PLAYED - A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE (59 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dark
thoughts filled
my head as I reached down and flipped on the old police CB. Before I even had a
chance to consider whether or not I should use it to call into the station, I
got caught up listening to the chatter.

Captain Pierce had wasted no time. He had issued an
APB on Nathaniel Hale, and men were being stationed around the city even as I
battered the poor car on the uneven dirt. Squinting, I could see the highway
that loomed ahead, and with it, the end of this journey.

Don’t use the radio. Don’t let the Captain know you’re
alive. Get the video. Get yourself some proof, first.

As I swerved the car onto the asphalt and floored it,
I wondered where Nathan was. We had scheduled a meet at a small diner on Fourth
Street, but he wasn’t supposed to show up there for hours. I only hoped he
would keep his damn head down until all of this was over.

There had been so many fuck-ups today already. I
didn’t want him to be another one, maybe one that I couldn’t fix. There had to
be a way to make things right, and I was determined to find out how to do
exactly that.

The miles ticked by as I hit traffic. It was nearly
rush hour. That would slow me down getting out to Nathan’s mansion, but it
wasn’t about to stop me. I reached over, flipping the switch on the dash that
lit up the siren and lights hidden behind the grill. Like Moses parting the red
sea, cars began to move aside.

I’m coming,
Nathan…

I had to ignore my fears and reservations. I needed to
get to the t22 receiver from the undercover car and bring the evidence to
someone I trusted. If I could get to the video, maybe I could fix this.

The off ramp was coming up fast, and I brought the car
swerving down and into the upscale residential neighborhood, its houses getting
more and more expensive as I approached Nathan’s mansion. Turning onto a side
street, I came up quickly to the car we had parked to serve as a recording
station. Inside, I knew the small receivers were doing their job, but what I
needed was the USB drive they were piping the information into.

Without a key, I used the butt of the shotgun to smash
in one of the windows, ripping the usb drive free and returning to my car.

I was hyperventilating as I tossed the small portable
hard drive into the passenger’s seat. This was it. But what exactly did it buy
me? A chance, sure, but if the Captain was compromised, how high did this go?
Was the commissioner involved? The mayor?

And even if I found someone to trust, what good would
it do if Wallace could still strike at us from behind bars?

No. I couldn’t take this to the police. Not when it
was possible that this infection ran rampant throughout the entire department.

My thoughts flashed back to the white envelope and the
press. I could bring it to the Times. I still knew a person or two on the
inside. They could keep me safe and break this case wide open. The FBI would be
all over it within a few weeks. I could start again with a new name and a new
life… WITSEC protection and the whole nine!

With Nathan at my side? We could run away together.
Surely he had some money stashed offshore.

I took a deep breath as I got nearer to my car, trying
to soothe my nerves. Everything was going to be okay. A short drive, a few
words with a reporter, and we could let the feds sort this whole thing out. I
was done.

Before I could even get to the door, I could hear it.
The police radio was going crazy. Opening the door and leaping inside, I froze
in place, my mind decoding the various messages cross-firing over the speakers.

Code 999,
officer needs help urgently. 10-59, hostage situation exists. Swat team en
route. Police surrounding a building on Elm Street. Suspect deemed armed and
extremely dangerous… Officer involved shooting…

I was gasping for air in the driver’s seat,
desperately trying not to pick up the radio. My hand gripped the wheel so hard
it was sending pain shooting up my arm. God help me if Nathan was involved. Did
the damn fool go and poke his head up? Had he killed someone? What the hell was
he doing on Elm?

“Oh, Christ…” I said aloud, throwing the car into
gear. Captain Pierce’s house was on Elm Street. I’d told him the Captain was
after him. Was Nathan trying to settle the score? My mind reeled as I tried to
make sense of it, but a moment later, everything clicked into place.

Nathan must have left someone to watch the house. He
must have known Captain Pierce took me out of there. He must have thought I was
as good as dead, and that made him extremely dangerous.

Without a second thought, I floored it. Lights on and
siren blaring, I flew along side streets, blazing a trail toward Elm. SWAT
would be out in force, and if they went into that house and found Nathaniel
Hale with Captain Pierce, they wouldn’t be so sympathetic. Despite everything
the Captain had done, Elm Street was his home. He had a wife and a kid.

First rule of the force:
nobody
messes with a
cop’s family. Crooked or not, it didn’t matter.
Nathan would
never even have a chance to explain himself before they took his head clean
off. If I could get there in time, maybe I could stop it. Speed blurred my
vision as the trunk slammed open and closed with every little bump.

I’m coming,
Nathan. I’m coming.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Breathe…
Just
breathe…

I tried to keep my cool as the Crown Vic swerved onto
Elm, coming to a hard stop just shy of the police line. I practically leapt
out, shouting at the Lieutenant to let me through as he trained a gun at me.
His eyes flashed with recognition and he gave me a wave, my hand reaching back
into the seat to pull the tactical shotgun out of the vehicle. I slung it over
my shoulder, crossing the police line with purpose and intent.

“Detective, where the fuck have you been?” Lieutenant
Daniels shouted as I stormed past him. At least one cop wasn’t in on this
little scheme.

“Enjoying the roomy trunk of my cruiser,” I shouted
back, walking straight past the line of police before breaking into a run.

“Detective! Stop!” Daniels shouted, but I wasn’t
giving him a chance to slow me down. He was a good cop, but I had no way of
knowing how far the corruption had spread. Any of these men could stop me from
getting into that house, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. I needed to
keep moving.

Captain Pierce’s house loomed at the edge of the
cul-de-sac. The police had formed a semicircle around the front as a pair of
helicopters thumped through the air overhead, blades chopping at the clouds
almost as fast as my heart was beating.

I held my breath as I passed SWAT, trying to remain as
inconspicuous as possible while still moving at a good clip. For my sake, and
Nathan’s, I hoped to God that the corruption hadn’t spread to their snipers,
wherever they were. Thankfully, nobody stopped me as I stepped away from the
perimeter and headed straight for the house.

I reached the captain’s stoop and racked a round into
the shotgun before bursting through the door, ready to rain down lead justice
on anyone who stood in my way. If Nathaniel Hale was here, I needed to
understand. I needed to see him, and if necessary, I needed to stop him.
Someone needed to take Captain Pierce down, but not like this. Not with murder,
and not in front of his wife and kid. I half expected carnage… What I found
instead was a woman tied to a chair, screaming.

“Upstairs! Oh, God, they’re upstairs!” she shrieked,
frantically motioning toward the living room with her head.

Confused, I aimed the shotgun toward the stairwell.
“Who’s upstairs? Who the hell is up there?” I asked her, adrenaline surging
through my body. Behind me, I could hear cops shouting, their voices strained.
They knew I’d breached the house. I kicked the door shut and stepped away. I
wasn’t about to give anybody a clean shot.

“My husband. My son. Please, help them!” she begged
me, tears streaming down her pale face.

“Who’s up there
with them? Who has your husband?”

“A man.”

There wasn’t time for more explanation, and I doubted
she was capable of giving a coherent one, anyway. Poor woman looked shell
shocked, like she was just hanging on by a thread. I nodded to her and rushed
past.

I stormed the stairwell. I couldn’t stop myself.
Whatever was happening here, I was the only one who could fix this. I was the
only one on the force who I knew for sure wasn’t some Irish puppet. I was the
only one I could trust. It was a terrifyingly lonely feeling.

I hit the landing, careful not to let my desperation
get the best of me. I couldn’t go into this half-cocked, and I was dangerously
close to doing just that. I had no backup, no one to cover me if things went
south. I had to be more cautious, more patient. I had to plan ahead.

Gun drawn, I edged around the corner of the hall,
sweeping my gun toward the door. When no one moved, I moved quickly and quietly
past the family portraits hanging on the walls, all signs of domesticity
passing by me in a blur. This wasn’t a house to me anymore. This was a war
zone.

I stopped in front of the door. I knew I should have
waited, should have listened for who was inside, but there was only so much
time I could waste. If Nathan was in there with the Captain, then I needed to
intervene as soon as possible, and even if he wasn’t, the cops outside wouldn’t
wait forever to come and get me.

I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out
between my trembling lips. This could have been the last thing I’d ever do. Was
I prepared for that? Was I ready to die today?

No,
I decided.
Stop thinking like that. You fight. You
fight smart, and fight hard.

I nodded to
myself and faced the door.
Here goes…

I kicked the door wide open. It swung inward with a
crash, burying its knob inside the interior wall as I raised my gun again,
throwing myself over the threshold.

“Police!”

Adrenaline pulsed through my veins as the little boy
came into view, cowering in a corner. The Captain was just to the left with his
hands in the air, the long barrel of a handgun pointed at his head. We stared
at each other in shock.

It wasn’t Nathan inside with them. It was one of the
phony Irish policemen. I was hit with a sensation that was equal parts relief
and cold, hard dread. I was glad it wasn’t him, but at the same time, the fact
that it wasn’t created a new set of problems. I could have talked Nathan down.
This guy? Probably not so much.

This was not
the situation I had expected to walk into.

“Drop the weapon,” I growled, training my shotgun on
the Irishman. Behind him, I could see the shattered window and the shell
casings scattered on the floor. He must have fired at least half a dozen rounds
toward the officers on the street. Clearly, this was a man who had lost control
of the situation.

That, at least, partially worked in my favor. It meant
that corruption or not, the men and women on the street would be aiming at this
asshole and not at me. Most of them, anyway.

“I said, drop it!” I shouted, wincing as he jumped,
his finger resting firmly on the trigger.

“You should be dead,” the man offered up, glaring. He
shot me his best sneer, but I could see the tremor in his hand. “You should be
fucking dead. This isn’t how things are supposed to go. This isn’t my fucking
fault!”

He looked scared and way too young to be up here with
that weapon in his hand. He was quickly devolving, his trembling now so obvious
that he was knocking the business end of his gun against the Captain’s skull.

This wasn’t good. A calm, cool, collected criminal was
bad enough. But a man who thought he had no way out, who believed he had no
option except to choose his own death? Those were way more dangerous, and any
attempts to talk them down almost always ended in blood.

“There’s a SWAT team outside,” I began, “and every
officer in a twelve-mile radius is parked down there. They’ll be coming through
the door downstairs any second now. You’re not walking out of here. They won’t
hesitate to kill you.” I took a breath, trying to offer him a little bit of
hope in the face of overwhelming odds. “But if you drop the weapon and let me
take you out of here, maybe none of this has to happen. Cooperate, and we can
work out a deal. It doesn’t have to end this way.”

“No!” the man shouted, swinging the Captain around to
put him between us. “You think I’m gonna let you put me in prison like you did
Wallace? I’m not half the man he is. The things they’ll do to me in there…”

He trailed off, lower lip quivering. “I know how
things go with your boys down there. I won’t be in my cell for a week before
some guard looks the other way while I get shanked to death as I’m takin’ a
piss.”

Okay. This wasn’t working. It was time to change
tactics. I wet my lips.

“
That
asshole you’re holding tried to get me killed,” I said, lifting the gun higher.
“And
this
shotgun is loaded with slugs. Do you think I won’t hesitate to
put one right through both of you right fucking now?”

He blinked at me. I saw his eyes dip to the shotgun,
then back up to me. There was uncertainty flashing across his face now. It was
time for me to make the decision for him.

I stared him down with all the viciousness I could
muster, my body taut as a bow string.

“
Put the fucking gun down!
”

I let out a breath as he dropped it, the metal
clattering against the wood floor. The captain kicked it across the room,
quickly moving away from the Irishman.

“Get to your room, get under your bed,” he shouted at
his son, and the boy fled from the corner as fast as he could, shooting past me
to do as his father bade him.

I’d done it. I moved forward and tossed my handcuffs
at the cowering Irishman, snarling as they skittered across the floor to his
feet.

“Put them on,” I demanded. I left no room for argument
in my tone. This fucker needed to know he had no options left now.

We’d have to act quickly. The SWAT team would be
prepping an entry, especially after I went and burst into the house
prematurely. I watched the man pick up the cuffs, preparing to strap them onto
his wrists, his fingers trembling and his shoulders slumped as he resigned
himself to his fate.

A gunshot shattered everything. The Irishman was stock
still for a moment, as though time itself had stopped at the colossal sound
ripping through the air. Then he collapsed, his face slack, eyes rolling as he
hit the ground.

I watched him fall as if in slow motion, crying out as
I spun toward the Captain. He stood there without a hint of remorse, holding
the gun the Paddie had discarded only moments before. He was still aiming it at
him like a cobra waiting to strike.

“What are you doing?!” I asked him as the sound of
crashing windows and shattering wood rose up from beneath us. The SWAT team
must have taken the shot as their cue to enter.

“I’m protecting my family,” he replied, leveling the
gun at me. There was no joy behind his eyes. No care or compassion.

I tried to spin away, my head turning as he fired. A
flash of pain seared through me and I collapsed, my legs simply refusing to
carry me any farther, my body failing as I hit the ground.

I didn’t even feel the impact. I knew it should have
bothered me, knew part of my brain was screaming that this was bad—
really
bad. I’d been hit. I was in
shock, probably, which often did more damage than the bullet itself. I had to
maintain my grasp on reality. I had to…

But it was no use. Every attempt I made to hold on to
my life slipped through my fingers like sand sifting back into the shore. I
expected my life to flash before my eyes, to see Momma and Jenny, to see
Nathan’s face one last time, but all I saw was darkness closing in from the
outer corners of my vision, creating a tunnel with no light at the end of it.

The very last things I saw as I drifted into
unconsciousness was the Irishman’s gun skipping across the floor toward his
corpse, his cold face staring at me in a way I knew we’d soon share. Darkness
took me as the rush of boots clambering up the stairs filled my ears, then
silenced.