If You Say So (KPD Motorcycle Patrol 6)

Downy looked down at the finger poking him, then back up at the girl.

The girl took a hasty step back at the look on Downy’s face.

Downy moved then, allowing the rest of the men behind him to disembark.

All in all, there were six men in the vehicle. One of those men being the chief of police, Luke Roberts.

I’d heard from quite a few of the men on the motorcycle patrol with me that Luke had once been on the SWAT team, but a couple of years ago he’d switched to full-time chief—something in which he hadn’t been altogether happy about.

“We’re going to give y’all until the count of ten to get out of here before we do anything drastic,” Luke bellowed.

Just then, the other armored vehicle opened, and twelve more men poured out.

All of these men were dressed much the same as the ones closest to us, only in tip-top shape and about my age.

Considerably younger than the first group.

I felt another drip of blood roll down my arm, and looked at the offending evidence, momentarily distracting myself from what was going on in front of me.

When I looked up again, it was to find the brave kid pushing at Downy.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

The shove that Downy returned knocked the kid on his ass.

More kids decided to be brave after that, and in the end, we had over twenty kids arrested, and even more in custody to wait until their parents could show up to bail them out.

I handed back a handful of zip cuffs that we’d been using to detain the kids to the chief, and he nodded his thanks.

“Get that looked at,” he ordered.

I looked at my hands, then shrugged. “It’s fine.”

Luke shook his head.

But I should’ve known better than to think I’d get out of getting checked out.

Before I’d made my way to my bike an hour after my shift ended, it was to find Captain Morgan waiting for me to exit.

“Ready?” he asked.

I frowned. “For what?”Chapter 4After this, hell should be easy.

-Coffee Cup

Malachi

I didn’t want to go to the hospital.

In fact, I wanted nothing more than to go home, fall into bed, and never move again.

Instead, I was in a hospital with Captain Morgan standing next to me.

“Wipe that bitch look off your face, kid,” Captain Morgan drawled. “If you’re not careful, it’ll freeze that way.”

I rolled my eyes at that tired excuse of a joke.

“So, what happened to have all those kids rushing the compound?” I rumbled my question.

A nurse led us back to a room that was off to the side of all the other rooms, then left with a promise that she would be sending a doctor in a little later to look at my wounds.

“Yao arrested some punk kid at the high school,” Captain Morgan said. “All the kids followed his ass from class.”

I cringed.

“And the adults?” I asked.

He pulled out a glove from the dispenser above the sink and blew it up like a child, tying it off and tossing it at me before answering.

“Just kids who want to start shit,” he said. “Some of them were from school and came along with him when he was arrested. The rest were from the local college. Lawyers… or wannabes, anyway.”

I looked at the balloon that was in my hands now, then tossed it back.

Captain Morgan and I did that, bopping it back and forth to each other, before someone finally came in.

And that someone made my heart fucking sing.

“Frankie,” I said, sounding like a total douche.

Frankie’s head snapped up and her mouth dropped open.

“Malachi!” she cried out. “You were the one hurt?”

I shrugged. “I was.”

She growled under her breath, and I decided it was the cutest thing I’d ever seen—at least from what I could remember.

“What happened?” she asked.

I went on to explain, in detail, exactly what happened.

First, I didn’t see the point in lying. At least not about this. And secondly, she’d likely see the entire fucking thing on the internet.

Shit like that was popular on the internet nowadays.

I already had to see my ugly mug on the face of newspapers, online news outlets, and at the damn grocery store on gossip mags—yes, I apparently was that popular. Apparently, I used to be beautiful. I used to be a pretty face. A pretty face that had rich parents who were oil tycoons that had been making the paper for their entire lives.

Me having a tragic war story now was gold.

At least to them.

“The someone that was arrested was a high-school student,” Captain Morgan muttered, answering Frankie’s earlier question. “He was brought in and the students followed him from school to the station.”

Frankie sighed.

“I remember being pretty dumb and stubborn in high school,” she said. “Always thinking that it was my way or the highway.”

I smiled at that.

I doubted that she was anything less than an angel in high school.