The Firm Hand of the Law (4 page)

Gareth was good enough to do so, making sure the bar was closed up before she got carted off to the cells. Eyeing his car from a distance, Lily was gratified to see that it still sparkled here and there. He might have won this battle, but she was going to win the war.

Chapter Two

“Why is Lily Brannigan in the cells?” Jeff Wings, one of Gareth’s colleagues and a technical superior, approached him at two in the morning. The station never really shut, but there were very few people there at that time of the morning. Gareth planned on staying there as long as it took to make Miss Brannigan crack. She’d spent an hour or so cooling her heels, and he planned to leave here there a little longer before making another attempt at talking some sense into her. He could still smell her perfume on his hands and shirt, a sweet scent which was distracting at best.

He hadn’t planned the sex. The sex was probably a very bad idea, but the chemistry had just been so… right. Gareth couldn’t imagine any man being able to resist the sight that was Lily Brannigan’s pink, pert cheeks and glistening pussy framed by tight black leggings. Even now, the sight flashed before his mind’s eye, making the paperwork he was busying himself with pale into irrelevancy. It certainly made answering Jeff’s question a little difficult.

“Because she’s a stubborn little witch who won’t listen to sense.” He took another bite of the hot dog he’d microwaved. It wasn’t good, but it was better than nothing. Late nights played havoc with a balanced diet.

“You’re not worried you’ll spook the supplier by arresting her?”

“It wasn’t exactly a high profile arrest,” Gareth shrugged. “I doubt anyone knows she’s gone. I’ll have her home by curfew, mom.”

Jeff perched on his desk, clearly not ready to drop the topic. “You’ve been on the case less than a day,” he said. “Your brief was to gather evidence, establish a relationship, and flip her. How is she already in custody?”

Gareth shrugged. “I work fast.”

“Don’t blow this, Gareth,” Jeff lectured. “You charge into this heavy-handed, you spook the suppliers, our case disappears, and you know the chief is banking on this case. You mess this up, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Jeff wasn’t wrong. The chief was jumpy about this case. It was a big one. If he cracked it, it could be his ticket into political office.

Everywhere there were games being played. Gareth didn’t care about games. He cared about doing his job. At that point in time, his job was making Lily Brannigan see the error of her ways.

He finished off the rest of his hot dog in a couple bites and shrugged. “I got to go, Jeff. Have a good night.”

“Yeah, you too.” Jeff gave him a dubious wave.

The faith was not strong in that one, but Gareth had better things to be doing than reassuring nervous nellies. He got one of the duty sergeants to pull Lily out of the cells and bring her to an interview room in which he was waiting for her arrival. He wanted to be there first, see how she came in, asses her state of mind before she got a chance to compose herself.

The duty sergeant brought her in without any issue. Some subjects came in cursing, squealing, fighting. Not Lily Brannigan. She sat in the uncomfortable metal chair with all the grace of a queen taking her throne. She was a tough little thing, that was for sure. When she got spooked, she got brave. He liked that, even though it made his job far more difficult.

He gave her a look designed to let her know he’d not forgotten what she looked like head down, bottom up, her pink pussy lips spread around his cock, pliantly accepting his will. “You tired of that cell yet, want to talk?”

She clasped her hands together and batted her lashes at him. “What would you like to discuss, Mr. Officer, sir?”

He smirked. Oh, she was so cute with her pretend submission.

“I’d like to discuss your cooperation,” he said. “Because one way or another, this gang you have yourself mixed up in is going down. If you want to go down with them, you better get used to what the inside of a cell looks like, because that’s going to be your new view for a long time to come.”

Lily shrugged off his threats. “Are you planning on actually charging me with something?”

Intimidation wasn’t working very well. He’d failed to factor in the sort of people Lily had been around her whole life. She was used to dangerous people throwing their weight around. In fact, he was probably the safest person she’d dealt with in a long time. There were rules he had to play by, and she knew it.

“You know what I think?” He sat down and fixed her with a penetrating stare. “I don’t think you want to be here, and I don’t think you want to be arguing with me. I think you’d rather be rid of this problem once and for all instead of waiting for the day when something really bad happens—and I think you know that sooner or later, something really bad is going to happen.”

He watched her carefully as he spoke, noting every little expression. She was trying to blank him out. A lot of the people he interviewed tried to do that, but there were some things people couldn’t hide. Dilation of pupils, respiration, heart rate, how much a person fidgeted, how much tension they were holding in their body.

Lily looked tense and she looked scared. She was trying not to show it, but he could all but smell her fear. Gareth had never played good cop before, he wasn’t entirely sure he knew how, but there was no way he was going to crack this pretty nut by playing the heavy.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to let you go home. And I’m going to let you go about your business as normal. And you’re going to come to me when you’re ready to get the help you need to get out of the trouble you know you’re in.”

She looked down at her hands now clasped in her lap, her fingers entwining around themselves over and over. “So you brought me in to let me go?”

“I brought you in to make a point,” he admitted. “But I think you get it. I think you probably got it a long time ago.”

“I get the point,” Lily said, looking up with her eyes narrowed. “You think a little do good lecture and some tactics you saw on scared straight are going to get you somewhere.” Her tone was beyond derisive; it was outright disrespectful. He was used to people not liking him for being a cop, but it was more than that for her. Her rebellion was soul deep. She hadn’t fallen in with a bad crowd, she’d been born into it. Her sense of right and wrong had been skewed from the moment she took her first breath. Her blue eyes burned into his, laden with tension and fear and under that a rage which was disquieting coming from such a pretty girl.

She didn’t know it, but she had him hooked. Fragility and strength in a package that spoke to neither of those qualities was a rarity. Yes, she was a criminal born and bred, but she was not a bad person. Lily stuck to her principals, awful as they were. He could work with her. It was just going to take some time.

Now he was letting her go, her irritation was surfacing. Probably the result of not having to keep herself so composed anymore. If he kept her in a little longer, she’d probably have a breakdown. The hour was late and she was clearly exhausted. Ordinarily, it would have been the point where he finally got what he wanted, but what he wanted in this case wasn’t a confession, it was cooperation, and you couldn’t brute force that.

“I’ll give you a ride home.”

“No you won’t,” she snapped. “I’ll make my own way back, thanks very much.”

Independent to the point of putting herself in harm’s way. Gareth considered giving her another damn good spanking but decided against it. She’d had enough for one evening. There would be time to slap her round little rump again another day.

He accompanied her out of the interview room and took her to the front desk, where they had her things ready to go.

“Stay the hell away from my bar,” she growled as she picked up her plastic bag full of personal effects. “And stay the hell away from me.”

* * *

Angry, Lily stepped out into the cool night air. It was close to three in the morning and she was beyond exhausted. That asshole cop had deprived her of the little down time she actually got. She started walking, not intending to walk the whole way home but needing to cool off a little and enjoy the freedom. Cells made her claustrophobic at best.

She hadn’t got more than a block from the station when squealing tires made her heart skip a beat. There was barely time to dive down into the stairs leading to a basement apartment before bullets started ringing out. One, two, three shots all seemingly directed at her slammed into the brick behind her, shearing off red shards and puffing mortar dust into the air while the shooting car sped off as quickly as it had arrived.

She put her hand to her face. It came away wet with her blood. A string of expletives escaped her mouth as she came up to a crouch, peeking up over the lip of concrete.

Footfalls came at a run, then strong hands lifted her up off the ground as if she were no more than a rag doll. “You alright?”

Gareth put her on her feet. Of course it was him. He’d probably been following her. She was momentarily impressed that she hadn’t spotted him. Usually tails stuck out like sore thumbs, especially on otherwise empty streets.

“I’m fine,” she said between gritted teeth.

“You’re bleeding.” His hands slid over her body with professional care, checking every inch for injury. In spite of her irritation and animal fear, it felt good to be touched by someone with that much strength at his disposal. He was there, and she was safe, even if she didn’t want to be. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” It wasn’t an offer for help, it was an order of help.

“I’ll be—”

Her objection was cut off before it could be fully formed. He took her by the hand and led her back to the station. This time she was spared the cells; instead she ended up in an office bathroom, fluorescent lights flickering in the early morning. It smelled of bleach and men.

“Sit up on the counter.” He tapped the top of it, as if she might not know what he wanted if he didn’t make it absolutely clear.

“I don’t need to sit on the counter, I have—”

Before she finished the objection, she was sitting on the counter. Gareth had reached under her arms and hoisted her up against her will.

“Any idea what that was about?” The look he gave her was nothing short of accusatory, as if perhaps she had been the mastermind behind almost getting herself shot.

“No idea,” she scowled. “Though I’m guessing it had something to do with the fact that I was about fifty feet away from a police station.”

“You know some people who wouldn’t want you near a police station?”

“Nobody wants to be near a police station,” she scowled as he rustled around for a first aid kit. “No matter how you slice this, it’s your fault.”

“It’s not my fault that some people think shooting people is a solution to their problems,” he said devastatingly evenly. He wasn’t shocked by what had happened. He didn’t even seem to care. He shook a bottle of antiseptic and prepared a cotton wad with all the emotion of a wall.

“Fuck you.”

“Language.” His tone was mild as he dabbed a cotton wad with stinging antiseptic on her cheek.

“You’re going to get me killed.” She scowled at him fiercely. The adrenaline was still pumping through her veins, making sitting still an uncomfortable impossibility. Inwardly, she was on the verge of tears, though she would never have given him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

“
You
 almost got you killed,” he said, pressing his thumb to her cheek beneath the cut to get a better look at it. “Just a scratch. I think you’ll avoid the emergency room.”

It was just a scratch, but she was going to have to go home, and God only knew what waited for her there. Whoever was bold enough to spray a street with bullets probably wasn’t going to stop once they realized they’d failed. Unless, of course, it had been a completely random act of violence. A gang initiation, perhaps. That was the trend of late, according to faintly hysterical talking heads who used the word “urban” as an epithet. No way to tell without testing the theory, and it was not a theory she wanted to test.

“Relax,” Gareth said, tapping her thigh. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“Oh yeah? If it were up to you I’d be wearing a bullet in my head right now,” she said skeptically. “Your idea of protection is letting me loose on the streets in the middle of the night to let the local gangs use me for target practice.”

“I offered you a ride.”

“After you arrested me for no reason. What a gentleman.”

“You want that ride now?”

She did want that ride. Actually, she wanted back into the cell, but she wasn’t going to say that aloud. She had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours and she really needed some sleep. He was going to make her ask for it, though, or at least admit she wanted his help. And that would be the beginning of a slippery slope all the way to snitchville—which was a town she really didn’t want to get caught visiting.

“I’ll get a cab.”

“Suit yourself.”

She wanted to kick him, he was so damn irritating. He was just doing his job, but his job made him a massive asshole as far as she was concerned. His job was to turn her life upside down, find out everything about her, and use it against her. He could not be trusted as far as she could throw him. In fact, it was safe to say that at that moment he was far more dangerous than any bullet. A bullet could rend flesh and break bone. He was capable of destroying her entire life.

Lily pushed off the counter with all the dignity she could muster and made her way out of the bathroom without a word or a look back at the cop. He might have followed, she didn’t know. She went out front, called a cab, and went home. When nobody shot her, she assumed it was safe to go to sleep.

She managed to sleep all of five minutes before a pounding at the upstairs door woke her. At first, Lily tried to ignore it, but it only got louder and more insistent. Eventually she was compelled to get up, still pajama clad, and answer it. It did not amuse her in the least to appear in purple pajamas with kitties playing across them, but the door sounded like it was about to come off the hinges. Wrenching it open, Lily squinted into the morning light. She recognized the shape of the one who had knocked instantly. It was that damn cop.