Center Mass (Code 11-KPD SWAT 1)

I stared desperately into his eyes, my heart pounding a mile a minute.

“You go. Drive directly to the police station. Do not, and I repeat, do not, stop. When you get there, go to Luke’s office and wait for me or one of the team to come get you. Michael has your girls. Don’t fuck around. I won’t help him if I know you won’t follow my orders,” Nico said insistently.

Somehow, I knew he wouldn’t either. He’d made a promise to Luke to keep me safe. A promise I knew he wouldn’t break.

I nodded, tears rolling down my cheeks, and he was gone.

Scooting over, I started my baby up. And I drove hard.

I didn’t look back. I knew if I did, I’d turn around. And this was the only way to save Luke’s life.

I picked up a tail half way there, a police officer, but he wasn’t actively trying to pull me over. Especially when he started weaving ahead of me, moving traffic out of the way for me. Most likely because I most certainly wasn’t slowing down.

By the time I pulled into Luke’s spot at the back of the station, and fell out of the car, my tail was there.

Pierson.

I hadn’t realized it was him.

My surprise must’ve shown on my face, because he sneered.

“I may not like Luke, but he’s one of our own,” he snapped. “Now, get inside before all of that work means nothing. I’m sure your brain would look good on the concrete just like Roberts’.”

I scrambled up off my knees where I’d fallen and ran with him to the back door.

Was he shot in the head, had that been what happened?

I could tell I must look a fright, especially when nearly every man and woman in the bull pen looked at me. Although not many, the ones that were there had some sort of a command post set up.

They’d previously been bustling about, yelling across the room.

Men and women spoke furiously, and the chief was in the middle of it all, issuing orders here and there.

When I entered, though, they all just…stopped.

Pity was etched onto all their faces.

They knew.

Was he dead?

“Please,” I whispered brokenly. “Tell me.”

The chief shook his head. “We don’t know, honey. We don’t know.”***Luke

Oh, my God, my head hurt.

It was pounding hard. So hard that when I opened my eyes, I immediately closed them.

The light had seared through my retinas, making it even harder to breathe.

Scuffling sounded beside me, and I opened my eyes again, this time with a little more success.

I was laying on the ground.

Blood pooled around me, but I could still make out what looked to be a yellow line.

I was in a parking lot.

Was the blood mine?

It would certainly explain the reason my head was pounding.

Why was I in a parking lot?

Then a pair of dainty black slippers, the type you saw on a ballerina, walked into my field of vision.

Groaning, I started to push myself up, but the dainty slipper stopped at my shoulder that I’d managed to raise about a foot off the ground and kicked me.

I rolled with the momentum of the forceful movement.

My head swam with the swiftness of the movement. One moment I was thinking I had the nausea under control, and the next I was puking.

Luckily, I managed to get it all onto the pavement beside me and not aspirated into my lungs. It wasn’t like I needed another way to kill myself. I had enough right now in spades.

It was the voice that I recognized first.

She had a slight Russian lisp, twanging the end of her words.

Anita Bryant.

By sheer force of will, I managed to suppress the third attempt of my stomach trying to empty.

But only because Anita was pointing the sites of her hand cannon, a .454 revolver that was bigger than she was, at my face.

A man had to have his priorities after all.

I swallowed, licking my chapped lips. “Why?”

“I don’t like being made out to be a fool. I already took care of the other two. You’re almost done, and then I’ll handle my husband’s ex slut. Then they’ll never find me again,” Anita hissed.

I blinked, surprised that she’d just told me she’d ‘handled’ her ex. The only thing I came up with when she said ‘handling’ was that she’d killed them. Deducting them from her existence.

Did she realize who I was?

Obviously she had to. I mean I was in my KPD SWAT shirt. I was next to my police cruiser.

And the blood that I could still feel leaking out of what had to be a hole in the back of my head meant that I had to have been shot. Which would’ve drawn attention from the restaurant I’d previously been in.

Then I remembered that Reese had been in the parking lot with me before I’d passed out, and my heart started to hammer.

“We didn’t do anything,” I rasped, trying to stall.

Reese, I knew, wasn’t in the parking lot anymore. Otherwise she wouldn’t have said ‘then’ when she was referring to taking care of her ex’s ‘slut.’

Nico, on the other hand, very well might be.

And the more I thought about it, the more sure I became that he was there.

When I’d told Nico what to do if a situation such as this were to arise, he was to send Reese to the station, call the team, protect our children, and then help if he felt it was safe.

In fact, every member of the team had the same directions, and it wouldn’t have mattered who was here. It’d be done to the letter.

When Special Agent Lawrence had offered his assistance, I’d taken him up on it, but I didn’t rely on it. I didn’t know his team, and his team didn’t know me. I knew that my team would do everything in their power to help. The same couldn’t be said for Lawrence’s.

“You did. I’m not stupid and I don’t know why Weston thought I was so stupid. I was in the fucking Army. I was raised in the mafia. I know more than most people only read of; what did he think, I was stupid? Well,” she laughed humorlessly. “He’s not thinking much of anything anymore. Him and the girl he tried to pass off as not his girlfriend are feeding the fish in the Sabine river.”