Wild (10 page)

“I am a law-abiding citizen and an officer entrusted to uphold the rules.”

“Ha.” He snorted. “This from the girl working in a strip bar who took out a guy in the parking lot the other day. I'm going to wager you've bent your fair share of the laws. Even cops sometimes skirt the edge of legal.”

“For the greater good.”

“And who's to say that the actions Fabian takes aren't also for the greater good, a good I'd like to tell you about, but right now might not be the best moment. We've got company.”

He could hear them pounding on the front door demanding entrance. Fabian was a smart one. A true survivor with a glib tongue. He'd handle the cops at the door. If they proved reasonable.

The rumble of voices came to his acute hearing, but no signs of violence—yet. However, tempers could too easily flare with the wrong actions. How desperate were the humans downstairs? They'd certainly wasted no time getting here. Were they looking for an excuse to get rough and blame his boss?

If they are here on a mission of rescue, then there's one easy solution.
One both man and tiger didn't like. In order to diffuse the situation, Lulu needed to show herself.

She came to the same conclusion. “I guess I should go present myself and prove that I'm okay.”

Easy enough to do, but then what? Cover blown, Lulu had no reason to stay, and Garoux certainly would expect her to go.

One big problem with that. Brody didn't want her to leave, and not because of the bears who'd threatened her. She was his mate.

She was a cop.

Still didn't change anything.
She's mine.

And damn, my grandma is going to have a fit.

 

CHAPTER 12

Lulu could have happily throttled Mahoney. Her father's best friend stood in the front hall conversing with Fabian, certainly not arresting anyone and acting much too chummy with the crime lord for her liking.

The worst part was she couldn't demand Mahoney arrest him. In all her time working for Fabian undercover at the club, and now within his home, she'd never caught him doing anything underhanded. It was the biggest mystery the precinct had ever handled and one that drove them insane.

Everyone could see there was something different about their city compared to neighboring ones. They hunted and tried to track the seedy underworld that existed in every place in the world where too many people gathered and brought along bad habits. Thieves, drugs, even the sex trade were things cops dealt with in other cities. It occurred in the city where Lulu had been raised. It was a fact of society, except for here.

The common theory was the man behind the oddity was Fabian. To all appearances, he was the man with the power, a power unchallenged until a few months ago. That was when the subtle campaign to smear Fabian came to light. Anonymous tips were made to the precinct, things that would supposedly cause Fabian grief. None of the tips panned out, and what they found wasn't concrete enough to act.

Word came down to try harder. As part of the operation to nab Garoux, Lulu was sent in undercover to try and ferret out his secrets. Working at a strip club, known dens of vices, should have provided fodder, especially when she got the managerial job. But the place was clean.

Until the audit.

The audit was the first real criminal link. However, Lulu really had to wonder where the corrupted link was—the accountant who brought it to Fabian's attention or the go-between blaming the new girl?

Speaking of blame, she peeked over at Brody. He stood on the main floor, leaning against the wrought-iron balustrade for the staircase, the image of nonchalance in his suit.

Suave perfection to her Raggedy Ann state. What did he see in her? Or had he known all along and merely played her? Despite the situation, she had an urge to pull him aside and ask.

She tried to read his body language or expression. It told her nothing other than he didn't feel ill at ease at all. Yet, for some reason, he didn't meet her eyes. He'd also barely said two words to her since they hit the main level. It wasn't that he kept quiet. He just conversed with everyone else.

It shouldn't have miffed her. It shouldn't have hurt. But it did.

While everyone laughed about the misunderstanding, she told the rookie who took her statement how the guys who attacked her at the club had escaped. They were still on the loose.

But did they still pose a danger to her? She doubted an incident like this would go unnoticed by the media. Soon everyone would know of the undercover cop revealed. Those thugs who attacked her would know she didn't work for Garoux. Only a moron would dare to harm a cop.

“You ready to leave, Lulu?”

Startled from her thoughts, she realized they were the last ones left, the other police cruisers and the special team's van gone. She turned to Mahoney. “Yeah. I guess so.” But oddly enough, she didn't want to go. She cast a glance at Brody. He met her eyes for a brief second, his expression inscrutable.

Say something. Do something. Anything,
a part of her silently begged.

He didn't move.

Mahoney drew her attention. “My car's this way.”

Since she could think of no good excuse to delay—
but I want to stay
—she followed Mahoney out. She felt somewhat awkward, given her oversized attire and bare feet. However, she wasn't about to beg for some better clothes.

What she would demand, though, were answers, starting with a whispered and irritable, “Why the hell did you come raiding in there,
Sal
?” Now that they were away, she referred to his code name. “I said I was okay.”

“There was concern you might be under duress and forced to say that.”

“It was code-speak. They wouldn't have known what I was saying.”

Except they had suspected, and the look of betrayal on Brody's face stung more painfully than expected.

She'd known her being a cop would throw him. It would throw most people—especially those who didn't obey the law.

“Whatever the case, the order was given to extract you from a possible hostage situation.”

“Since when does extraction for a hostage invite sirens and fanfare? Next time, let's really go all out and add a little writing in the sky or a Twitter announcement.”

Mahoney didn't immediately reply as he ducked into the driver's side of his car. She slid onto the passenger seat of the police sedan. The interior appeared much like an office on wheels with stubs of paper stuck to the dash, brown envelopes stuffed between the seats, and a laptop mounted on an arm projecting from the dash.

She lifted a sheaf of papers from the seat before slipping in.

“We didn't mean to come in with sirens blaring. The signals got mixed, and the crew came in hot instead of stealthy. Don't worry. Someone's head will roll for this.”

“So long as it's not mine. I was in his house, Mahoney. Who knows what I might have found or heard?” And what if it incriminated Brody? Could she truly jail a man who brought her such pleasure?

A man she'd probably never see again.

How depressing. She and Mahoney continued debating the case.

“What happens now?” she asked. “My cover is totally blown. Who else do we still have working the case?”

“No one. This is it.”

“What do you mean, ‘this is it'?”

“The plug is being pulled. Too many months spent watching and for nothing. If Garoux's not clean, then he's hiding it perfectly. The department doesn't have the money to keep on investigating a man whose worse crime thus far is eating those hellishly good dogs down on Main by that bank.”

“We should arrest that hot dog guy. It's his fault I gained five pounds over the summer,” she grumbled.

“We could make a better case against the hot dog dude than Garoux.”

“I can't believe this is it. That brass is just going to shut it down and assume Garoux's clean.” Did that mean she could no longer think of him as a mob lord?

Does that mean Brody isn't a criminal?
Maybe not a bad guy, but he was doing something unethical in handling the audit of the club while working undercover for Garoux.

“What about those guys who attacked me in the club? Do you have a lead on them?”

“We didn't even know you were attacked until you gave your statement. We'll head to the station and fill out a—”

Bang!

The other vehicle slammed out of the side road into the front of the police sedan, sending them spinning, which, on the two-lane blacktop bordered by a thin line of fir trees, meant they ended up off the road. Branches snapped against the undercarriage as they careened before slamming to a halt against a sturdy tree.

Lulu snapped forward, smooshed into the air bag, and then bounced back. Her brain rattled around inside her head. The car shuddered and came to a stop on its side. Her seat belt held her mostly in place, as did the air bag, but gravity still tugged.

She heard a groan beside her and tried to peer sideways, the bright mocking sunlight streaming through her window making her blink.

“Mahoney?” No reply. “Are you all right?”

A groan this time. While sore, she could move all her body parts, and her wits were fast returning. She needed to get out of the car and call for help.

Leaving her buckle intact so she wouldn't land on Mahoney and squish him, she pushed at the door. It clicked and shifted, but the darned thing wouldn't budge farther. It was heavier than it looked.

Crunch
. Someone walked outside.

“Hey. Anyone out there? Can you help me with my door?”

Too late did it occur to her that it might be the driver of the other car, the one that had intentionally rammed them.

But why?

For a second, she thought she'd perhaps hallucinated hearing steps outside until the car wobbled as something lit atop it. She braced her hands and feet before daring to unclip her seat belt. She squinted through the sunshine-filled window.

She couldn't see much. Legs encased in jeans. Black boots. She'd just described a good portion of North America's population.

The door to her side was wrenched open. Opened, torn off its hinge, and then tossed to the side.

What. The. Hell.

Leering down at her was the thug from the club, the same guy with the friend who'd knocked her out and then set her office on fire while she was in it!

Not good.

Some women might have quivered in fear. Some might have begged for their lives. Lulu got pissed.

“You!” she shouted. “You've got a lot of nerve showing up again after what you did last time.”

“Don't remind me of my failure,” the dude snapped. He reached in and grabbed her by the arm and yanked her from the car in a show of strength that impressed even her. “Because of you, I lost out on a great condo because I didn't get paid. Although, now the client is offering a bonus to bring you in alive. So in a sense, I guess this is a better deal.”

What a waste of a handsome face, although his mug provided a good spot to plant her fist.

Before she could think twice, she reeled back and popped him one in the nose. Something crunched, making it totally worth the sore knuckles.

A satisfied grin stretched her lips as he bellowed, “You bitch. You broke my damned nose. Do you have any idea how annoying that is to fix?”

During his tirade, he kept one hand clamped around her upper arm, an immovable vise. His free hand grabbed his crooked nose and yanked. It cracked again but straightened, and as she watched, got straighter, the redness of her blow fading.

However, it wasn't the rapid healing that totally freaked her out. It was the …

“My, what big teeth you have.”

The thug, with the suddenly pointed dentition, sighed dramatically. “And see, it's comments like this that prove my theory that ‘Little Red Riding Hood' was originally written about a bear.”

Say what? “No, it wasn't.”

“Because you've been brainwashed to believe otherwise.”

“No, because that's how the author wrote it like a zillion years ago. Little Red Riding Hood was stalked by a wolf while the bears got Goldilocks and a much better ending.”

“Bah. ‘Goldilocks' is a joke. It has been perverted from its original intent and commercialized into something feel-good. In the true version of the story, the bears ate the girl. They didn't become lifelong friends.”

How utterly serious her wannabe murderer seemed. “Are we seriously debating fairy tales while you dangle me from a wrecked cop car? What exactly is your plan for me?”

Because she doubted he'd gone through the trouble of smashing into her car to say hello.

“I told you. Taking you in for the bounty.”

“There's a bounty on my head?” How astonishing. “What for?”

“Because of who you associate with.”

“You mean because I'm a cop? How do you figure kidnapping me and attempted murder are going to benefit you? I mean, is there seriously enough money to account for the hassle this is going to cause?”

“There is.” His smile was too charming. So she punched it, and then screamed as, in retaliation, he jumped from the top of car, dragging her with him. It wasn't a long span, but unexpected, and tethered to him by an iron grip, it made her landing awkward.

Forget breaking free and making a run for it. Freaky guy with the teeth was not letting her go, and he'd brought a friend. She noted another guy standing by a pickup truck, the same truck with a thick grille that had rammed them only moments ago.

“You're the one who hit us.”

Dude actually rolled his eyes. “Well, duh. We needed your car to stop. It seemed like the fastest way.”

“We could have died.”

“Yeah, that would have sucked, given my new bonus is contingent on you being alive. Now could you get your ass moving? Places to go. People to see.”