Deceiving Lies

He looked over at me, and then back at the building. “Why?”

“Because the buildings around here are all abandoned or closed up because of the storm. So they’re dark anyway, but all the houses on the other side of these buildings? There are flashlights, candles . . . you can hear people talking. There’s nothing in there.”

“Maybe there’s nobody in there then,” he said softly.

“No, she’s in there, I’m just betting she’s downstairs. But we need to do this tonight, Mason, like, now. I’m not shitting you, I have a really bad feeling.”

He took in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and then released it in one hard rush. “Okay, get ready and let’s go get her then.”

After putting on our bulletproof vests, we quietly opened up our “oh-shit” bags and took out zip ties, magazines, boxes of ammo, glow sticks, and extra cuffs. After loading extra magazines with ammo, we started putting everything on us, and looked at each other.

“You ready?” he asked.

“You have no idea.”

“Let’s do this.” He put his fist out, and just as I went to slam mine down on it, my cell phone began vibrating in my pocket. “Is yours ringing?”

I nodded. “Yours too?”

“Yes, shit.” He grabbed his phone and I reached for mine. We both stepped away from each other and the building, and answered as quietly as we could.

“Ryan.”

“Hey, Ryan, it’s Detective Browning in Homicide.”

My heart skipped painful beats as I waited for him to continue. Not now, she couldn’t be dead when we were so close.

“We had a shooting outside an underage nightclub. One dead, three en route to the hospital in critical condition. From what the witnesses that were on scene are saying, gangs were involved, and it all started after people had been yelling about their territories. But everyone we’ve talked to so far doesn’t know who the shooters were, doesn’t know what gangs they’re in, and doesn’t know what the shootout was for exactly. You know, the usual. We need you to come over here, and help us sort through some things if you could.”

No. No, I can’t.

“Ryan? You still there?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

“Can you meet us in homicide, we have the witnesses over there.”

I gritted my teeth and was suddenly spun around by Mason. “Tell him you’ll be there.” I shook my head and Mason gripped my shoulder roughly in his hand. “Tell him you’ll be there.”

Hanging my head, I choked out, “Yeah, on my way.”

After hitting the END button, I looked up at Mason and tried to calm myself so I wouldn’t react against him.

“This is our job, someone just died, and three are in critical. We have to go help them.”

“But, Rachel—”

“Will still be there later. I know this is hard, Kash. After all this time, I know it’s hard. But we need to do our job.”

I flung my arm out and tried to keep my voice at a normal level. “Three in critical, one dead. That is going to be hours gone. At the very least we’re going to be gone for five, probably nine or twelve. I can’t be gone that long, I have a bad feeling about this, something is going to happen to her!”

“Maybe your bad feeling was about these people, did you think about that?”

“No, it’s her. I know it’s her.”

“People are dying and one already died, we have to—”

“And Rachel might die tonight if we don’t do this now.”

Mason exhaled roughly and spun on his heel to walk away before walking back to me. “No matter what we decide right now, neither one is the right choice. If we stay here and go in and get Rachel, it’s the right choice for us and for her. If we go and do our job, it’s the right choice for our job, and for the families of the deceased and wounded. We made a commitment to serve and protect. We need to help the detectives find out what started this so they can find out who shot these people so the family of the deceased can find some sort of peace in all of this. Okay?”

I was shaking my head, I needed to get Rachel. We’d barely sat on the house long enough, but I knew we needed to go in there now.

“Why don’t we call backup, have SWAT go in there?”

I looked at him like he was insane. “And then what, Mase? Both get kicked off the department for doing exactly what we were ordered not to do? For all we know, they wouldn’t even send backup because they’re going to think I’m just losing my fucking mind trying to find her. They’d tell us to stand down, or demand that we go to the department to have a meeting with Chief for all this. Do you not remember last year when you tried to take down Blake and save Rachel? How many times the chief from the Austin department told me to back off? The only reason he even listened to me was because I’d talked to Rach and her goddamn car was there. We have nothing right now other than instinct. Unless we have proof, we’re fucking screwed.”

Mase’s hands raked roughly through his hair as he groaned. “Okay, okay. I got it. But we can’t skip out on our job because of an instinct either. Kash, if we decide not to take this call, and she ends up not being in there, we’d end up in more trouble than if we called for backup right now. As soon as we’re done, we’ll come right back here, and we’ll go in that building. I swear to you.”

Looking at the building, I was completely torn. I knew I couldn’t go in there alone, and I knew Mason was about to leave, with or without me. A part of me knew this was my job. I loved my job, I loved helping people, and while death was a very unfortunate part of my job, we still had to deal with it. But at the moment, I just couldn’t see past what was right in front of me.

“As soon as we get back?”

“I swear.”

With one more look, I growled and turned toward Mason’s truck.

16

Rachel

I WOKE UP with my face pressed into a hard chest, and for a moment, I smiled and curled myself into the warm body as much as possible. My smile quickly faded when I took a deep breath in and didn’t catch a hint of ci

Trent.

Trying not to wake him, I slowly began uncurling my aching body to move away from him—but one of my knees was sandwiched between his legs, and the movement had his arm tightening around me and a low grunt bubbling up from his chest. Giving up my efforts, I failed at keeping my focus off every part of my body that was hurting. Including my full bladder and empty stomach, the entire front side of my body felt like I’d been run over.

“Go back to sleep,” his deep voice rumbled.

“I don’t know if I can. I hurt all over, and now that I’m awake, it’s all I can think about.”

Trent began pushing me away from his body, and I hissed out a curse when his hand touched my shoulder. Withdrawing his hand, he grunted as he rolled away from me, and suddenly his dark eyes came into view above mine. Even without light, I could see the worry embedded in his features.

“Is it that bad?” he asked and moved so he was on his knees, his hands planted on either side of my body.

“I’m fine, just sore. Are you okay?”

“Just?” he asked, his tone clearly disbelieving. Before I could respond, he brought his hand up to my cheek and I tried to hold back a whimper when my face automatically tightened from the pain. “This is going to hurt, but let me make sure you didn’t shatter any of the bones in your face. I can see the bruises even though it’s dark.”

His hand pressed down hard against my cheek, sweeping back and forth as he made his way to my nose and chin. To keep myself from crying out in pain I had clenched my jaw so hard that by the time he was finished I was sure it would break if I tried to unlock it.

“Did you fall on your right side, or did you just turn your head before you hit?” he asked and ran his thumb lightly just under the cheekbone as he waited for my response.