Chapter 18

I hate it when I’m trying to eat a salad, it falls on the floor, and I have to eat tacos instead.

-Text from Audrey to Tobias

Audrey

His job was boring. I didn’t know how he did it every day.

Literally, every single second that I’d been sitting in his car had been the most boring of my life.

I’d even sat through some pretty boring shit during nursing school—such as evidence-based practice seminars that were eight hours long—and even that had some enlightening qualities about it—like lunch.

But this? Waiting for someone to speed? This took the cake.

I’d distracted myself by talking and talking, and talking some more. Though he’d answer my questions, I almost felt as if he was only replying because he thought I’d want him to reply, not because he actually wanted to reply, so I’d started to fall silent.

Now I understood why Leida had told me that her uncle was a stickler for the law. He was a different person right now, hyper aware of his surroundings, and sitting here at the bottom of a hill didn’t seem to affect him at all.

He actually seemed to like it!

After our conversation about my legs shaking and feeling hotter than I’d ever felt before, and when we got to the topic of my moving in, he’d gotten his first speeder.

It’d been a little old lady about the age of my grandmother had been when she’d died, and she had started crying when Tobias walked up to her car.

He hadn’t given her a ticket, though. Only a warning.

Sucker.

“If I was to, say, want to get out of a ticket, how would I go about doing that without showing my breasts?” I asked casually.

He looked over at me, those beautiful eyes shining with mirth.

“Are we talking me, or are we talking another officer that definitely is not me?” he countered. “And are we talking you in particular, or another individual who’s not a nurse?”

“What does being a nurse have to do with it?” I asked him.

He looked at me, grinning, and then turned his eyes back to the road.

His smile, paired with his uniform, was doing some uncomfortable things down below my navel, and I was seriously going to jump him the moment we walked through his door.

I literally might climb him like a tree the moment we pulled into his driveway.

“Cops don’t shit where they live. That means that most cops won’t knowingly issue a ticket to another officer or an officer’s wife. They also won’t issue a citation to a firefighter, paramedic, or a medical professional who might very well be providing treatment to them in the future.”

That made a whole hell of a lot of sense.

“So I should, what? Always have my badge hanging from my rearview mirror or something?” I questioned, seriously interested in knowing the answer.

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t just blurt out ‘I’m a nurse’ the moment he walks up, but yeah, him seeing your badge might help. I’m not saying it’s a sure fire way to get out of the ticket, but it’s damn sure going to make him hesitate.”

My lips tipped up.

“For any other individual that’s not a cop, nurse, paramedic, etc, then honesty is the best policy. Don’t be a dick, admit that you were wrong, and be courteous. When he pulls you over, turn the car off, roll down the window, turn on the dome lamp—if it’s dark. Put your hands on the steering wheel so that they can see that you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t be doing with them.”

“You don’t want me to get my insurance and registration before you get to the window?” I was confused now. “Why?”

“Let’s put it like this,” he said. “Say you’re walking up to a car, sometimes at night, and you can’t see what the driver is doing exactly, but he’s leaning over in his seat really fast as you walk up to him. What is he doing?”

I paused. “Getting his insurance?”

Wasn’t that obvious.

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Well, no. But there was a fairly good possibility that he was.”

His lips hardened into a thin line, and then he shook his head as a speeder topped the hill going not five over, not even ten, but twenty-two.

“Gotta take this one,” he said, flipping on his lights. “And to answer your question, what if what he was doing was reaching for a gun?”

Reaching for a gun.

“I don’t know.”

He nodded his head. “That’s right, you don’t. Nobody knows. The cop that’s pulling you over is doing a job, a very dangerous one. We never know what’s going to happen. We have been trained and we have experience. We know what is supposed to happen, but sometimes it doesn’t always play out that way. We know that so when we’re approaching a driver’s window, we’re aware and watching for it.”

He started into traffic, and I realized that every single person that’d been passing had conveniently moved out of his way, giving him easier access to the man that had already pulled to the side over a mile away.

And this time, as he got out of his car, I watched the other car.

The man was scrambling for something in his middle console, and I now saw the dangers that Tobias did.

Was he reaching for a gun? Or was he searching for his insurance card?

Oh, God. How did he do this day in and day out? It was nerve wracking.

Luckily, it was just his insurance card that he was looking for, and Tobias came back to the car moments later with the man’s license and insurance.

“This makes my stomach hurt,” I said to him.

His lips twitched. “Sorry, darlin’.”

He went about writing a ticket. This dude didn’t get off, despite Tobias saying that he was, indeed, very understanding and nice about getting pulled over.

Going twenty-two miles over the posted speed limit wasn’t something that Tobias would let him walk for, despite him being courteous.

I realized, though, in the next thirty seconds, that it wasn’t always the car that you pulled over that you had to watch for. You also had to watch the traffic surrounding you.

Which I wasn’t doing…not until it was too late.

I’d been watching Tobias’ ass as he sauntered to the car in his tight pants when my whole world exploded.

Something hit the cruiser so hard that it shook.

My head hit something solid, and I felt blood running down the side of my face and into my t-shirt.

My vision was blurry, but as I opened my eyes, I wasn’t where I was only two seconds earlier. I was now well away, in the grass median, and watching as Tobias started running toward the car.

He made it three steps before the popping started.

It was gunshots.

A lot of them.

And when I saw Tobias go down, and disappear into the tall grass, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

It was almost on automatic that I reached for the handheld microphone that Tobias had been calling his tickets into all day.

At first, I couldn’t find it, but it was still connected to where it used to be, so I followed the cord down with fumbling fingers until I found it on the floor next to the driver’s side floorboard.

My fingers wouldn’t work correctly, so I had to use both palms of my hand to press the button and hold it for counter pressure.

“O-o-officer d-d-down,” I stuttered.

My mouth wasn’t working right, either.

My tongue felt so thick.

***

Big Papa

“O-o-officer d-d-down.”

Every cop’s worst fear was hearing those two words.

Every single cop’s. Every single cop’s wife. Every single cop’s mom.

I found myself on my feet as I listened to the radio go crazy.

Cops in the area that were able to hear the radio traffic started asking locations. The dispatcher told everyone to get off. Officers ignored her.

But no location ever came.

I stared at the radio, my heart beating a mile a minute, and I tilted my head.

Reaching for my phone, I called Ghost.

“Your sister with Fender today?” I asked him.

“Yeah, from what she told me. Why?”

My stomach sank.

“We just got an officer down call on the radio, and we don’t know where, or who,” I said. “Sounded like her.”

Then I hung up and called into dispatch on my phone.

But it didn’t matter.

As soon as I found out, I relayed the information; a few calls started trickling in.

Now I just hoped it wasn’t too late.

“Merridy!” I called to my new temporary secretary. “I’m headed to the scene. It’s only about four miles from here.”

Then I was gone before I could see the cute girl’s shocked look on her face.

Aaron, and three other cops—who’d been off duty as of ten minutes ago—followed me out.