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FLETCH
Breathing inside these helmets is a fast track to sending a man insane. The noisy inhalation. The rattling exhalation. The way my breath fogs the shield, and the scratches on the front make my eyes strain to both focus on them, but also see past them.
My vest squeezes me tight, compressing my lungs and pushing nerves into my throat.
Though, I can’t blame the latter strictly on the vest.
My baby has only one healthy parent. Me. My ex-wife is… physically present, but her brain floats somewhere far, far away. And here I am, taking a massive, potentially life-threatening risk.
I’m armed. Shielded. Protected as best I can be. But I walk toward a gunman and hope he doesn’t pop me between the eyes and ruin the last dregs of family Mia can count on.
Still, I place one foot in front of the other and do what needs to be done.
Sweat beads on my brow, and more trickles along my spine. I feel every stone on the road beneath my boots. Every imperfection in the tar. I feel the breeze on my exposed arms—wind that passes through the trees, but also the air current from the helicopter whirring high above the bank.
Most of all, I feel my aching heart blister and bleed deep in my chest.
Archer and I had no secrets. Ever. He was my best fucking friend and the only man on the planet I trusted with everything about me. My failed marriage. The guilt I carried, not only for Jada’s downfall, but for my shitty, half-assed parenting before Mia came to live with me permanently. He knew of my shame, and my pain after Jada fucked us over.
He knew that every time I took a new woman to bed, I was hurting.
And that every time I slept alone, I was hurting more.
He knew every hope I ever held in my heart.
Every fear.
Every thought.
He was with me, shoulder to shoulder, in our plans to climb the ranks together. Detectives, first class. Second. Third. We would sit for lieutenant only if we werebothinvited. Because everything we did, we did together.
I knew of his past. His family. His loss, though it happened so long ago. I was brutally and unapologetically aware of his time inside a mafia family, his plans to run from them and stay gone. I knew he’d killed.
I also knew he would kill for me. And die for me.
As I would for him.
Then Minka Mayet came into our lives, and just like that, Archer and I discover a gaping chasm of half-truths and flat out lies floating between us.
Shedid that to us.
And now they want me to move on like it doesn’t matter?
My heart thunders in my chest, sprinting so it hurts. Racing until I feel bile in my throat. But I step into no man’s land at the bottom of the stairs, in full view of the bank.
Then I start up.
I have nowhere to hide if the perp opens fire. Nowhere to run exceptaway, with my back a juicy, wide-open target for him to practice on.
Swallowing, I clench my fists—open, then closed—and scowl at the way my breath fogs the helmet’s see-through visor. Nerves make me shaky, and anger makes me jittery. Not a great combination. But as the black plastic on the front door shifts, I lift my hands in surrender and calm my breathing.
Focus.
For the first time in my life, my survival matters. If I die on these stairs, Mia has no one. Sera will be saddled with lifelong trauma.More of it.Archer potentially loses the love of his life. Tim loses Aubree. And countless lives will be altered by the fates of the dozens of hostages inside.
If I fall, too much topples with me.
“I’m Charlie Fletcher,” I call loud enough to be heard from inside the bank. Slowly, I crest the top of the stairs and wait, unshielded for anyone who’d like to take a shot.
