center of his entire world, but now that he knew the truth, that she couldn’t measure up to the woman he may have built her up to be in his head, it’d be impossible to get that feeling back. No matter how many times he tried to convince himself otherwise, he couldn’t love her. He didn’t even know her. Not the real her.

  The van slowed before taking the next turn, bringing her back into the moment. No windows. Nothing that could tell her where they were without exposing herself to the driver. She closed her eyes against the sudden nausea churning in her stomach. Grillo was supposed to be dead. She had to get out of here. She had to get to Wells. Setting the crown of her head back against the side of the van, she caught sight of wiring framed along the back doors leading into a junction box a few feet away. She forced herself to take a deep breath, then slowly pressed her hands into the floor behind her to scoot toward it. The wires most likely led to the van’s brake lights and blinkers. If she could signal the drivers behind them, she might have a chance. She twisted her head toward the driver’s cabin as she moved. “Where is my son?”

  The moment she got free of these cuffs and escaped, she was going after him.

  “Don’t worry, Shea. Lieutenant Richards will take good care of your boy.” Grillo took a sharp right, pressing her into the frame. “Little guys like that sell for a lot of money nowadays. Plenty of needy couples willing to pay top dollar for a chance at being parents. Think of it this way. We’re doing you a favor. He’ll have a good life, never knowing you weren’t strong enough to take care of him yourself.”

  “What?” The floor felt as though it’d disappeared out from under her, and even after a few seconds, she couldn’t regain her footing. They were going to put her son up for illegal adoption, and she’d never see him again. Blinking against the fog threatening to consume her, Shea pulled at the cuffs around her wrists until she drew blood. It trailed down the back of her hands, dripping from her fingertips. The pain forced her to focus. No. They weren’t going to sell her son to the highest bidder. She’d fight for him until she couldn’t stand. She’d sacrifice everything to get him back. Because she was strong enough, damn it.

  Shea worked her palms beneath her glutes, ignoring the strain in her wrists until she was able to maneuver them to the backs of her thighs. In seconds, she threaded her feet through the hole her arms made and brought her hands to the front of her body. She slid to the breaker box beside the doors and pried it open. “You read my department psych eval.”

  She had to keep him talking, distracted.

  “Part of the job. I’ve seen what depression has done to a few guys on the force. Most of them ate their guns at the end, leaving their families with nothing but debt and anger, but you didn’t. That says something,” he said. “You’re a good cop, Ramsey. I think you would’ve done the NYPD proud given the chance. Unfortunately, we’ll never find out if that’s true.”

  The van slowed. Grillo was going to finish the job he’d started back in those woods. Tie up the loose end. Her.

  Adrenaline dumped into her veins. Diving her hand into the mechanical box, she gripped a white metal lever that would cut power to the vehicle and pressed her feet against the doors as she pulled it back as hard as she could. The metal groaned loud in her ears, then snapped, and she fell back. She didn’t have time to pick the lock on the cuffs. The best chance she had in getting to Wells in time was survival. And she’d do whatever it took. Her breathing shallowed as her nerves hiked into overdrive with awareness.

  “What the hell?” Grillo hit the brakes.

  Momentum threw her deeper into the van, and she slammed against the mesh separating the cargo area from the driver’s cabin. He shouldered out of the drive
r’s-side door. The handle. Where had she dropped the handle? She felt along the cold surface of the van’s floor but couldn’t find it anywhere. The back door was wrenched open, Grillo’s dark outline taking up her only escape.

  She didn’t have time to think—only act.

  Shea lunged, tackling her abductor head-on. She hit the dirt and forced him to roll with her but ended on her back with him hovering above. Thrusting her palms into the base of his throat, she knocked him off-balance, then swept the bastard off his feet with both legs, but he recovered faster than she thought possible as she struggled to her feet, still in cuffs. He aimed a fist directly at her face. She dodged the attempt to knock her out, and he launched forward. Hurtling her elbow into his spinal column, she shoved him with her entire body, and Grillo went down. She stood over him, ready to end this once and for all. “You’re not taking my son from me.”

  “We already have, Officer Ramsey,” a familiar voice said from behind.

  Something hard struck the tendon between her neck and shoulder. She hit the ground, the sound of footsteps loud in her ears as she struggled to get her bearings. A pair of black heels moved into her vision.

  “You weren’t supposed to be part of this, Shea. So I’m going to give you one last chance before I have Grillo get rid of your body where not even the best forensic investigator in the country could find it.” Lieutenant Lara Richards crouched beside her, her rich perfume surrounding her. Clean blonde hair skimmed Shea’s face, no sign of blood from the cut on the lieutenant’s head. No sign of the cut at all. Had it really been there or had Shea imagined it? Had anything been real? “Where is the casing Vincent recovered from the warehouse?”

  Shea twisted her wrists inside the cuffs, halfway sitting up, but the wound in her side wouldn’t let her do much more than that. “Go to hell.”

  A light laugh rolled off Lara’s lips, her forearms crossing in front of her body as Grillo got to his feet behind her. “I can see why he likes you so much. You must’ve been one hell of an investigator to get Vincent’s attention. I know how little he lets get to him when he’s focused on solving a case.” The lieutenant gripped Shea’s chin between long fingers, and it took everything inside Shea not to pull away. “Pity for all that talent to go to waste. I could’ve used someone like you on my side.” Lara straightened. “Get her inside. It’s time to put an end to this.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  There was only one place this could end.

  Vincent pressed his foot down on the accelerator, the momentum pinning him back into the seat. If he was right, Lieutenant Lara Richards wasn’t just part of Grillo’s organization. She was the organization. She’d turned cops into criminals, all while taking a cut along the way, and he hadn’t seen it until it was too late. Now she had both Shea and Wells. If his former CO hurt either one of them... Vincent tightened his grip around the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

  He redialed Shea’s number for the tenth—or was it the eleventh?—time. She wasn’t going to answer. Not if Lara had gotten to her, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying again and again. The SUV’s interior filled with her voice as the ringing cut to voice mail, and the tension in his hands drained. Streetlights blurred out the side windows as he sped through the city. “I’m not giving up on you, Freckles. Ever. If you don’t believe anything I’ve said this far, I need you to believe that. I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  He ended the call from the steering wheel and took the next left toward the waterfront. Rain peppered the windshield, the hint of humidity clarifying.

  “Five minutes out. Everyone check comms.” Sullivan Bishop’s orders came through loud and clear from the device in Vincent’s ear. The founder and CEO of Blackhawk Security hadn’t spent much time in on assignment since proposing to his army prosecutor, Captain Jane Reise, but when it came to the safety of his own people, the former SEAL preferred the field over his massive oak desk.

  “Monroe and... Monroe checking in,” Kate said over the line, her husband’s laugh reaching through the comms.

  “Dunham’s got your back.” An engine growled in the background of Elliot Dunham’s earpiece. As much as Vincent hated to admit it, he needed the private investigator’s help to recover Shea. He needed all their help. He’d tried solving this case on his own for so long and gotten nowhere. Now he needed his team. “But I’d like to point out, Waylynn is making a bigger sacrifice than all of us by babysitting your demon spawn for this event.”

  “And there you go ruining the moment.” Elizabeth laughed, parent to one of those demon spawn. “Dawson and Levitt checking in.”

  “Chase in position. I’ve got eyes on at least two dozen hostile NYPD officers positioned at the west and south sides of the warehouse.” The echo of a rifle loading crackled over the channel. Former Criminal Investigation Command special agent Glennon Chase, Anthony Harris’s pregnant wife, had jumped at the opportunity to bring down the organization responsible for taking her husband. And if there was one thing Vincent could be certain of tonight when it came to Glennon, she wouldn’t fail. Her former partner, newest Blackhawk Security investigator Bennett Spencer, had already been left for dead. She wasn’t going to lose anyone else. The woman had fought too long and too hard to keep her small family together.

  They all had.

  Vincent tapped the earpiece. “Kalani on location.” One breath. Two. The weight of the situation settled under his rib cage. He pulled up beside another Blackhawk SUV on the north side of the warehouse and got out, gun in hand. Streetlights highlighted the dozens of officers and squad cars positioned between him and the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. “I owe you guys one.”

  “I might just be speaking for myself, but we wouldn’t mind some of your mom’s cooking in exchange for our services,” Elliot said.

  “Elliot, one more word out of your mouth, and I’ll revoke your firearms permit.” Sullivan’s warning ended the conversation as he climbed from his SUV and stepped to Vincent’s side. The former SEAL had seen battle plenty of times and fought a war with his own brother to save his woman. Vincent wouldn’t do any less. “You ready for this?”

  Within thirty seconds, the rest of his team pulled into the parking lot and took position, each armed and ready for the coming fight on either side of him. Eight Blackhawk operatives up against an entire organization of corrupt NYPD officers. At least two dozen cops studied them from across the street, in addition to the snipers Vincent had no doubt had centered his team in their crosshairs. No one was going to get out of this fight unharmed, but he wouldn’t back down. Not this time, and not when it came to Shea and her son. Squaring his shoulders, he strengthened the hold on his weapon. “I am now.”

  “This is the NYPD,” a staticky voice said over a megaphone from one of the patrol vehicles nearby. “Drop your weapons, get on your knees and put your hands behind your heads or we will be forced to take lethal action.”

  “I don’t have a clear visual inside the warehouse. The windows have been boarded,” Glennon said from one of the buildings east of their location into their earpieces. “No confirmation on the target’s location or if the hostages are inside, but I do have a great view of the two snipers aiming their rifles directly at your heads.”

  Vincent tapped his earpiece. “No matter what happens, Glennon, I need you to get me inside that building.”

  “You got it,” she said.

  Stepping forward, he holstered his weapon. There still might be a way out of this that didn’t include bloodshed. He shouted loud enough for his voice to carry across the street and dug the evidence bag from his pocket to put it on display. “I know you’re in there, Lara, and I know what you want. Send out Shea and her son, and we can both walk away from this. Nobody else has to die.”

  “You expect me to believe you’re willing to walk away from your little investigation once I hand them over?” The grouping of officers under her c
ontrol cleared a path as Lieutenant Lara Richards stepped into view. Her laugh hiked his warning instincts into overdrive. She’d been a good cop once, a good commanding officer. What the hell had gone wrong? Or had he even really known her at all? Her wide smile vanished, that cold gaze steadying on his as she unholstered her service weapon and brought it to her side. “I know you, Vincent. I know what you’re capable of, and that even if I let Officer Ramsey and her son go free, you’ll never stop coming for me.” She brought the gun up and aimed. “You’re too good a cop.”

  “You set the fire that night.” He tightened his grip on the evidence bag. “You killed two of your own men to try to cover up your operation.”

  “I warned you before you went to the warehouse that night this case was going to get you killed.” She cocked her head to one side. “You should’ve listened to your CO.”

  “And the others? The journalist and her assistant, the rookie, the defense attorney and IAB Officer Walter. They were getting too close, right? They suspected your organization was turning the NYPD into nothing more than a hit squad for hire, and you couldn’t let them find out the truth.” Everything was starting to make sense. “You were willing to risk everything to keep yourself in power, but you made a mistake.” He held up the casing discarded after Lara shooting Officer Walters center mass, and lines deepened around the edges of her eyes. He’d questioned the motive behind the shooter leaving evidence at the warehouse scene, but now it made perfect sense. It hadn’t been used to keep him and Shea in that building longer after all. “You did the dirty work yourself, but you handed off the cleanup to someone else. And now it’s going to cost you.”