What am I doing still standing here when I have a ride home?
Home, the place where I’m safe and everything makes sense.
Swallowing back my emotions, I turn towards Simon and nod my head.
Ready to follow him.
Ready for this entire nightmare to end.
James
Now - Garden City
“Chief’s down. Someone in one of the Russian cars shot him,” Johnathan yells in the ear comms.
What the ever-loving fuck is going on?
That had to be a mistake.
My ears can’t even fucking fathom the words that just entered my brain as I stare through the windshield of my BMW.
Chief’s down.
“Goddammit!” Lucifer bellows into the ear comms as well.
Stuck in my car, racing toward the scene, all the information I’m getting is coming through my damn ear.
My foot is pushing firmly on the gas pedal, but I’m too far out to see what’s going down.
About twenty minutes ago, Simon got a hit on Alexei’s car with his license plate reader. Alexei, the elusive Russian boss we’ve been chasing after for months. The same Russian bastard behind Sophia and Beth’s kidnapping.
Everyone has been pulled in to help follow him. Gabriel, his wife Meghan, Johnathan, Andrew, and the Chief of Police have tailed Alexei’s car to highway 40, heading east toward Bethlehem.
Detective Sommers and I have been en route to provide additional backup.
But everything has gone to hell.
Who the fuck would kill the damn Chief of Police? There’s no way I heard that right. I mean seriously, he’s gotta be alive. If not…
Shit.
There’s no goddamn way the man, whose daughter I’ve been secretly stalking and watching for how many fucking months, just fucking dies.
There’s no fucking way.
A bunch of chatter suddenly comes through the bud in my ear. Shit about Meghan running away from Gabriel to confront her father and getting grabbed by the Russians.
None of this shit is making sense.
How the fuck did a simple tail job fail so spectacularly?
Who the hell decided to pull over the Russians?
“Chief’s dead, confirming it now. Same with Brady. Both have fatal shots to the head,” Andrew says over the comms.
My heart sinks at the words.
There’s no fixing dead.
And Sophia…
Shit.
Sophia’s just lost the last of her family. Her mom died a few years ago, and now her dad’s been murdered by someone.
And I don’t even know who fucking did it.
More chatter comes over the comms. Simon and Lucifer are ordering everyone to obey the fucking state police.
“Fuck!” I scream out as loud as possible.
Mashing the gas pedal to the floor, I keep trying to get around all the stupid slow fucks surrounding me, but it’s like the gods have all decided to take a giant piss on the idea.
I’m the furthest away from everything that’s been going down and I’ve never felt more fucking useless!
Normally I’m the guy in the background with a sniper rifle, watching over my brothers. But I’m stuck in a car and I can’t do a fucking thing.
I have zero clue what’s happening right now. I can’t get my eyes on the situation and it’s killing me.
“I’m putting a call into the Governor’s office right now. Give me a few minutes. They’ll have to get extra cars and men there before they can haul you away. We’ll have enough time to get you free,” Simon says.
“I’m about a minute away from the scene. There isn’t a lot of traffic right now, but you will be causing a backup soon enough,” I mutter over the comms.
“Do not stop. We need to get someone after the Russians,” Lucifer says.
Heaven seems better than the fucking purgatory I’m dealing with now.
“What about the Chief? Who the fuck killed him?” I ask, my throat wanting to close up around the words.
I’m fucking torn here. Do I stop and kill the motherfuckers who are holding my brothers down?
Or do I keep moving like I was ordered?
I’ve never left a brother behind before, and every instinct inside me is screaming for me to stop my car and kill the two fuckers harassing Gabriel at least.
Kill them so he can be the wrecking ball he was always meant to be.
“Not our immediate concern. All we know is that it was one of the Russians,” Simon says.
He’s right, and I know it.
But it doesn’t feel good accepting it.
Speeding past all the guys, I try to turn off that little part of my brain that calls to me.
Calls me to cause some bloodshed.
The little part of me that’s always sitting just beneath the surface and wants to kill every single motherfucker standing in the way of what I want.
I make it a couple more miles down the highway before I get stuck in more traffic.
“Goddammit,” Simon all but screams over the comms just as I screech to a halt.
His yell is so damn loud in my earpiece, I fight not to scream myself from the feedback echoing around in my brain.