Chapter 19
Hawk hit the floor, dropping the gun and bleeding.
The rest of the room went into chaos. Guards yelled at one another. A bright light blew up outside the semicircle of windows. When one guard pointed to a bullet hole in the window, the hole suddenly got a lot fucking bigger.
Every window crashed as shadows came flying through. Glass rained, sending half the guards scrambling out the door and the other half to stand, dumbfounded. Voices raised. Nala fell to the ground, covering her head with her hands as Vincent threw himself over her. Words like “FBI!” and “Stay where you are! Drop your weapons!” echoed around them. It wasn’t until someone grabbed Vincent and then Nala that she finally opened her eyes and looked at a big fat “FBI” printed on a bulletproof vest in front of her.
Her hands were tied behind her back. Vincent was shoved back to the ground next to her. More FBI agents came swinging through the windows, raiding the whole damned place as they crunched broken glass beneath their boots and chased after more of Xavier Crow’s personnel.
The commotion they heard throughout the rest of the house was like the entirety of the military raining upon Crow’s palace. The raid lasted only a few minutes, at most, but the whole time Nala gaped in awe at the scene opening up around her. Holy fucking shit! This was the kind of stuff people only saw on TV! So many people, dressed all in black and wearing helmets, their visors pulled down, throwing smoke bombs into rooms to drive people out… putting the butts of their large guns in people’s backs to make them march to the grand foyer downstairs, where Vincent and Nala were eventually taken as well. Do they think we’re anything but victims in this? Are we being arrested too? They did have fake IDs, and who knew what else they had done that was technically illegal.
Nala and Vincent stood among the usual suspects, like corrupt security personnel, a beautifully injured Hawk who was cursing and punching anyone in her way before one big and burly FBI guy smacked her in the back and sent her to her knees, and generally sketchy looking people. But there were also scared witless maids, concerned chefs, and a couple landscapers who swore they didn’t speak English.
They were rounding up everyone.
Including the man of the hour, Xavier Crow, who was marched down his stairs with his head still high. His hands were cuffed behind his back, but one would have never guessed this was anything but his own plan based on how he surveyed the land around him.
Once he hit the bottom of the stairs with his black-suited entourage, a familiar face walked through the main entrance.
Maggie pushed her rain jacket behind her as she sauntered up in the same dark denim jeans and beige peasant top she wore when Nala saw her earlier that evening. Her demeanor was both determined and satisfied, as if this were the greatest moment of her life – it probably was.
“Xavier Crow!” she called, pulling something from her pocket. Nala half expected a gun, but it was a leather wallet instead. “Margaret Jameson, FBI.”
His eyebrows went up. Nala’s practically leaped off her face. I will never be that cool.
“You’re under arrest for extortion, insider trading, kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, and multiple counts of conspiracy to commit murder.” When Hawk squawked in pain a few feet away, Maggie continued, “That one’s arrested for just murder. What a pair you make.”
Jay approached, also wearing a FBI jacket. “Great job, babe. We got everyone.”
She did not smile. “I know. Don’t call me babe.”
Maggie pushed past Nala and Vincent without regard. She only had eyes for Crow.
“A pest in my own Aviary,” Crow said, before she had the chance to speak. “I always knew there was something off with you.”
“Kinda like how everyone with half a lick of sense always knew there was something or fifty off with you.”
“Nothing you have against me will hold up in court. These scandalous lies you tell will do nothing but hurt your institution instead.”
Maggie smirked before landing a punch right between his legs.
Nala almost laughed as the man slowly sank to his knees, containing a painful expression that she recognized as balls breaking. Maggie told her FBI partners that her hands slipped.
“You have confessed so much already, Xavier.” Maggie gestured to Nala. The nearest agent pushed her down and ripped something off her back. When she looked up, she saw that she had been bugged the whole time. When she patted me on the back… she bugged me? “We’ve got your full confession on there.”
“Nobody will believe it,” Crow wheezed.
“Shut the fuck up, baby killer.”
“You better do as she says!” The only man dressed in a dark suit came through the front door. Even this one surprised Vincent, who stared wide-eyed at Joseph making a lackadaisical entrance. “You’ve had two official investigations going on for a while, Crow. If it weren’t the FBI, it would’ve been the police. You’ve been making negative waves in this city for a while.”
“You stupid little…”
“Let me guess? Mama’s boy? Wouldn’t be the first time I heard that.” Joseph didn’t have a gun or cuffs to show off, but he did pull out his credentials. “Montoya is my real name. You might know my mother, Madeline Cromwell, the woman who does all those pesky business corruption investigations in the PNW. She asked me personally to work with the FBI on this one.”
“Because you’re a pervert,” Maggie muttered.
“No kidding,” Jay echoed.
“Why do you think I didn’t say no?”
“So good to know that my judgment in character over the past year has been totally shot,” Crow said, attempting to have the last word. “Now I’m going to shut up and wait for my lawyer.”
“Wise idea. Take him away.”
Before the FBI agents could parade him through the foyer and out the front door, however, Vincent leaped to his feet and cried, “Wait! Please!” He was let go, his hands still tied behind his back, but his feet swift as they took him to Crow. “I want to ask him one last thing.”
Crow sighed. “What is it?”
“How?” Vincent looked like he wanted to throttle Crow, and Nala wouldn’t blame him. “How could you kill a pregnant woman?”
Crow’s demeanor remained unchanged. “Why do you care?” he asked evenly. “What would you have done when it inevitably came out that your precious little Matthew or Magda was actually mine?”
Vincent bit back a growl. “Kept loving it like my own.”
“Hmph. How fucking noble.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Jay said. “Get him out of here.”
Vincent was pulled back and Crow marched out of his own home. Some of the FBI agents started cuffing Crow’s security and taking them to vans to load up and haul downtown, while others started questioning the staff. Nobody touched Nala and Vincent. Except for Maggie, who came back down the stairs with her hands in her back pockets and a gun poking from a holster. Wow. I want to believe she shot Hawk. Nala would believe it until she died.
“Sorry you two kept getting wrapped up in this,” she said, taking out a pocket knife and cutting apart their binds. Vincent shook out his wrists while Nala braced herself against the ground. “Because of your fucking stupidity, though, we got the last of the evidence we needed to finally raid this place. Jay and I have been undercover for over a year now.”
“I helped!” Joseph called.
Nobody heeded him.
“Glad I could help,” Nala muttered.
“Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. We’re all young and dumb once.”
“…Thanks.”
“Don’t mind her,” Jay said. “She’s tough on the love. Makes her pretty endearing, right? She’s great at Thanksgiving dinners.” He smiled. “My husband adores her.”
“Your husband would think Paula Deen is great company.”
“For all the wrong reasons.”
When they both caught Nala looking askance at them, Maggie explained, “We’re not a real couple. Jay and Marguerite Jones were our undercover names. That house is a FBI house.”
“I would have never guessed,” Nala sighed.
“You should get some medical attention. You may have only got shot with CO2 for a couple of seconds, but that’s enough to do some damage. I’ll get you a medic as soon as one’s available. Hold tight.” Maggie patted her shoulder. “Need you nice and healthy so we can take your statement. Might need you to testify.”
Vincent turned to Jay. “Are we being arrested for anything?”
“No. Although we know about the fake IDs.”
Vincent groaned.
“We’ll look the other way regarding any of the… questionably legal things… you’ve done since entering The Aviary as long as you give us official statements about everything’s that happened. Your records stay clean and your reputations strong. We all go home happy.”
Vincent exuded a sigh of relief. Nala leaned against his shoulder and almost wept to feel his arm wrap around her.
“By the way,” Jay said to Nala. “I’m sorry about what happened at the hotel. I couldn’t blow our cover to anyone. Hawk had made us as some sort of spies, which caused the shootout. Obviously we were all right, but I know it scared you two shitless.”
“It’s all right,” Nala said, starting to shiver in the drafty foyer. “I’m used to that by now.”
“Found this one in the master bedroom.”
Maggie, standing on the landing of the grand staircase, looked up and saw one of her colleagues bring down a woman in a gold dress. Oh, no. “Well, you were around after all.”
Quail looked her in the eye before grunting in disapproval. “And you were a cop after all. Should’ve sniffed it out.”
Maggie finally got to pull out her handcuffs. “I hate to do this, but…”
“Do it already. I got a lawyer on speed dial by this point.”
Rolling her eyes, Maggie took Quail from the agent’s grip, turned her around, pulled her hands behind her back, and cuffed her. “Sylvia Rogers, you’re under arrest for multiple counts of solicitation and prostitution.”
“No shit. I’m a fucking escort and a girl’s gotta eat.”
“Anything you say can and will be used against you… so you might wanna shut up.”
They started marching down the stairs, Quail’s head held high and her face so stubborn that she looked like she was about to turn around and smash her heel on Maggie’s toes. Instead, she said, “I can give you Sebastian! He’s a dirty bastard with…”
“Yeah, yeah, we know all about your client’s workings with Crow. Save it.”
“I used to be a real respected girl, you know! One of the most sought after on the east coast!”
“Yes, and you had protection over there, didn’t you?” Their voices echoed in the foyer until they were at the front door. “Don’t have a powerful madam to protect your ass this time. You’re a fat little quail sitting dead in the road after all.”
Jay turned away from the scene as soon as they were out the door. “Poor thing. We had our eye on her for a while. Had quite the fall from grace since she used to work for a high class BDSM dungeon back east. Was engaged to some bigshot before she caught him cheating.” He shook his head. “Next thing we know about her, she’s out here turning tricks in the big leagues.”
“Apparently,” Nala muttered.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to it. We won’t detain you or anything, but don’t stray too far away. We’ll need your statements before you can go home.”
Once they were finally left alone, Nala fell into Vincent’s arms and let out a repressed sob. He rocked her back and forth slowly enough to make her feel at ease with so much pumped up energy around them.
“I almost died…”
“I know, darling.”
“But you came for me…”
“I did.”
“You stalked me… but you came for me…”
“I had to make sure you were safe. I normally wouldn’t do something like that.”
“I know.” Nala began to shake as a powerful realization claimed her. “It’s over, Vincent. It’s all over. He’s not going to hurt anyone anymore.”
“I sure hope not.”
“Don’t say that. Tell me he’s not going to hurt anyone.” Tears started to fall from her eyes, dampening his sweatshirt. “Tell me it’s all over and we got the justice we set out for.”
His lips buried in the crook of her neck. “It’s all over, Nala. It’s all fucking over.”
“I love you so much.”
“I love you too.”
They kissed, not for a lack of anything else to do, but because they were so overcome by emotion that nothing else needed to be done. Nala fell back, feeling Vincent hold her with one arm and overpower her with his kiss as if that were the most natural thing in the world. It is now. Heavy boots stepped this way and that. The occasional words of derision were exchanged outside. Sirens sounded. Medics came. People wanted their statements. Soon there would be reporters. Until then, Nala was content to spend the first few moments of her new-found freedom sharing her joy with her boyfriend.
Are you okay, Tasha? Are you happy that I got you justice? Or are you angry that I hurt the man you loved?
Nala opened one eye as lighter steps walked by. It was two women, wearing FBI gear and reporting back from their superior. One woman had big, bushy hair, and the other long, black hair that looked too Slavic to ignore.
“I’m gonna need a cigarette after this,” the curly-haired agent said. “I’ve never smoked.”
“Buy me a coffee first. As soon as we get back to HQ I’ve gotta go back to those criminal pathology classes. Thinking about it is wearing me out. Fuck it, we’re wanted upstairs to process the office.”
Both women turned in the couple’s direction, briefly exchanging glances with Nala and smiling. She smiled back, watching them walk by, self-assured – tired, but self-assured.
“What is it?” Vincent asked, nuzzling her. They still sat in the middle of the damned floor in the foyer, but Nala didn’t care. She was wrapped in his arms, and as far as she was concerned, that was the safest place to be.
“Nothing. Kinda funny how many doppelgangers there are in the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
He did, going so far as to slip some tongue in the middle of a crime scene. That’s how he was, and Nala easily accepted it – because that’s how she was. The world could be collapsing all around them, and she would be content if it meant kissing a man like Vincent Lane.
I’m glad you’re not mad at me, Tasha.
She kissed Vincent harder, finally garnering the jabs of a few agents around them. Somewhere in the distance, a man was asking them to stop long enough to answer a few questions. Except nobody was able to stop such a formidable pair once things started to heat up. Especially when someone like Nala was happy. Right now she was mostly relieved, but she knew she would wake up the next day feeling pure happiness for the first time in…
Well, she didn’t know in how long.
Far away, a little bird perched in its cage, singing a song of mourning. Nala used to be like that. A nightingale, crying desperately over a broken heart. The most beautiful song in the world. Beautiful because it spoke to the darkest, most pitiful parts of the human condition.
Nala used to be like that. Then someone opened her cage door and finally let her fly away, right into the arms of the only man who could change her life in such a wonderful – and unexpected – way.