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“Shut up,” his partner snarled. Baldie turned and held up a ziplock bag full of white powder. “Look what I found.”
This was why my father was in prison. It was the backward arrest. They’d just planted the evidence for which they were going to charge me. But their bodycams were on, which didn’t make sense.
“Got anything to say, Cooper?” Baldie asked.
I was tempted to make some smartass comment but didn’t. This was already going sideways and I didn’t need to hand them any ammunition to fire back at me. Plus, even if the bust was legit, saying nothing is always the best course. It’s why lawyers were invented. The driver, Blondie, was glancing in the rearview mirror and I could tell he was nervous.
Baldie then held up my forty-five, which was caked with mud. “This doesn’t look like department issue.”
“Careful,” I said. “There’s a round in the chamber. Might want to clear it. The trigger is light.”
“I know my guns,” Baldie said. He started messing with the pistol and I could tell he didn’t know his guns. The M1911 is unique because of the double safety. Loaded, with a round ready to fire, the hammer is locked back and requires the safety on the left side to be thumbed down and a hand around the grip depressing a second safety built into it. The 1911 stood for the year it was invented and it was a classic, but oddly, a lot of people had never handled one.
“Careful!” I said as he grasped the slide while holding the grip while his finger was inside the trigger guard because he was stupid. The sound of the gun going off was deafening inside the SUV. The only upside was he’d had it pointing down, between his legs. A puff upholstery floated upward from the hole in the seat and the smell of a firearm going off filled the air while everyone’s ears rang from the shot.
“Geez, Fuck!” Blondie yelled, which I thought was a reasonable response to his idiot partner’s actions. Another couple of inches and Baldie would have been gelded. On the plus side, he wouldn’t have been able to reproduce which could only be beneficial to the overall human gene pool.
I’d read somewhere that smell is the most powerful of the senses and I believe there is truth to that because that particular odor of weapon discharge immediately evoked memories I’d kept long bottled. Gunfire, screams, the sight and pungent odor of blood. Torn flesh. Rain’s voice, comforting a Ranger who was dying, telling him he was going to be all right. That the medevac was inbound even though she and I, and the rest of the platoon, knew it was dust-stormed in and he wasn’t going anywhere except into darkness.
Rain had held his hand, hunched over him to protect him from incoming, willing to sacrifice herself even though she knew his wound was mortal. I was returning fire even though I had little clue where the incoming was originating from. That’s the hard part; fighting ghosts in the midst of chaos. So many times, you’re fighting blind.
“Open the windows, please,” I asked.
They both looked back at me. “What?” Baldie said.
I slammed both feet into the back of his seat. “Open the fucking windows, asshole! Clear the air.”
He was so startled he hit the buttons and they went down in the front. The back ones were reinforced and couldn’t move.
I tried to force myself to relax but it was hard with my hands cuffed behind my back.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Baldie demanded.
“How fucking stupid are you?” I demanded.
He didn’t have an answer to that since there was a bullet hole in his seat.
“Let’s go,” Baldie ordered the driver.
“Did you lock my truck?” I asked. “There’s a little girl’s favorite teddy bear in the cargo bed.”
Technically someone could reach in and lift the bear out, but that would set off the alarm if the doors and tailgate were locked since Will had put an anti-tamper alarm in the Gladiator. Which I hardly ever used.
“Fuck you,” Baldie said, but Blondie dug in his pocket, pulled out my key fob and hit the lock button.
“Thanks.”
He pulled out, did a U-turn on 52 and headed north.
CHAPTER 43
Ididn’t start to get worried until I didn’t get an answer when I texted Vince. I’d been talking to Anemone in Cleve’s office that was now my office—there was a surge of power for you—telling her it was wrong to start kneecapping the memoir in the copy edits because she didn’t want to offend anybody in Burney. I’d spent most of my teen years trying to offend everybody in Burney, and they’d just enjoyed the drama. Anemone was bringing high-class drama.
“We tell the truth,” I told her. “We do not bend to please other people, we bring other people up to our level.” It took me a while, but she caved, I think because she knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep the grateful little woman bit going in real life anyway.
That’s when I realized I hadn’t heard from Vince. How long did it take to drop a teddy bear off at the fire house?
I kept checking my phone because it was so not like him not to acknowledge a text. My first thought was that the Wolves had found him, but it was broad daylight, and if nothing else, Vince would have returned fire. That’s a joke. Kind of.
