Chapter Sixteen
Nyrene sat on the stairs, clutching her purse to her belly and trying not to shiver with fear.
The cop had just unlocked the door.
He must have been the one who’d been inside her house, and while he was there, he’d helped himself to the spare key she kept in her junk drawer in the kitchen.
He’d unlocked the fucking door, then simply outmuscled her as he pushed it open.
Nyrene was five foot eight and solid, with muscle under her curves, but she wasn’t any match for a cop who looked like he just might be able to bench press his own car. Muscles strained against the sleeves of his uniform shirt, roping his arms, and as she watched, they bunched and unbunched.
“We’re going to take a ride,” he told her.
She swallowed and shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Then I’m going to shoot you in the knee,” he informed her, his voice strangely remote. Strange, because his eyes were bouncing around all over the place, refusing to linger on her face for even a minute.
But she didn’t take that to mean he didn’t mean what he said. She had good reason to believe he did mean it—the thoughts were practically spray-painted across his mind in sickly neon green. He didn’t want to do it, he’d regret it, but he’d do it nonetheless, because he felt he had no choice.
She had a choice, though.
Her choice was to be stubborn and wait it out because Joss was close, maybe even already in the house, and Dev was coming. All she had to do was stall.
Deciding to risk it, she removed one lone brick in the wall that protected her mind from his. She could glean the surface thoughts in his mind already, but she needed more.
…can’t believe I’m doing this. What’s my wife going to think?
…no choice. If I don’t, they said they’d kill her.
“You do have a choice, Officer”—she flicked a look to his nametag—“Morell. This whole thing is falling apart. It has been for a while. You do realize that the reason they wanted Ben Deverall dead is because he has evidence that’s going to bring this whole mess down, right?”
His lids flickered. “Be quiet.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Dev’s got that evidence, and he’s already given it to…” Her hesitation was brief and she hoped he didn’t notice. She was making this shit up as she went and lying had never been one of her strong suits. She’d never thought she’d have reason to wish otherwise, until now. “The FBI. That’s why that agent was there. That’s why the BOLO was called off.”
“Shut up,” he said, voice going hard.
But she caught another clear thought.
I fucking knew it…
Movement behind him caught her attention and she fought not to betray anything. Joss.
“You didn’t really think somebody was stupid enough to try to grab me in broad daylight, did you?” She threw the words out there. “Dev and Agent Crawford just made that shit up so they could have a valid reason for Crawford to go in and start feeling things out in the department.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
That was all she caught from him that time.
She didn’t understand why he was buying any of that bullshit, but she had to brazen it out.
A huge forearm snaked around Officer Morell’s throat, joined by a weapon that pressed into the man’s temple. The man went strangely still, not resisting at all.
“Take his weapon for me, will you, sweetheart?” Joss asked, his voice tight. “Do it fast.”
She lurched up, not even questioning him. She remembered how he’d used his mind to grab Dev and had no doubt he was doing something similar to hold Officer Morell trapped, a prisoner in his own body.
She pried the gun from Morell’s hand and fumbled with it until she was a few feet away, lowering it to her side with the muzzle pointed at the floor. She’d never held a gun in her life and the weight of it was monumental, pulling her entire arm to the ground, or so it seemed.
“What now?” she asked, voice trembling.
“This boy is going to take a few steps into the room or I’m going to ventilate his brain, that’s what,” Joss said, voice still tight, but a little less strained. “Come on, son. In you go.”
In jerky, oddly reluctant movements—Like a puppet’s, Nyrene thought—Morell moved into the room. Once inside, Joss said, “Nyrene, shut the door for me, would you?”
She scurried over and closed the door, then moved back across the room, still holding the gun.
“Stay where you’re at now, sweetheart,” Joss said, his drawl thicker, voice still tight. It hardened as he shifted his focus to the cop he still held in a vicious grip. “I’m going to let you go now, son. You’re going to walk straight over to the chair and sit down. You do anything more than that, I’m going to do what you threatened to do to Nyrene—I’ll shoot you in the knee, but not one knee, both of them. You won’t even have to worry about riding a desk. Your days as a cop are over.”
He let Morell go and the big cop staggered a little.
Nyrene saw the struggle in his eyes, the internal battle being waged. And she saw the defeat that swam in his dark gaze. He accepted it and took one slow step, then another, toward the chair Joss had indicated. Halfway there, he stopped and turned around.
When he saw the gun Joss held pointed at knee level, he didn’t even blink.
“If I give you names, will y’all make sure my wife gets protection?”
Joss inclined his head. “We would have done that anyway.” Something that might have been a smile tipped up one corner of his mouth. “But you asking makes me think you might not be below the level of pond scum. You’re just right on level with it.”
* * * * *
Dev approached slowly, back to the wall of the house. The captain came in from the other side. Something vibrated in his pocket. His phone. He ignored it.
One step closer…another…another… The window was just a few steps away.
The vibrating started again just as he eased to the ground, ready to belly crawl under the window so he didn’t cast a shadow through the curtains and betray his presence.
Hurry, hurry…
The vibrating stopped, but started again as soon as he regained his feet.
Then the door swung open and he dropped, weapon ready in a two-handed grip, aimed at chest level.
Joss stood there.
“Get your asses in here. We got this under control, but there’s gonna to be a party. Don’t want to ruin the surprise,” the big man said in a cheery voice. He tossed a look behind him at the captain. “Good afternoon, Captain. It’s been one hell of a day.”
Then he ducked back into the house.
The adrenaline swirling in Dev had him ramped up so high, he was all but shaking with it as he stepped over the threshold of Nyrene’s house, uncertain what he was going to find.
It wasn’t anything he expected.
Officer Hank Morell sat in the same broken-in easy chair that Dev had used when he had come here that first night. Hell, had it even been a week? He had a grim set to his features and when he saw Dev, then the captain step through the door, his tanned features turned a dull shade of red.
Aww, fuck, Dev thought.
There was a quiet click of the door as the captain shut it.
“Morell. What brings you here?” Amana asked.
He shot her a look, then glanced at Dev. “You probably already know, Captain,” the young cop said, voice emotionless.
Dev saw red.
Joss stepped in front of him. “I knew you were just a few minutes away so I made him go ahead and put in a call to the cop who brought him in on the mess. Let’s not lose sight of the prize here.”
As far as Dev was concerned, the prize was the dirty cop sitting in the middle of Nyrene’s living.
Nyrene—
He turned his head, seeking her out.
She was curled up in the corner of her couch, clutching her purse to her chest in a familiar way. Her normally golden skin was pale and she gave him a wan smile. “He was going to shoot me in the knee,” she said, her voice wobbling. “He told me we were going for a ride and I wouldn’t go so he threatened to shoot me in the knee. I wouldn’t go with him, though.”
She delivered those words all without blinking an eye, and Dev was torn between rushing to her and turning on the cop who had put that look on her face.
“I ought to fucking kill you,” he said in a low voice, not looking at Morell. If he did, his control would snap.
From the corner of his eye, he saw both the captain and Joss shift toward him. He laughed hollowly, shaking his head. “Eye on the prize, I know.”
He retreated to a spot by the window, one that offered a clear view of the street while providing a decent level of obscurity for him. “Just when does this party get started?”
* * * * *
Larry Oman wasn’t a happy man.
Not at all.
Morell had given him a terse call and told him there was a problem at the target’s house and he needed Oman on site, ASAP. Then he’d hung up, refusing to answer Oman’s two subsequent phone calls and then the single text he’d replied to had been as terse as the phone call.
Would you just get the fuck over here? There’s a fucking mess.
Part of Oman was hoping the girl had gone and offed herself. Or maybe Dev had lost it and offed her. Or whoever had been feeding her intel, although none of those options were really the best, because he needed to know what the fuck she knew why Dev had been willing to risk his life to keep her with him and just what the general fuck was going on.
Without having those answers, he was in something of a mess himself.
And that was the only reason he was letting some dumbass, shit-for-brains uniform jerk him around.
Morell needed to watch himself.
Oman parked his car at the end of the driveway, effectively blocking the car in front of his. He took a quick look around the neighborhood, if one could call it that. There was a car down the street, parked on the side of the road. At the very far end, he caught sight of the front end of some sort of SUV on the cross street, but he couldn’t make it out clearly. He did see the unmarked car that Morell drove, just a few doors down, and he had to shake his head. If that was where Morell had been watching her from, he’d probably been noticed.
Either by the girl or Deverall, although why in the hell either one of them was here, he didn’t know. It was just another thing to worry about. As if he didn’t have enough.
Grim, he mounted the steps as he cast one more look around the perimeter.
It was quiet, not even a bird calling to break the mid-afternoon silence. No cars driving down the street. Nothing.
Too quiet.
Uneasy, he reached down to try the door.
He found it unlocked and that didn’t do shit to relieve his nerves.
Hinges creaked as the door swung open and he went for the weapon he carried in a holster secured under his left arm. As he nudged the door open wider, he drew his Glock and peered inside.
He caught sight of Morell’s broad, muscled back in the middle of the room, standing there staring down at…something. Furniture blocked Oman’s view and he couldn’t see anything.
He didn’t want to go inside, but it was too conspicuous to stand out here, so he slid in and shut the door, pressing his back to it after a quick look to make sure nobody waited there.
“Morell, what the fuck…”
Morell turned.
Oman swore at the sight of the man’s hands, cuffed in front of him. There was also a piece of duct tape over his mouth, but judging by the look in Morell’s eyes, neither the tape, nor the cuffs were necessary. Morell looked at Oman with seething hate, the same way he’d looked at him when Oman had threatened his wife if he fucked up the job.
“Guess me and your bitch are going to have some fun,” Oman said without thinking.
A floorboard creaking had Oman looking away from Morell for the briefest moment. His gaze flicked back to Morell, but then slowly slid back to the doorway as Officer Bennett Deverall stepped through.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Dev said. “How about you and me have some fun…bitch?”