Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart 3)

“You want to talk to me?” He sounded shocked.

“Yeah,” I told him.

His frown deepened, and I quickly added, “My mama is making blueberry pie.”

That was all it took to have an affected smile ticking up at one side of those lips. “My favorite.”

I gave another nod.

Awareness spun between us, a storm that churned and spiraled and sucked me right in, the way it’d always been. What I needed to remember was that nothing would be the same.

“I’d love that,” he said.

“All right, I’ll see you tomorrow at one.”

I climbed into my car, soul crashing against my ribs. I sucked in the deepest breath and pulled out onto the road, hoping beyond hope that I wasn’t making a huge mistake.

Seven

Mack

You had to wonder why some asshole always went and ruined your day.

Especially when I was in the middle of one that had sparked a hope in me unlike anything I’d felt in a long, long time. Izzy just . . . standing in front of me and making me feel like everything could turn out right. Helped a bit that she’d invited me over for her mama’s blueberry pie.

She might as well have been passing me an olive branch.

But that’s just the way life went, wasn’t it?

You had to take the good with the bad.

And when you were a cop, you spent your life taking on a whole lot of the bad.

Proof of that was I was more than halfway home, minding my own business, when a car came blazing out of a side street just as I was making it back into Charleston.

My attention whipped that way, watching as a late model BMW blew the stop sign coming out of a neighborhood, fishtailing as it hit the main road.

They gunned it going the opposite direction.

Doing about double the speed limit.

Switching on my lights and siren, I flipped a U in the road. Could feel my skin getting sticky, hit with the unsettled feeling I got whenever things weren’t quite right.

An intuition that had saved my ass more times than I could count.

I grabbed my radio. “Detective Chambers, lights and sirens, pursuing late model BMW. Requesting back up.” I rattled off the license plate and my location. I got confirmation, and I floored it, the big engine of my Suburban roaring.

The white car in front of me swerved in and out of the lane, flying by two cars, not giving a fuck that he might be putting someone in danger.

Nothing I hated more than that.

My eyes narrowed, and my heart thudded harder. Was this asshole trying to outrun me? With my siren going, the two cars pulled off to the side to let me by, and I got right up on the car’s tail.

Could tell he was thinking about it. Itching to push his car as fast as it would go.

Run.

I edged an inch closer, letting him know I’d be all too happy to chase him down.

Finally, he flipped on his signal, put on his brakes, and pulled off to the side of the road. I came up right behind him, adrenaline a thunder in my veins.

I’d been in this line of work long enough to smell the stench of trouble from a hundred miles away. And it was just emanating from this asshole.

Actually, four of them. Could see the car was filled, two in the front and two in the back.

Unease stirred, and I waited until the plates read clean, then stepped out of my truck into the overbearing heat. Sweat instantly slicked my flesh, and my guts twisted up in a sick sort of anticipation, at the ready for anything.

Was wearing my typical uniform—jeans and a tee and boots and my gun strapped to my side.

Never mattered if I was on duty or not. I was ready to go.

Could almost see the four kids sitting in the car gettin’ antsy over that shit, looking in the mirrors, squirrelling in their seats, anxiety coming from that white metal like it’d been painted with it.

If I didn’t already know I had a prick on my hands, he only sealed the deal when I got up to the side of the car and he still had his window rolled up. With the heel of my fist, I banged on it.

Reluctantly, he finally rolled it down, arrogance coming out of the inside as thick as the heatwaves sagging in the sky. My gaze swept the car, taking in the four guys that I pegged at around twenty. They weren’t dressed much different than any other guy I’d come across on the streets.

It was what was underneath those layers that got to me. Something sleazy oozing from their skin that cued me in that they were up to no good.

“Problem, officer?” The driver’s tone dripped with sarcasm, brow lifting like it was me with the issue rather than the other way around.