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She stared at Jack, fear in her eyes.
“Drop it. Now.”
She opened her hand, and the gun slid from her grip. Huck kicked it away from her.
Jack eased off her, keeping a grip on her wrists. “When I let go, you’re going to sit up and put your hands behind your back.”
He sat back. The woman leaped up, but Huck had his service weapon trained on her. “Hands behind your back,” he ordered. His hands weren’t quite steady, but his words came out with authority.
She shook her head. “He’s going to kill me.”
Huck started to speak, but Jack looked at him, trying to communicate that this wasn’t the time for questions. They had to Mirandize her first. “You have the right to remain silent…” he began.
“Sorry,” Huck mouthed.
Jack nodded as he snapped the cuffs around the woman’s wrists and finished reading her rights. They walked her toward the apartment she’d bolted from, and a detective stepped through the door as they approached. “This the runner?” he asked. Huck had given rudimentary information when he’d called for help.
“Yes, sir. She’s been Mirandized, but all she’s said so far was that someone was going to kill her.”
“Who wants to kill you?” the detective asked.
The woman just glared at him.
“Before we take you in, would you like to explain why you came running out of an apartment holding a gun?”
She rolled her eyes. “I ain’t gonna to talk to you.”
The detective sighed. “Take her in, process her, and put her in a room. I’ll be in to talk to her as soon as I can,” the detective said.
Jack nodded. “Come on.” He tugged on her arm. She scowled at him, but she didn’t put up any more resistance.
Jack motioned for Huck to join him when he reached the car, and he hoped to God no one saw that his hands were shaking. He’d held together even when the woman rushed at him, but then, after the fact, the danger he and Huck had been in hit him full force.
“You okay?” Huck asked.
Jack nodded. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”
Huck settled into the passenger seat. He looked worn out, like the adrenaline was wearing off, but he clearly had the makings of a good cop. If they’d been partnered when he’d first gotten out of the Academy, they would have become good friends and possibly learned to read each other nearly as well as he and Gray had. It wasn’t fair to Huck that Jack constantly compared him to Gray. If Jack could just accept that they weren’t going to mesh in the same way he did with Gray, they’d make a good team.
They didn’t talk on the way to the precinct, but after they’d processed the woman they’d captured, Tallulah Carter according to her ID, Jack and Huck hit the drink machines.
“I talked to the guys who showed up after we did,” Huck said.
“Yeah, and…?”
“There’s a body in the kitchen of the apartment our girl ran from. Two bullets in the chest and one in his head, but the bullet holes aren’t the right size for the gun we took from her. The dead man was a dealer who did five years in the Durham Correctional Center and had been out on parole for almost a year.”
“So who did the woman we picked up think was going to kill her?” Jack wondered. “The same man who’d shot the vic?”
Huck shrugged. “That would make things easy, wouldn’t it? If she’ll talk.”
Jack nodded and ran a hand through his hair. It was going to be another late night/early morning. His shift was almost over, but he’d be tied up for a while, going over what he’d seen with the detective. He sent Gray and Mason a text to warn them.
Need to report on a crime scene. Will be late getting home.
He hoped he’d be there in time to snuggle in bed with them for a at least a few minutes before they had to get up, but Mason had an early class that day so he doubted it would happen. He missed the three of them having time to just lie in bed. The weeks since Gray had started his new position had been so busy Jack hadn’t had much time to worry about their future, but that also meant he hadn’t seen much of his men either.
When Jack was summoned to go over his statement again, he wasn’t sent to Chet, the detective who’d shown up at the scene. Instead, he met with Roberson, the senior Major Crimes detective who was mentoring Gray. A few minutes after they got started, Gray walked into the room. Gray smiled at him, but they didn’t have a chance to talk since Roberson was firing questions at Jack as fast as he could answer.
