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Fleet heard a crack…then a report, and waited for the pain, but…it never came.
The large man went down under a flurry of hits and kicks as Talia’s fury took hold and she pummeled him to the dirt. She followed him down, unhesitatingly.
Once again, the intended weapon flew from the man’s hand and landed near Fleet, and he picked it up. He had no clue how to use it, but he hoped since it had just fired, there was no safety or anything he’d have to worry about to keep him from shooting. Because if the hulking man looked like he was getting the upper hand with Talia, Fleet sure as shit was going to fire on the bastard.
With one final scissor of Talia’s legs, she flipped the colossus to his stomach, then whipping off her belt, looped it around his neck and tugged hard until the man lost consciousness.
Fleet’s numbing fingers would have dropped the gun, but he had the clarity of mind to bend over and place it on the ground before he lost all feeling, figuring it might fire if it landed wrong. Then he managed to make his feet shuffle to where his intrepid woman sat atop her quarry.
He was rattled, but she looked like it was all in a day’s work.
“I’m going to stay here and make sure he remains knocked out,” she told Fleet conversationally, then sent her eyes to the scattered zip-ties. “Do me a favor? Pick up a couple of those and secure him, will you?”
That, Fleet could do. Unlike the gun, he used those suckers all the time to bundle wires. He’d handle it,ifhis digits would stop shaking.
Once he’d managed to accomplish what Talia wanted, lashing the man’s hands and feet together with a number more than the two it should have taken to do the trick, Talia rolled off the still comatose victim and took a deep breath.
“Hmph,” she grunted. “You didn’t stay put.”
“I know, but—”
“Thank you. I’m glad. He might have gotten to me without your intervention.”
“Wow.” Fleet was still jittery but he wouldn’t let this moment pass. “Is that my tough-cop girlfriend saying I was a good little helper?”
“Asshole,” she chuckled. “But, yes. However,” she cautioned, “if you so much as breathe word of it to any of the guys, I’ll deny the hell out of it.”
“My lips,” Fleet responded, “are sealed.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE
Talia tossed and turned, unable to get to sleep. Today had been a close one, and it weighed on her mind.
How many times had she been part of a stand-off or a take-down in her career, and performed cooly and professionally? She couldn’t even count.
But today? Today had been about Fleet’s safety, and she’d known the minute the prick had turned up behind them that she was the only thing standing between him and death, and it had rattled her.
That she’d performed as she was supposed to was small comfort, knowing she’d made several mistakes as her confidence faltered, but damn… What a teammate Fleet had been. He’d picked up her slack and they’d won the day.
When she’d put out the call to her department once the perp was secured, and her fellow officers had shown up, the congratulations were all hers, but later, when Mason brought in her squad to help debrief the situation, Talia made sure her man got all the kudos he deserved.
His stalker/abductor was indeed none other than Brian, the nasty EMT who had come to the mountain when Fleet had suffered his aneurysm. Apparently, he’d once been an officer on a small police force well north of Old Town, but had been fired when it was found he was part of a white-supremacist group.
Somehow, he’d managed to slip through the cracks when he’d applied for a job riding shotgun on an ambulance as an EMT, and unluckily for them, Fleet and Talia’s relationship had been shoved right in his face. Which had set him off.
Now the man was facing multiple charges, and it was pretty well established they’d never have to worry about the racist jerk again.
Mason and her chief in Old Town, as a precaution, were widening their investigation to make sure Brian had been working on his own, but right now all signs pointed to him acting solo; his brain going rogue. That meant no more looking over their shoulders, no more security details, and no more stress on Fleet that would hold back his recovery.
She knew from a few things Fleet still let slip, that he continued being nervous about dating a white woman, but he also readily admitted he couldn’t deny the love that had blossomed between them.
“Can’t sleep?” Fleet asked from the other side of her bed.
Pixie was no longer in the next room. Having enjoyed her date immensely, she’d come home only to hear about the attack on Talia and Fleet. In lieu of that trauma, she’d chosen to have Doug drive her home over Talia’s protests that she was still very welcome. But the astute Pixie had known Talia needed to be alone with Fleet.
Indeed, with a spare bedroom, Talia hadn’t relegated Fleet back to guest status. She needed him close.
“Just rehashing the day,” she sighed.
