A familiar pickup truck squealed into the station’s parking lot, sending water everywhere as its headlights slashed across us. Knox got out and slammed the door. He strode up to me, his jaw tight.
“What are you doing here? You need to stay with Naomi and Way,” I said.
He shook his head. “I’m with you.”
“I appreciate that, but you need to keep them safe. Hugo could decide to move on them tonight.”
Knox crossed his arms. “Lou’s got two shotguns. Liza J dusted off Pop’s rifle. Stef is mixing drinks and handing out pepper spray. Jeremiah and Waylay are marching around with our old Little League bats.”
“You’re getting married tomorrow.”
“Not without you and not without Lina. Call Naomi if you don’t believe me. This wedding only happens with us all.”
“Chief?” Grave appeared in the door. “Ford Fusion belongs to Mark Nikos. Guy leases commercial properties between here and DC. He’s got a local address. Had it since this summer. Got two patrol cars swinging by his place now.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Grave.”
He wouldn’t be there and neither would Lina, so I wasn’t wasting my time dotting those i’s.
I turned back to my brother. “This is your shot at something good. You’re not fucking it up to play big brother. Not tonight.”
He gripped my good shoulder. “You had my back last time. You’re not going out there without me.”
“Looks like the three of us are goin’ to jail together,” Nolan said.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered. I pulled out my phone and dialed.
“What?” Lucian demanded.
“I need you to go to Knox’s and keep everyone there alive.”
“I have a security team en route.”
“Great. And now I need you to be there since my idiot brother is standing here in the parking lot with me.”
Lucian swore colorfully and I heard the telltale snick of his lighter. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I heard a beep and looked at my screen. Naomi.
“I gotta go. I have another call,” I told Lucian and disconnected. “Naomi, I don’t have any updates but we’re doing everything—”
“Uncle Nash? I know where Lina is.”
“I see a redneck pickup with smokestacks and a gold Ford Fusion parked next to the barn,” Nolan reported. He was on his belly at the edge of the tree line, peering through binoculars.
Thanks to Waylay’s heads-up, we’d accessed the property through the woods, coming up behind the house and barn. The rain had brought with it a thick fog that lay like a blanket, making the property look ghostly.
“Dilton and the car that took Lina,” I said, trying to put a lid on the emotions that were boiling up inside me.
Knox and I exchanged a look. For better or worse, the men we were looking for were here. And none of them were getting another chance to hurt someone we loved.
“I got movement,” Nolan said quietly.
We stilled and peered through the rain and gloom.
“Big guy. Just burst out of the open side door. Gun drawn. He’s looking around.”
“For us?” Knox asked.
We were two hundred yards away, but my ears still picked up a faint sound. It sounded like someone shouting. We watched as the man ran back inside.
“Lina,” I said.
Nolan grinned. Even Knox’s mouth managed to curve. “Bet she’s givin’ them hell,” he predicted.
“Tell Lucian Dilton’s still here,” I told my brother. “I’ll call for backup.”
I was just dialing Grave when the gunshot rang out.
My heart stopped. My brain emptied. The only thing left was instinct. I was on the move, racing through waist high overgrowth.
I heard Knox and Nolan behind me, but I wasn’t going to wait. Not with Lina inside.
I covered the distance to the barn easily, vaulted over the fence, and remembered to lead with my good shoulder when I smashed through the door.
It gave way easily and I paused long enough to clear the foyer before moving on. Two doors were open. One led downstairs, the other to a long hallway.
Lina wouldn’t let herself be trapped in a basement with no easy escape, so I took the hallway at a dead run. Something tickled at my gut. I ducked just as a door on my right opened and a huge fist swung at me.
I rammed Mark Nikos, the man who’d dragged my woman out of a grocery store and thrown her in the trunk of a car, with my not-so-good shoulder, catching him in the ribs and knocking him back into the doorframe.
“Got him. Go,” my brother said behind me. I didn’t even bother looking back. If Knox said he had him, he did.
I continued down the hall until I reached an open doorway. The door itself was cracked and dented, its hardware useless on the floor.
I felt for light switches and found a row of them. I flipped them all and raced into the illuminated stable. The gates to each stall on the left-hand side were open on their hinges.
I did a fast sweep of each stall, hurrying down the line. She was here. She was close. She had to be. I could feel it.
“What’s that?” Nolan demanded, catching up to me. We both looked down at the liquid pooling on the brick outside the next to last stall. In the middle of it was a single shell casing.
For a split second, my heart stopped. Then I heard a faint hiss and spotted the wand and hose, still spraying a fine mist of water.
“Water,” I rasped.
“Two sets of footprints,” Nolan observed.
We followed them to where they seemed to jumble and combine against the stone wall. Discarded in the middle of the wet prints was a pitchfork. The tines were stained red. There were rusty, red droplets dotting the floor.
“Bet you a hundred bucks Lina stabbed him with the pitchfork,” Nolan predicted.
“I’m not takin’ that bet.” Something like pride pushed at the bubble of fear in my chest. Lina could and would handle her own until I found her.
We followed the trail of blood and water to the end of the room. A tall wooden fence with a gate opened into another darkened space.
Light from the stables spilled into the pitch-black, and I could see the floor was covered in a thick layer of sawdust.
“I think it’s an indoor riding ring,” Nolan said. “There’s gotta be a switch around here some—”
There was a noise in the dark. A strangled kind of yelp, followed by a thump and a grunt. I didn’t care that I couldn’t see. I knew she was in there and I would find her.
“You fucking stabbed me with a pitchfork!” howled a disembodied man’s voice.
“You were asking for it, you stupid fucking moron,” Lina shot back scathingly.
She was okay. At least okay enough to talk shit.
“Angelina!” My voice cut through the blackness like a dart.
“Nash! Get out of here! Ouch! You son of a bitch—”
I was getting closer. I could tell by the sounds of the scuffle growing louder. I dodged my way around a large, shadowy object. A vehicle or farm implement under a tarp, I realized. There were more of them lined up between me and her, creating an obstacle course.
I was almost on them. I could feel her near me. And my stomach churned at the sound of a fist hitting flesh. But the ensuing howl wasn’t hers.
The lights came on, illuminating the ring. I was six feet from her. Hugo was on his knees in front of her, blood pouring from his leg, more from his nose.
“You fucking bitch,” he screeched and raised the hand that held the gun.
I didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Didn’t calculate. I acted.
“Nash!” Lina’s scream echoed in my head as I went airborne.
Hugo’s head turned toward me in slow motion, followed by his arm. But it was too late for him. I hit him with the force of a freight train, leading with the shotgun I carried. His handgun went off and we rolled into the sawdust. I rolled him, pinned him, and smashed my fist into his face. Once. Twice. Three times.
“Okay, hotshot.” Lina’s voice was soft and calm at my side. “I think you got him.”
But it wasn’t enough. Nothing short of ending him would be. I pulled my arm back again to let my fist fly, but her hands were on me.
“Morgan!” Nolan’s warning shout had both of us looking up in time to see Tate Dilton leveling his gun at us from ten yards away.
Dilton turned toward the running Nolan, and both men fired almost simultaneously.
I was aware of Nolan dropping to his knees, of Lina’s horrified scream as I grabbed her under the arms and dragged her behind a big blue tractor.
I pushed her down behind the tire and fired two shots over it to draw Dilton’s attention. Lina clawed at me and dragged me back down. Her touch brought me back into my body.
My breath was coming in vicious pants. Sweat was running down my back. My fist throbbed. My heart thundered in my chest.
“Nash,” she said, pressing herself against me. “Can you see Nolan?”
I scanned the arena and shook my head. “He must have found cover.” I glanced down, checking her for injuries. “You’re bleeding, baby.”
She held up her left arm where a piece of her sleeve was missing. The surrounding material was soaked with red. “I hit Hugo with the pressure washer in the face and pulled a Nash Morgan when he fired.”
I tore the sleeve off my shirt and tied it over her bicep. “What’s a Nash Morgan?”
She grinned at me and I’d never loved anyone more than I did in that moment. “I did just what you did when you walked up to that car. Saw the gun and turned sideways. The bullet barely grazed me. I don’t think it even qualifies as a flesh wound, but it stings like hell.”
“Jesus, Angel.”
“It’s a scratch,” she assured me.
“When did you stab him with a pitchfork?”
“After he shot at me.”
“He didn’t shoot at you. He shot you.” My vision was going red. “I think I need to shoot him,” I decided.
“If you shoot Hugo, I get to shoot Dilton. He’s the one who shot you,” she said.
“I know.” I chanced a peek around the tractor’s wheel and saw Dilton disappearing behind a mountain of plastic totes. Nolan was nowhere to be seen.
“You know?” she hissed.
“Memory came back when I got your voicemail.”
“Wait a minute. Why are you here? You’re supposed to be protecting Naomi and Waylay.”
“Lucian and a private security team are guarding them.”
“You two gonna talk all day or come out so I can shoot you in the head?” Dilton shouted.
A bullet zinged off the metal body of the tractor.
I pushed Lina lower and pointed at the tarped vehicle next to the tractor. It was shorter and lower. “Go,” I ordered.
She shook her head vigorously. “No.”
“Get your ass out of here, Angel.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she hissed, knocking me off balance.
I winced when my ass hit the knobby tread of the tire.
“What’s wrong?” she hissed. “Are you hit? If that guy shot you in your perfect ass, I’m going to kill him.”
“I’m not shot. I’ll explain later.”
A bullet whizzed over our heads, ruffling the edge of the tarp.
I caught a glint of blue as I fired back blindly.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said again.
“Angel.”
“What?”
I gripped her chin and turned her head. “Found your Porsche.”
Her mouth fell open and a high-pitched squeak came out.
“You get the car out of here. I’ll take care of unfinished business.”
She looked to the car, then back at me. “Damn it. I can’t do it. I’m not leaving you here.”
“You love me.”
Lina blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You fucking love me,” I told her.
“Oh? And I suppose you don’t love me?”
“I fucking love you back. So much that we’re not waitin’ until after.”
“What?”
“We’re getting married.”
“People are shooting at us and you want to propose?”
Another shot rang out. I rolled low and fired one back in Dilton’s direction.
“You got a problem with that?” I asked, pulling out a fresh magazine and slamming it into my gun.
“This is so typical of you. You wait until we’re in the middle of a heated situation to coerce me into doing what you want. There are about a thousand decisions we have to talk through. Where would we live? Whose job is more important? Who takes out the garbage?”
“And they all start with the first. Are you gonna marry me, Angel?”
“Ugh, fine. Yes. But when the adrenaline crash happens and you realize that you just stuck yourself with me from here until the end, that’s on you. I don’t wanna hear any whining.”
My heart leapt and I grinned at my beautiful girl. “I’m gonna kiss you real hard after.”
“You’re damn right you are,” she said.
I heard a whiff and a clunk. I pushed Lina flat to the ground as Duncan Hugo landed face-first in the sawdust at our feet. Knox appeared from the front of the tractor, shovel in hand. He had a cut on his forehead and bloody knuckles.
“Now we’re even,” he said.
“Dunc! You out there?” Dilton called.
Knox knelt next to Lina. “Nolan’s bleeding bad. Got him stashed under some hay wagon, but we need to get him out fast.”
I looked between my brother and my girl. “Get him out of here. I’ll take care of Dilton,” I said grimly.
“Nash, no.” Lina gripped my arm.
“Baby, I’ll be right behind you,” I promised her. “I’ve got a lot to live for.”
“And a ring to shop for,” she pointed out.
“Did you seriously propose on my fucking wedding day?” Knox demanded.
Lina slapped a hand to Knox’s chest and he winced. “Ow!”
“Jesus, what’s with you two?” she demanded.
My brother smirked. “You didn’t tell her?”
“I’ve been a little busy,” I said dryly. “Take her and Nolan and get them out. I need to end this.”
Knox nodded and picked up the unconscious Hugo’s gun. “See you outside.”
“Dammit, Nash. I can’t leave you here,” Lina said, her voice breaking.
“Angel, this is my fight. I’m the one who has to end it and I’m counting on you to get my brother and my friend out of here in one piece. Trust me to do my job like I’m trusting you to do yours.”
She scrubbed her hands over her face and swore quietly. “Fine. But don’t you dare get shot,” Lina said finally.
“I won’t,” I promised.
Knox took her by the arm and started to pull her away.
Her brown eyes locked on mine and held. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Now get the hell out of here so I can go be a hero.”
“I’m moving here,” Lina told Knox as they ducked down.
“Great. What happened to your arm?” Knox asked.
“The guy you hit in the face with the shovel shot me.”
“You fuckin’ kidding me?” I heard my brother snarl.
I waited until Lina had uncovered the Porsche and Knox loaded a white-faced Nolan into the passenger seat.
My brother threw me a salute then turned and ran low toward the barn door at the end of the arena.
Nolan flashed me a weak middle finger as Lina slid behind the wheel of the Porsche. I returned it grimly. “See you after,” she mouthed.
I blew her a kiss then took aim as the Porsche’s engine roared to life.
Dilton popped up from behind his cover aiming in Lina’s direction. I fired a split second before he pulled the trigger. He disappeared back behind the totes, clutching his arm.
He was a decent shot. But I was better and I knew his weakness.
“Nikos? Where the fuck are you?” Dilton bellowed as Lina hit the accelerator and the Porsche leapt forward. My girl’s triumphant “woohoo” carried to me on a cloud of dust left in the car’s wake. I grinned and used it as cover.
Staying low, I left the safety of the tractor and moved toward Dilton’s location. I needed to get eyes on him.
I ducked behind a smaller tractor with a post hole digger and peered under its belly.
Dilton was sweating and chewing his gum like his jaw was a piston. He was on his knees bellied up against a short stack of hay bales. His arms—one bleeding—were stretched out on top of the hay. In his hands, he clutched his prized Smith & Wesson six-shooter.
I fucking had him.
I took aim and fired, sending up a puff of rotting hay inches from him.
He fired an answering shot in the direction of the tractor.
“Dilton.”
He scrambled around on his knees in the sawdust as I stood up.
I stared into the eyes of the man who’d tried once to take my life, and looking into them, I knew he wouldn’t get a second chance.
“You know I gotta kill you now,” he said, gnawing nervously on his gum.
“I know you tried once.”
“Guess you really did get your memory back, didn’t you?” he said, gaining his feet.
“What I don’t get is why.”
“Why?” he scoffed. “You stole that job from a real man and pussified the entire fuckin’ department. I shoulda been chief. I did more for this goddamn town than you ever did.”
“Then why wait all these years before taking your shot?” I took another step closer.
He was sweating like my great-aunt Marleen at a Fourth of July cookout.
“I don’t fuckin’ know. Stay the hell where you are,” he said, holding his gun with both hands. The long, shiny barrel revealed the tremor in his grip.
“Maybe you didn’t think about doing anything until Duncan Hugo came along and put a bug in your ear.”
“What makes you think I didn’t put the bug in his ear?”
“Because you’ve never had an original thought in that pea-sized brain of yours. I know none of this originated with you.”
Dilton’s lip curled, lifting his mustache. “You really have no fucking clue.”
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
He was aiming low, the weight of the gun pulling the barrel down. “Shit. You expect me to confess to everything right before I put you in the ground.”
“Why not? Tell me how smart you are before you pull that trigger again.”
“I’ll tell you as you’re bleedin’ out since I can stick around this time.”
I was ready for it. I read the twitch and watched his finger pull the trigger in slow motion. There was a click and the stupid stunned look as Dilton realized he’d already fired his last bullet.
The son of a bitch never could keep track of his rounds.
A split second later, three patches of red bloomed on Dilton’s torso. The echo of the three rapid gunshots rang out in the cavernous room and inside my head.
Dilton’s sweaty face went slack as he looked at me, then down at the holes in his chest. His lips moved but no sound came out. The red was still spreading when he dropped to his knees and then fell forward on his face.
Behind him stood an ashen-faced Wylie Ogden. His hands shook as he kept the gun trained on him.
“H-he was gonna kill you,” Wylie said in little more than a whisper.
“He was out of bullets,” I said. I don’t know if he heard me, because he was staring down at Dilton like he was afraid the man was going to get back up.
I remembered then, in Wylie’s two-decade career, the man had never had to discharge his weapon in the line of duty.
“Put the gun down, Wylie. We’re all friends here,” I said, moving toward him slowly.
“He was gonna do it,” he said again.
I heard the sirens then, the long, urgent whine drawing closer and closer.
“It’s over now,” I told him.
“It’s over,” he whispered. He let me take the gun out of his hands and then sank to his knees in the blood-soaked dust next to Tate Dilton’s body.
Dawn was just beginning to break over the trees by the time I stepped out of the barn. The long, dark night was over. A new day had begun.
The entire property was crawling with cops, feds, and other first responders.
I was surprised to see my brother push away from the side of the barn and head my way. He had a bandage over the cut on his forehead and more on his knuckles.
We stood shoulder to shoulder in the open door, taking it all in.
“You did good in there,” he said finally.
“What?”
“You heard me. You seem pretty okay at your job. When you don’t have the rule book shoved up your ass.”
It was the nicest compliment my brother had paid me since he came to my senior homecoming football game and told me I hadn’t “sucked too bad” on the field.
“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for having my back.”
He flashed me a Knox Morgan smirk. “When are these assholes gonna learn, you don’t mess with the Morgan brothers?”
“Hey, happy wedding day.”
“Gonna be the best day of my life.”
As if on cue, the reason for that appeared.
“Knox!” Naomi and Waylay broke through a ring of state cops and started running.
“Don’t be fuckin’ late,” Knox said to me with a parting thump on the back. And then he was loping across the gravel to them. I watched my brother sweep the two most important women in his life into his arms and swing them around.
“Apparently you don’t know the meaning of the phrase ‘lie low,’” Special Agent Idler said dryly as she approached. Frosted leaves crunched under her feet as she left Nolan behind.
He was strapped to a gurney, a red-soaked bandage taped to his chest, his phone glued to his ear. He caught me staring and pointed to the phone.
“Wife,” he mouthed, looking delusionally happy.
My lips quirked and I tossed him a salute. He grinned and held up a friendly middle finger.
“He gonna be all right?” I asked.
“He’ll be fine. Missed all the vitals. But you know what that son of a bitch just did? He quit.”
“You don’t say?”
“Don’t know why he’s telling me since I’m not his boss. But seems he got poached by the private sector,” she said, shooting a pointed look to where Lucian was standing, arms crossed, in a huddle with a handful of agents.
“You don’t seem too broken up about having to fire my ass,” I observed.
“Maybe it’s because sometimes the greater good comes at too high a price tag,” she said, watching my brother kiss his bride-to-be as she clung to him. “Of course, maybe it’s also because Duncan Hugo knew less about his father’s operations than a midlevel employee,” she continued. “Or maybe it’s because your friend Lucian agreed to put his extensive resources at our disposal to help us take down Anthony Hugo once and for all. So you can see how I might be a little too busy to worry about whether some small-town chief of police keeps his job.”
“Back away from my chief, Special Agent,” Mayor Swanson said. It would have been more threatening had she not been wearing jack-o’-lantern pajama pants and clutching a Snoopy tumbler of hot coffee.
“We’re just having a conversation, Mayor,” Idler said.
“You make sure you keep it friendly. I’d hate for the seventy-two thousand people who liked this article about our hometown hero to find out the FBI hung him out to dry.” She held up a stack of printouts and waved them around.
I snatched them out of her hand, then regretted it immediately when I saw the first few comments.
He can protect and serve my ass any day.
Thinking about committing a misdemeanor in northern Virginia. BRB.
“Christ,” I muttered.
“If you think the FBI has the time and money to handle the PR fallout, by all means, go for it. But I’ll make it my personal mission to go on every morning show between DC and New York—”
“Mayor Swanson, Chief Morgan’s job isn’t in any danger. At least, not from my end.”
Nolan’s ambulance pulled away and I was rewarded with the kind of sight a man wouldn’t soon forget.
Angelina Solavita.
She was leaning against the side of that goddamn navy-blue Porsche, her long legs stretched out in front of her, hands shoved in her pockets. Her face was bruised, her clothing was muddy, and she was standing there in borrowed firefighter turnout boots.
She looked like a beautiful badass. My beautiful badass.
She spotted me and those full lips curved knowingly.
I stepped between Mayor Swanson and Special Agent Idler without seeing them.
“About time he got his head out of his ass,” I heard the mayor say as I walked away from them.
Lina pushed away from the car and launched herself at me.
I caught her and boosted her up. She wrapped her legs around my waist.
“Hey there, hotsh—”
I didn’t let her finish. I dragged her mouth down to mine and kissed her like it was the first time. Like it was the last time. Like it was the only time.
She went soft in my arms and I went hard. The taste of her, the feel of her, the reality of her was too much. I was never going to get enough.
I pulled back from the kiss. “It’s after.”
“Yeah, and you’re still buying me a ring.”
“You didn’t change your mind?”
“I told you. You’re stuck with me. I drafted my letter of resignation on my phone while I was waiting for you to kick Dilton’s ass.”
“How’s your arm?” I asked her.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s fine. I don’t even need stitches.”
“I said you could probably use a few stitches,” one of the paramedics yelled from the open window of their vehicle.
Lina shrugged and grinned at me. “Eh. Same thing.”
“I fucking love you, Angel.”
Her face softened. “I love you too, hotshot.”
“You gonna marry me?”
There was so much love in her eyes that I felt like I almost couldn’t breathe. “Yeah,” she whispered.
“Good girl.”
I pulled her mouth down for another kiss, then winced when she dug her heel into my ass cheek.
“Are you sure you didn’t get shot in that perfect ass?”
“Shot? No.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll show you later. First, why don’t you give me a ride home?”
She let out a little squeal and unwound her legs from my waist. “I thought you’d never ask.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I tugged it free.
I grinned and turned the screen toward Lina.
“Why is my mom calling you?”
“I’m guessing you missed a few calls.”
“I figured we could tell them about our night together,” she said, looking guilty.
“You big, beautiful chicken,” I teased.
I snatched the keys out of her hand and tossed her my phone.
“I’ll drive. You talk.”
“Fine, but as my fiancé, I hope you’re mentally prepared for parents with no sense of personal boundaries or privacy descending on Knockemout to meet you.”
“I can’t wait, Angel.”
