Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Braxton’s eyes widened at my approach.
I couldn’t blame him. After all, I was pointing a gun straight in his direction. What he didn’t see was the asshole pointing a gun directly behind him. One of the many hitters out tonight to take him off the playing board. After I left Heaven’s Lace, I had Liam triangulate where Braxton’s squad car was parked so I could find him before it was too late.
I wasted too much time dealing with Sapphire and her bitchiness. Before I made it to him, I slit the throats of two men waiting behind a dumpster. Now I had a gun pointed at another assassin, whose finger had started to tighten on the trigger. Too bad for him, I was quicker. Before he got off a shot, I got the fucker right between his eyes.
At the sound of the shot, Erickson dove to the ground and grabbed his side piece from his ankle holster. There from the pavement of the parking lot, while lying on his back, he pointed the barrel in my direction.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I hissed. “I just saved your ass, you overgrown child.”
Part of me knew I should have been concerned about the gun pointed in my direction, but I knew he wouldn’t pull the trigger without provocation.
“Drop the weapon,” he responded.
“Like hell I will,” I seethed. “Do you seriously think I would save you, only to kill you later?”
“How do I know you didn’t set this whole thing up for me arresting you and finally figuring out exactly who you were?”
“Buddy, I’ve been arrested more times than you jacked off this week.”
“Nice visual.”
“Seriously, can we get back to what’s important? Stop pointing that fucking gun at me and point it where it needs to go,” I told him as I picked the assailant’s gun off the ground from where it had fallen behind him and tucked it in my jeans. If we made it out of here alive, I’d hand it over to my contact at the police station to have him run it for ballistics. Hopefully, they’d solve some cold cases.
Enough of this stalling.
More of these fuckers were on the way.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Don’t you get it?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief. Either he was a complete numbskull, or he just had too much faith in humanity. I hoped it was the latter because you can’t fix stupid.
“Get what?”
“You thought all of this was because I wanted to get close enough to kill you?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t try to kill someone you used to fuck.”
“That would never be a deciding factor on whether we put someone down.”
“You’re cold.”
“What the fuck ever. I’m only here because someone put a hit out on you.”
“I didn’t believe you the first time you told me, so why would I believe you now?”
I gave him a blank look.
“You’re serious,” he replied, eyes full of surprise.
“Of course I’m fucking serious, you moron.”
“Fuck, okay. Where are we going?”
“I’ll answer you in your car. Let’s go. We don’t have much time.”
“Fine,” he agreed without further argument.
We started walking towards his cruiser. I continued, “Have you been sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”
“I can’t discuss open cases with you.”
“I’m not asking you for details, but you’ve got to have some sort of idea why someone would want you dead.”
“I’m a good cop, and I do my job.”
“This goes so much farther than that. You’ve really pissed someone off. Not only did someone come to us to remove you from the picture, but we’ve also found a call for your death posted on the dark web message boards.”
He was silent.
Just before we got to his cruiser, his back windshield shattered. Glass flew everywhere. Hunching down low to the ground, we kept moving. We had a battle of wills as I tried to push him ahead of me. Just as we made it to a parking lot, a couple more shots rang out and ducked for cover behind a van close to the entrance of a dark alley. I took in our surroundings and calculated our chances of making it to the end of the alley unscathed. We were going to be sitting ducks in here.
Fuck!
“Get the fuck down!” I yelled, hoping the moron would actually listen this time.
We were taking fire, and this jackass wanted to be chivalrous.
He was trying to protect me.
Me!
He obviously had some preconceived notions of who I was. It made me wonder if he had ever met someone like me before. None of the dangerous situations I had been exposed to in the last couple of years were unique to me. Not that it completely desensitized me to getting shot at, but it sure as hell wasn’t the first time, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last time. At least not until I got out of this life, but that would never happen.
I was going to be a Renegade Reaper for life.
“Do you have a fucking death wish or something?” I growled at him as I pushed his ass further behind the soccer mom’s van that was fast becoming Swiss cheese with the amount of damage it was taking for our benefit. If only fucking Sapphire would have told me everything sooner, I could have had this ass munch in protective custody.
I could have been home in front of my flat screen, binge watching eighties crime dramas, while wrapped up in my favourite fuzzy blanket and eating ketchup flavoured popcorn.
The things I would do for money, or rather, wouldn't do.
There was no way I would allow a good cop to be gunned down on my watch. No matter what the boys accuse me of. Sure, he was nice to look at. Maybe my ovaries danced a little more in his presence. He might have been the first guy I had sex with, but it shouldn’t matter. None of that shit ever influenced my decisions before.
So why the fuck would it now?
“You already got grazed once and you're not wearing a vest,” he commented, pointing at my arm.
“Shit,” I cussed.
“I'll say…”
He watched me with disbelief as I tore the bottom of my shirt, wrapped it around my bicep, and tightened it with my teeth, wincing at the sting.
“No more fucking comments from the peanut gallery,” I chastised him. “You owe me a new shirt and a bottle of beer, not necessarily in that order.”
“Missy, if you get me outta here, I'll buy you a whole case of beer and a new fucking wardrobe.”
“One, you know damned well that my name's not Missy. Two, there's nothing wrong with my goddamned wardrobe.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Not at all what I was saying, angel.”
“Not your fucking angel either,” I replied, even though him calling me sweetheart made my insides a little gooey.
He opened his mouth to reply, and I shushed him. He had to be close to emptying his clip. They were getting closer to our position. It was now or never. I whispered a little something to whatever God or Gods there were and hoped my afterlife wasn't more crimson than white, then took a deep breath.
“On three,” I told him, readying my pistol. He nodded, so I took position. “I'll cover you.”
“No way.”
“This isn’t up for discussion. They're after you.”
I could see it in his eyes when he conceded.
“Okay, go now!” I yelled.
Thank fuck my brothers taught me how to handle and shoot a gun!
I pulled my gun out of my shoulder holster and took aim at each of my targets, pulling the trigger in quick succession as I took them out. Taking someone’s life wasn’t easy, but anyone, given the circumstance might have to make the same choice. I knew exactly how many lives I had taken. It was morbid, but I didn’t decide to pull a trigger lightly.
When the last shooter hit the ground, I took off down the empty alley in the same direction that Braxton ran. Out of breath, I made it to the end and ducked around the brick building, where I found him waiting for me.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I responded, hands on my knees, as I took a deep breath.
“Did you get them all?”
Was I talking to some guy whose life I saved, or am I talking to Officer Erickson, the man who arrested me a couple of weeks ago?
I swallowed the enormous lump in my throat.
“Why did you save me?” he whispered when I didn’t answer.
“You don’t deserve to die.”
I didn’t care that the way this guy earned his living was by putting people like me behind bars.
“But you’re a Reaper.”
The members of the Reapers made it their number one priority that our reputation stayed the way it was. The public needed to fear the Reaper. That was the only way we could continue to do what we needed to do to maintain the balance.
“Obviously,” I replied sarcastically.
I had him thoroughly vetted after he arrested me a couple of weeks back. Just like with all of our targets, I contacted Liam to do a deep dive in his background. From what he discovered, prior to and after his undercover work, he did everything by the book. There weren’t any reports of unnecessary roughness or false arrests. I respected anyone like him who had a code and stuck to it, even if he couldn’t actually pin anything on me.
He didn’t even have a juvenile record.
He came from an affluent background, so he didn’t want for anything monetary in value during his childhood. His father had a membership at the local golf and country club that likely cost upwards of twenty thousand dollars. His high school transcripts would have gotten him into several universities all over the country without a hitch. Yet he forwent all that for a career in law enforcement.
Next, I needed to do was call Erik to check in.