Fay's Six

CHAPTER13

“I don’t know about this.”Walker rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t like sending her in by herself.” He sat in the passenger seat of Stone’s vehicle as they followed two cars behind Fay on the way toward Walker’s neighborhood.

The plan was simple enough.

Stone and Walker would pull down the street behind Walker’s house and wait while they listened to Fay’s conversation with Lee. If all went well, she’d get Lee talking about her incompetence. It should be easy for her to push his buttons.

“If it were me, would you feel the same way?”

That was an interesting question and one that made him pause. “Yes and no,” he said. “She’s just as capable as you and I know she can handle herself. But that’s not the point.”

“What is then?”

“I care about her.” Walker stared off into the horizon as they approached his street. His heart beat wildly. He never expected to care so much about another person outside of his family. It also scared him that it happened so quickly. His sister warned him that something like this would sneak up on him and hit him right between the eyes. “I know that shouldn’t change the way I see her doing her job, but it does. I have this intense urge to protect her.”

“I get it,” Stone said. “My fiancée’s a cop. I watch her walk out of our home every morning in that uniform with a gun strapped to her hip and I worry she’s going to get into a situation where some asshole is going to beat her to the draw. But she worries about me the same way.” Stone took a left one street past Walker’s neighborhood. “If it was you heading to your house to confront Lee, she’d be standing here with a heavy heart too.”

“I don’t know. She compartmentalizes better than I do.” Walker laughed. “Is it weird that I think I know her that well and we’ve been dating—if you can call it that—for a few days.”

“Not really,” Stone said. “We all saw it at Wind River. It was so painfully obvious that Hank almost didn’t pair you up and the rest of us had bets on how long it would take once you were given an assignment.” Stone rolled to a stop at the house directly behind Walker’s.

He’d called his neighbors and told them there was a situation. They went out until further notice.

“You’re bullshitting me now,” Walker said.

“Nope. But because of your problems in the past with each other, he needed to make sure you both could put shit like that behind you. And you did.”

“You seriously bet on whether or not Fay and I would hook up?”

Stone shook his head. “Not whether or not. It was when.”

“Who won?”

“I did, of course. Fifty bucks, thank you very much.”

“When all of this is over, you and Sparrow owe me and Fay dinner.” Walker wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or horrified. Either way, he couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

Or his heart from swelling.

He stared between the houses as Fay pulled her vehicle into the driveway. He pushed his listening device into his ear. She would not be able to hear him, but he would be able to hear every word.

His pulse raced.

That was normal during a mission.

His mind turned over every possible outcome, both good and bad.

Also, normal.

But what wasn’t normal were the intense emotional tugs at his soul.

“I’m going in,” Fay’s voice crackled over the radio.

“We’re on.” Walker cleared his mind. It was time to focus solely on the task at hand and nothing else. He slipped from the vehicle.

“What the hell are you doing?” Stone asked.

“If that were Sparrow in there, would you be sitting out here? Or would you be getting a closer look?”

“Fair enough, but let’s not go all Rambo, okay?”

“If she needs me, you’re not stopping me,” Walker said.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

* * *