Good Gone Bad (The Fallen Men 3)

“With you,” I agreed, trying not to let my giddiness show.

He was going to let me do this.

“Know you’re done with waiting and watching, Harleigh Rose, but we still gotta do this in a way we can bring them down for good. I don’t want you in danger after it’s revealed you were in on this, you get me?”

“Get you,” I agreed.

“Fuck me, but you’re fuckin’ trouble,” he muttered.

“You love it,” I sassed, because sassing the patriarchy was my bread and fuckin’ butter.

He grunted his agreement. “Gonna hang up and get this shit sorted. You wait there for me to call you back, and Rosie, if you move one fuckin’ inch out of that car, I’m going to punish you so hard, you won’t sit easy for a fucking month. You with me?”

“With you,” I whispered through my sudden loss of breath.

He hung up.

I tried to get my breathing under control and flipped on “Gun in My Hand” by Dorothy to get my head in the game.

Fifteen minutes later, a black van pulled up across the street from me.

Two minutes after that, Danner’s Mustang Fastback screeched to a halt behind that and he climbed out of his car wearing tip to toe black that made him look like a fuckin’ biker god.

He knocked on my passenger side window then tagged my hand the second I opened the door to pull me back over the street to the van.

“You do everything I say,” he told me as we power walked. “There’ll be a piece in your ear so you can hear me and a microphone in the camera they’re goin’ to attach to your jacket. If I say move, you move. If I say get the fuck out of there, you get the fuck out of there before you take your next breath.”

“Aye, aye, Officer,” I said, turned on by his no-nonsense cop persona.

I wanted him to use the cuffs dangling from the back of his black jeans on my wrists, push me against the car for a full body search and then fuck me silly.

He turned to me with a glare as we reached the back of the van and he knocked on the door. “I want to hear you agree with me, seriously, Rosie.”

“Yes, Officer,” I said sweetly, hand to my heart. “I solemnly pledge to obey your orders.”

He scowled, but before he could reprimand me again, the doors were opened and I was being pulled into the back of a van the likes of which I’d only ever seen in cop movies. There was equipment everywhere, three computers, speakers and two TVs, a rack bolted to the floor that carried weapons and police armour.

“Cool,” I whispered, touching a vest that read “RCMP.” “Can I wear a bulletproof vest?”

“No,” said the huge black man I recognized as Sterling, one of the cops from the scene of Cricket’s death. “But you can get over here so Johnson can get you set up and I can brief you.”

“Aye, aye Officer,” I repeated with a flick of my fingers in a mock salute.

Sterling cut his gaze to Danner who only sighed wearily.

They attached a camera to the necklace I wore with “Rosie” written in gold, affixing it to the skull and crossbones pendant that hung beside it. They explained to me the rules and regulations of doing a ‘sting,’ and what exactly I was trying to get Grant to say.

If I successfully got a confession from him, Danner, who would be waiting outside the office, would cuff him and bring him into the station in order to offer him immunity in return for becoming a confidential informant.

When they were finished with me, I was restless with eagerness, so confident in my own abilities, I felt invincible.

I’d never been on the right side of the law before, but apparently, it could offer the same thrilling high flagrantly disregarding it could garner.

I practically skipped out of the van and across the street, pulling the gun I’d hidden down the back of my pants out and into my hand, Danner trailing behind me. He grabbed my arm as we reached the chain link fence dividing the port from the street and turned me to face him.

“Do we need to go over the plan again?”

“Show up. Kick some serious ass. Get the hell outta there,” I said as I checked the safety on my gun and adjusted the cool, familiar, heavy weight of it between my hands.

“Are you taking this seriously?” Danner asked in that voice that shot wet straight to the core of me. It was his no-nonsense authority voice. The one he used to bend me over his knee and break criminals into pieces on the floor of interrogation rooms.

Still, it wouldn’t do for him to know how it affected me, especially when we were about to put our lives on the line and he was doubting my badassery.