Chapter 16
KNIGHT
My team all but broke through the door of the locker room after we arrived back at the station.
That wasn’t exactly the outcome we were hoping for in the store, but once I saw the desperation in Rykin’s eyes, I knew that’s how it would end, and there’s no denying it, we feel every loss. Even the ones who deserved it.
It’s sad really. Not many of our hostage situations leave me guessing. The majority of the time, it comes down to pure stupidity mixed with an unfortunate amount of desperation, and nine out of ten times, it’s a deadly mix.
As I unload everything from my tactical belt with a heavy heart, my phone buzzes from within my locker with the familiar alert of my home security app. I quickly grab it and swipe my thumb across the screen just in time to see Harper striding out of my home, still wearing my old T-shirt.
A stupid smile pulls at the corner of my lips.
There’s something about this woman in my clothes that does something wicked to me.
Harper pauses on my front porch and turns around looking directly at the camera, and a deep curiosity pulses through me, wondering if maybe she forgot something.
Only the curiosity disappears the moment she grips the hem of her shirt and raises it up, quickly flashing the camera with those perfect, pierced tits.
“Fuck me,” I mutter, unable to take my eyes off her.
Harper laughs to herself on my porch before pointing directly at the camera and then to herself, only to then mime sucking the world’s biggest cock.
She laughs again, but when she turns and walks away, she grabs the shirt again, flashing that perfect ass.
And fuck, for a man who trains to have composure in the most volatile situations, I’m bursting at the seams.
“Well, shit,” Ace says, getting the drop on me as he peers over my shoulder and glances at my phone. “Whose ass is that?”
I toss my phone back into my locker before grabbing Ace and slamming him up against it, my hand braced around his throat. “Even think about jerking off to that ass and I’ll hack off your little shrimp dick with a rusty nail and feed it to you. Understood?”
Ace grins. “How the mighty have fallen. You went and got yourself a girl.”
“Damn it,” I hear Diesel from across the locker room.
“I did not go and find myself a girl,” I tell him, knowing damn well Diesel is listening too.
“All I’m saying is this one is off limits.
I’m not with her, we’re just . . . I don’t fucking know what this is.
It’s new. Very fucking new, and until I figure it out, you don’t get to comment on her ass, and if I hear you even mention it, I will have no problem singeing the memory right out of your brain. ”
“Fuck, Knight,” Diesel says, suddenly a lot closer before smacking the back of my head. “You’ve got it bad.”
“I don’t got nothing bad.”
“So who is she?” Ace asks as I release him from my hold.
“She’s no one that you need to be concerning yourself with,” I say, desperately needing to get the spotlight off me. After all, I’m not quite ready to tell them I spent the morning buried inside my step-niece. “You two have enough girl problems of your own to be worried about mine.”
Diesel scoffs, his gaze shifting to Ace. There’s still hostility there, but I gotta give it to the assholes, they’re good at keeping a lid on it while we’re out in the field. But now that we’re back at the station, all bets are off. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“Come on, man. You know she wanted a piece of this right from the start,” Ace taunts. “They all do. Nobody can resist all of this.”
“Amy Cartwright. Grade nine biology,” Diesel says, starting to list off all the women who have shamelessly rejected Ace. “Trina Kent. Sarah McLoud. Bar Jessica. Insurance Jessica. And don’t forget my fucking cousin Jessica. There’s Maggie from—”
“Okay, okay,” Ace cuts in, knowing this list is bound to get long.
“Maybe not every last living soul on Earth wants to get on their knees for me, but no matter how many rejections I’ve had, they don’t mean anything because, at the end of the day, I’ve had your sister, and that will always be more than enough. ”
Diesel’s face drops and Ace launches into a sprint, knowing damn well he’s about to have his ass handed to him. “I’m going to fucking kill him,” Diesel roars, taking off after Ace toward the station gym.
I let out a heavy sigh.
Ace would never cross that line with Diesel, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t taunt the fucker about it, and with the two of them already bickering like an old married couple, this isn’t going to go down well.
There’s an hour until our actual shift starts, and Diesel isn’t going to waste a second of that time teaching Ace a lesson, and honestly, he deserves it.
Ace knows that Diesel’s sister is a sore point for him, but there’s also a good chance Ace baited him on purpose.
He hates when they fight, despite how he goes out of his way to make it worse, and though it’s entertaining, things are just better when they’re getting along.
I head toward the station gym, striding through the door to find Ace already flat on his ass on the sparring mat.
“Is that all you got?” he taunts Diesel as I shake my head, hoping like fuck Diesel doesn’t break him.
After all, I’m going to need both of them sharp and focused during our shift.
They need to get this shit out of their system, but they also need to remember they have careers to think about.
So if they can’t manage their shit, I have no problem heading over there and putting both of them in their place.
I take a seat on the bench by the sparring mats to supervise the children when I notice Detective Gray pass by the door. He glances in, and seeing me sitting here, he pivots and strides into the gym. “Slater,” he says with a slight rise of his chin.
I get to my feet and meet him in the middle, hoping like fuck he’s got some good news for me. “Were you able to figure out who’s running up that case?”
He shakes his head, instantly putting me on edge. “That’s just the thing. I’ve been looking into it since you mentioned it, and I can’t find anything that matches the description you gave me from that night. I’ve asked around, and no one knows what I’m talking about.”
My gaze narrows on him, suspicion rattling me. “You sure?”
Gray shrugs. “Don’t know what to tell you. I’m positive. There’s nothing in the system. No homicides were logged for that night. Maybe you got the details wrong.”
Remembering the look in Harper’s eyes when she came to my place after that shift, unease begins to plague me.
She was terrified, even her hands were shaking.
Nobody can feign that type of terror. There was a body and a message.
Now that the body is no longer in the morgue, there is suddenly no information logged in our system, and the detective who dropped the body off wants to claim he knows nothing about it. I can only assume the worst.
“Right,” I say slowly, my suspicions making me feel sick. “I must have my wires crossed.”
Could Gray be the asshole responsible for all of this? The one who’s been watching her, the one who’s been sending sick messages in the form of mutilated human hearts? Or is he just a pawn in somebody else’s sick game?
I need to get to the bottom of this.
Heading back to the sparring mat, I pull out my phone and bring up a number for someone I haven’t thought about in a long time. After hitting call and holding it to my ear, the phone rings three times before a feminine voice answers.
“Knight?” Carly questions in a hesitant tone. Not that I blame her. The last time we spoke, she was confessing her undying love after we’d slept together once. I ran the first chance I got. I don’t even know why I still have her number in my phone, but I’ve never been so glad that I do now.
“Hey, Carly. How have you been?”
“I, ahhhh . . . I’m confused. Why are you calling me?”
“Do you still work in security at Blackstone Hospital?”
There’s a short silence, and I can only imagine the millions of questions floundering through her brain. “Yes,” she finally says.
“Listen, I really need to get some footage—”
Carly cuts me off with a scoff. “Oh, hell no. I’m not putting my ass on the line for you,” she tells me. “You know damn well there’s a process to gain hospital security footage. Go through the proper channels. I can’t help you.”
“Please, Carly,” I say, lowering my tone. “I wouldn’t ask if this weren’t important. Going through the proper channels . . . fuck. It might be too late by then, and this is personal. I need that footage.”
There’s another beat of silence before she finally lets out a subtle sigh. “What do you need?”
“The footage for the past few nights in the morgue. There’s been some weird shit going on down there, and I need to get to the bottom of it before someone gets hurt.”
“By someone, I’m assuming you’re talking about a girl,” Carly mutters, an edge to her tone, telling me she’s still a little pissed about the way I bailed on her, but what did she expect? It was a one-night stand gone wrong.
“Yes, she’s a girl, but this one is different. She’s . . . family. My niece.”
Bile rises in my throat when referring to Harper as my niece, and while I know it’s mostly true, I’m working double time to try and put that little snippet of information aside.
Right now, I need to play all the cards I have, and if Carly is still sour about what happened between us all those years ago, then I need to play it smart, and mentioning who Harper really is to me isn’t going to cut it.
Carly pauses for a moment as if deep in thought. “I can maybe get you the last twenty-four hours without raising alarm bells, but I can’t do anything more than that. I’ll need higher security clearance for that.”