17. Theo #2
“Oh, someone was arrested,” she snickers. “Oz stood with him while the dentist worked on him, and made sex jokes the whole time, because they were connected with a pair of cuffs, and the dude’s mouth was open for two hours straight.”
“Real mature.”
She snorts. “I’m just saying that these guys might be rough and a little scary, but they look after the underdog, they help empower people.
They made it so that scared woman could collect the album with photos of her deceased brother.
They make it so a single mom has a secure home because her ex had a habit of kicking doors in. ”
“Why do you drive your own car to work?”
Finally, she breaks her stare with the office. “Huh?”
“Why do all of your other colleagues drive department-supplied cruisers, but you drive a personal car?”
Her non-swollen eye narrows. “You ran my information enough to know that the piece of shit car I drive is registered in my own name?”
I nod. “Why does Oz get a shiny truck? Why does Alex get a current year SUV? Why does everyone get something shiny and new, but not you?”
“Because I don’t want anything.” She climbs out of the car and forces me to follow. I slam my door and meet her at the hood, but before she takes off, I yank her back and hold her face.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want any perks. I don’t want to drive a fancy car when there are people in town who have no car at all. I don’t want anyone to claim their tax dollars are paying for me to be fancy.”
“Why not? The point of tax dollars is for the police to have resources that make their job easier.”
“Because it’s a short leap from tax-funded town employees to mooching, thieving, or racketeering. So I drive my own junker, and then no one can ever say I accept anything from anyone. I do my job, Theo. I do it well. I uphold the law and keep people safe.”
She called me Theo. We’re standing outside Checkmate, and she’s finally using the name I begged her to use.
“You uphold the law and keep people safe… Except for women beaters.”
She scoffs. “They don’t count. I’d sooner save a raccoon from the streets and let him sleep in my bed.”
I hold her face and bring her back when she tries to turn away.
I’m standing merely twenty feet from the people who might want to kill me.
I know a large part of me wants to kill them.
But here I stand, thinking about Libby’s bed.
“Am I the raccoon, Lib? Am I the rabid animal that you take pity on?”
She leans into my hand and grins. “Guess so. Not sure how I feel about it. I’ve avoided the car thing for a decade, but now I have you in my bed, and no matter which name you choose to go by, that shit looks bad for me either way.”
“Maybe you should stop caring about what people think of you?”
“Says the guy who won’t admit his surname isn’t Griffin.”
She throws these words around so easily, when for the past twenty years, Bishop has been a dirty word in my world. Nobody has spoken to me as flippantly as she does, and not once has the thought of danger entered her mind.
In my world, I’m formidable, a dangerous animal few cross, and fewer yet live to tell the tale.
But it’s like Libby didn’t get the memo.
She doesn’t give a fuck that I prefer not to speak; she hasn’t even noticed.
She doesn’t give a damn that my stomach drops every time she says Gunner and Bishop in the same sentence, or the hatred I feel for people I literally do not know.
She’s hit the nail on the head; I want to punish them for the crimes their father committed.
“Come on.” She twines her fingers with mine and slowly begins in the direction of the front doors. “They already know we’re here. It’s not like their receptionist didn’t already round up the troops.”
“You won’t reconsider staying out here?”
“No.” She stops at the glass front door and turns back, giving the voluptuous Dolly her back. “I was a little girl once, and I wanted to come with you. I wanted to run away and go wherever you went. I didn’t, and I spent the next two decades regretting that decision.”
“You were only nine, Lib.” I bring our joined hands up and press a kiss to her knuckles. “You didn’t have a whole lot of choice.”
“I do now.” She gives a small smile. “I make all of my own choices now, and that includes no more ground turkey in my diet.”
“Turkey is cheap, Elizabeth. Fuck! Stop being so high-maintenance.”
The door whizzes open at Libby’s back, revealing Dolly in her chaotic outfit of satiny black, leopard print heels, and bright red lipstick.
“I’m gonna need you folks to get inside and put me out of my misery.
I’m dying to know what’s going on; the guys have raided the weapons cabinet, they hid grenades in the conference room, and then the dumbasses tried to tie Jessie to the bathroom heater.
The boss ain’t sharing why we’ve gone into lockdown, but it happened right after the chick cop called, so I’m gonna need you to give me answers. ”
“There are grenades in the boardroom?” Lib asks. “Are you serious right now?”
“Pins are still in.” Dolly pulls a lock of hair around her shoulder and studies the ends. “You have nothing to worry about. But seriously, tell me why everyone is panicking. I have the right to know why Kane was carrying away a screaming and biting Jessie.”
“The pregnant one?” I ask.
Dolly nods.
“She was screaming? Why?”
“Oh,” Dolly waves me off. “Not screaming like, ‘ Help me, help me! ’ But the kind like, ‘ I’m going to tear your balls out through your asshole and make you eat them for dinner. Put me down before I smash you with a brick while you sleep !’ Our little Jessie ain’t a damsel.
She’s got a problem with Kane never listening to her. ”
“That’s enough now, Dolly.” A man in jeans and a flannel shirt steps up behind the receptionist with tight lips and dark eyes.
Eric DeWhit; former agent, retired now. Turned in his papers within hours of Kane doing the same. They were in together, and then they got out together.
“Theo Griffin.” His eyes scour me from my shoes to my hair, and with a twitch of his nose, his gaze goes to Libby and he does the same to her.
I pull her closer, almost stuffing her behind my back by the time he’s done studying her.
“Libby Tate.” He puckers his lips in thought, then pulls them in with a click . “Is this official business, or are we pals?”
Libby steps out from my shield and stops only when I wrap my arm over her shoulder and force her to.
Her knees almost buckle from my weight, but I’m not letting her go, and I sure as hell am not letting her stand in front of me.
“I’m not here in an official capacity, Cap.
I have someone here who’d like a meet with the guys.
I’m kinda the…” She considers her words, then shrugs.
“The middle man, I guess. I know both parties, so I made the connect.”
“You unarmed?”
He’s asking me, I’m certain, but it’s Libby who shakes her head. “I’m a cop. I’m never unarmed.”
He thinks about it for a moment. Studies her battered face, and the arm that I have slung around her neck to the point of almost choking her. Then he looks to me. “You?”
I shake my head. “I grew up on the streets. I’m never unarmed.”
“You’re carrying?” Libby spins with a gasp. “What?”
“I’m very discreet about it. You spent the whole night with me, and you’ve yet to see a weapon.”
“Mm. That answers that, then.” Eric rubs a hand over his stubbled jaw and continues to study me.
“Walked into an office with him – or, well,” he chuckles.
“Was carried in by him. But he wasn’t there when you came out.
Now you’re saying you stayed together all night…
” He lifts a brow. “You have a story to tell us, no?” He looks me up and down once more.
“I won’t take your weapons, Griffin. You were in yesterday, you were surely packing, and you managed to keep your cool.
But you should know this building is secure.
Every man inside has half a dozen pieces on his body at every minute, and we outnumber you five to one. Don’t make us take you out.”
“We’re not here to cause trouble,” Libby insists. “I belong to Alex, right?”
Eric nods. “Yeah.”
“So you know I’m not here to make trouble. Alex trusts me, you guys trust Alex. We just want to talk.”
“Alright.” He slowly backs up, taking his receptionist with him and jockeying her back as though worried she might be a target.
When I came in yesterday, everyone inside was laughing and loud. There was joking and muffled crashes. But today, it’s deathly silent.
Dolly moves back to her desk when Eric gives her the eyes , but her phones remain quiet.
This almost feels like a funeral. A moment of silence for the fallen.
I let naked legs talk me into walking toward my death.
Libby walks faster than me, more eager than I am to face them, and when we leave the reception area and enter a much larger space full of desks, we’re met with loaded silence. A dude with long hair that stretches to his jaw sits at a desk with his fingers steepled and resting against his chin.
Another guy, seven feet of muscle I know to be Spencer Serrano, rests with his back against the wall, a foot lifted behind him, and his arms folded. He watches us with an intensity in his eyes, and about five guns strapped to his legs. He’s massive, and he’s not playing.
“Cruz.” Libby steps up to another guy who rests against a walking cane. He’s young, no older than me or anyone else in this room. His jaw is square and ticking, his chest broad.
He steps forward in a black shirt and camo pants, but his glower turns to a small grin when Libby offers a fist, and he bumps it.
My brow shoots high at their familiarity.
This all seems too fucking friendly for her. Has this been a game all along? Draw me in, fuck me, bring me here, and flip the script to reveal she’s a Bishop soldier after all?