What If

At last, she’d come close enough to the window for me to see the outline of her body. Desire and anger collided inside of me. I wanted her, as much or more than ever before.

But rage boiled up that someone else could be looking. That any other fucker could even place eyes on what was mine would send me into the depths of darkness, ready to rend their eyes from their skull, so they never touched her again.

As she stood there for longer than made sense, I freed my erection from my pants. Imagined her soaking cunt wrapped around me and her lust-filled words filling my ears.

Tugging and violently releasing what belongs to her outside in the truck as I’ve done almost every night since she left gave me a mere moment of relief, but my heart remained lost. I want her flesh as much as I want her heart and I cannot separate the two for her or myself.

I’ve never used my position for personal gain before. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I’d move heaven and earth to make things right for her. For us.

I found out everything I could about her former case.

I found out everything about the current case and the little fuck who set her up.

Because she was set up. What I found is that history has a funny way of putting things together, and it was only a matter of time before the puzzle pieces fit, and I had my plan.

Outside the bar where my first meeting of the day is set up, I run over my plan and make my peace with the laws I’m about to bend.

I straight arm the door and let my eyes adjust inside the dim room. It stinks like cheap perfume and a mixture of a bathroom that needs cleaning and the scent of someone that couldn’t hold their liquor.

Taking a seat in a corner table, facing the door, I settle in to wait. One thing that I’ve earned in the ten years I’ve been on the force is favors. I’ve rarely called any in until these last few weeks.

Five minutes later, the door opens, and two hoodies with jeans hanging below their asses stumble in. The taller of the two men shoots a glance my way, then quickly looks away as they take two stools at the bar. He knows my face. The other one, the one whose name is Les, doesn’t.

I swallow, my heartbeat steady, and rub my lips together, giving them a few minutes to get a drink in front of them before I move.

I push down the rage. It doesn’t serve me right now. I need the cold calculation of the game right now not the heat of revenge.

That will come in time.

I push back my chair, see the way my contact flicks his eyes my way at my movement and stands, making his way toward the back hall as we’d planned.

As I replace him at the bar, he changes direction, and he’s out the front door, and I raise my eyes to the bartender who nods, turns away, walking around into the back room and leaving me alone with the filth who is about to understand the way his new world is going to work.

I grab the back of his neck before he knows I’m there, slamming his nose down onto the wooden bar and stifling the growl that rips through my chest.

“What the fuck!” he spits out along with a spray of blood.

Before he can get his hands up, I give his face another meeting with the bar, pull my Rueger from the back of my pants and settle it against his temple.

“Shut the fuck up. Your job is to listen until I ask you a question. Then your job is to answer.”

I pull him back up and lean in to see the purple swelling already taking over his nose as a stream of crimson flows over his lips.

My phone goes off as I expected and I ignore it, knowing exactly what it means. It tells me my next move is in motion and I have about two minutes to get this fuck ready for his part in my little play.

“Your buddy Derek Melrose is going to walk through that door. Your friend, the one who bought you that drink, is going to be with him. The door is going to be locked, and the three of us are going to have a little conversation. Then, you and Derek are going to have a little ‘come to Jesus’ with a detective who is waiting to take a statement from you.”

As I’d done my investigation, found out that Derek and Les were connected. I knew it was a sign. What are the chances that those two would be partners? Les was the piece of shit that set Jessie up out of high school.