Maybe Swearing Will Help (SWAT Generation 2.0 3)

“I bet ol’ Louis here that you and Ashe had a thing. Louis swore it was a mutual hatred. Had nothing to do with lust. I told him he was wrong, so he decided to bet me. I was honestly beginning to think that you would be making me a liar,” Hayes explained.

I rolled my eyes.

“Well shit,” I said. “Does everyone think this?”

“I’m sure they assume just like me,” Hayes said as he finished tucking his pants over the tops of his boots and stood. “I mean, when you lose your shit on someone for saying she’s hot and he’d fuck her, then turn around and give her shit, it makes it more than obvious to us. She’s yours. Only you’re allowed to treat her like that.”

He was talking about yesterday during the SWAT tryouts.

By law, we were supposed to allow everyone to try out. Even if we thought that they weren’t SWAT material.

Ashe had been with her cousin Rowen, who was Dax’s wife, as they watched the tryouts.

I kept waiting for her to come down, to do what she’d bet me she could do, but she’d never come.

She’d been sitting there BS-ing with Luke and Rowen when Jerry Too Wary, better known as Jerry Bergonson, a three-year veteran of the KPD, and definitely not SWAT team material, had made a comment to Saint about how hot Ashe was. How he loved her hair, and he could play naughty school teacher with her later while he held onto that hair and made her do unmentionable things to him.

I’d, of course, done what I do best.

I’d walked up to him, informed him he needed to stop, or else.

He hadn’t. And when Nico paired me up with him, going one on one? Yeah, I hadn’t shown him any mercy.

We were supposed to pull our punches and not draw blood, but I’d granted myself one really good, solid hit before I started pulling my punches. Then the little fucker had tried to taunt me about my ‘girlfriend’ to psych me out. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know that the more pissed I became, the better I was at focusing.

Poor little Jerry had gotten his ass kicked. Then he’d had to run the obstacle course.

Needless to say, he hadn’t made the SWAT team. He’d also gone out of his way to give me shit every time he saw me ever since.

“Fucking right,” I said. “Can’t fucking stand Jerry.”

Louis chuckled.

I finished getting dressed and headed out to the armored vehicle.

I was one of the first ones there, which was why I got in the front seat and started it up.

“You driving?” Nathan asked as he took the passenger seat.

“Yes,” I said as I hit the button that would tell us where the call was located. “Think we can just leave without them?”

“Not sure I want to go on a SWAT call to Eleventh Street with just two of us,” he joked.

“A-fucking-men,” I muttered. “Can’t even patrol that street without getting shit thrown at my cruiser.”

“I had a dead cat thrown at me yesterday,” Sammy said as he got into the seat closest to the cab of the rig. “It was still bloated, too. Exploded all over my windshield. Was the most disgusting thing that I’ve ever experienced.”

We all had a good laugh as the rest of the crew loaded in. I pulled behind the other vehicle and followed them to the call.

“So about those marks…” Sammy said as he tried to continue talking about what we’d dropped the moment I’d walked away.

“I know that I’ll kick your ass if you give her a hard time,” I said. “And I know that I don’t want to talk about it.”

Chuckles filled the truck.

They didn’t press the topic anymore, but I knew without a doubt that there’d be more questioning later.

Right then, they were just trying to focus on the SWAT call we were about to run.

Or, as we got closer, the SWAT training exercise that we were going to run.

At the elementary school.

I felt sick to my stomach when we rolled up to the address and found what we found.

When we got out, it was Bennett and Foster who met us at the door.

“Today,” he said, “we’re going to work on school lockdown situations. What to do if we ever run a call on the elementary school—or the other two campuses for that matter,” Foster pointed at the doors behind him. “Right now, these doors are locked, as per protocol. The children are off today, so don’t worry. But… we’re going to act like they’re all there. Like, per school policy, all those little babies are locked in their rooms, and a shooter is on the loose.”

The feeling didn’t go away.

Not for hours.

Not until I got home and found Ashe on my front porch, staring at me warily.