Chapter 12
A fuck must be earned. I can’t go down the street with a bucket of fucks, giving them to everyone. IfI feel that you’ve earned it, I’ll give you a fuck.
—Quaid to his officers
QUAID
“Mmm, don’t go,” Ellodie murmured sleepily, hanging onto my arm that she was wrapped around.
I had a whole freakin’ body, and she was literally wrapped around my left arm. Her face was resting on my shoulder. Her arms were clinging for dear life around my biceps. And her legs were curled up to her chest but wrapped around my forearm. And my hand… my hand was between her legs where it’d been for the last couple hours, numb as fuck, but more than happy to be where it was despite the pain.
“I have to,” I grumbled as my alarm continued to blare on the nightstand.
I went in at four in the morning for my shifts to get ready for the day. I’d see who was on shift, who I needed to put where in each district. Who was going to be missing. WhereI needed to pull from to even out.
It was a long, arduous process, but I did the job well.
I’d started out in the gang unit just like most of my brothers had, but the gang unit was a hard life to deal with. Almost all of us but Quinn were out of it now, finding alternatives to work where we were needed most.
Quincy was a detective.
I was sergeant in charge of patrol.
Quinn was head of the gang division now.
Auden and Atlas were on SWAT.
Garrett was a K9 officer.
AndGable, well, Gable did a little bit of everything, everywhere.
Last year he’d been undercover. When he’d gotten done with his last assignment, he’d decided to call it quits after a case gone wrong. He’d been in violent crimes when his old boss had come to him, begging for his help on the case.
Needless to say, the Carter family didn’t shy away from tough jobs.
Mostly. Because the gang division was a death trap that sucked the life and soul out of you.
It was hard on any day to see young kids doing stupid things.
It was a completely different story when you saw young children, all of ten and eleven, choosing the gang life, only to die in the streets thinking they’re badasses.
“Thought you had to go,” Ellodie murmured into my shoulder.
“I do,” I sighed, turning my hand and grabbing the inside of her juicy thigh. “You gotta let me go.”
She did, albeit reluctantly, and I pulled my pillow out from under my head to hand to her.
She clutched it to her chest, and I felt this pang in my heart that I’d never felt before.
The last thing I wanted to do was leave my bed where a certain very willing woman was fast asleep. But crime didn’t stop just because I didn’t want to go to work.
So, to work I went.
The shower I took was quick, and less than fifteen minutes after peeling myself out of bed, I was heading to the front door.
“Hey,” I said when I disarmed the alarm and Gable was already standing there waiting. “You just get off shift?”
“I did,” he confirmed. “I’m gonna catch about six hours of sleep on your couch. She told me she was a late sleeper yesterday, and I’d have plenty of time to catch a few hours before she was ready to do anything for the day.”
Gable and I passed in the doorway of my place, and I closed the door behind him.
He locked it tight, and I was headed to my cruiser seconds later, ready to face my day, despite the warm, willing woman I left in my bed.
Sadly, I had a feeling as I drove to work that this day had already started out on the wrong foot.
AndI wasn’t wrong.
“Sergeant,” one of our newest beat officers, TrigRochester, said as he raised his hand. “Are you sure that you want us out there handing out tickets left and right? You know that they’re going to start bitching about us meeting our quota.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “I don’t give a fuck.”
“But really you should,” Teague, another new hire, said. “I mean, look at the way the mayor came down on us during that parade. You had that sweet ass car chase, and he couldn’t care less. All he cared about was the fact that we gave out tickets aplenty to all of those drunk fucks who were reckless and disorderly.”
I looked over at Teague and said, “A fuck must be earned, Teague. Neither the mayor, nor anyone else, has earned that from me. I do my job. I make sure the city is safe. And there’s a goddamn fair going on, that year after year, brings out the worst of the worst. You see anything shady going on, I want you to fuckin’ fix it. If that’s giving a goddamn ticket, then give the goddamn ticket.”
Someone snickered, and I whipped my head around, ready to hand them their ass, only to have my eyes clash with deep blue eyes that were clearly amused with me.
Ellodie.
What was she doing here?
“Oh, Sergeant,” another new hire, DukeMiller, said. “Who’s she? She’s pretty.”
Forcing my eyes away from the woman who had half of my attention all morning, I narrowed my eyes at Duke and said, “You may be a former NavySEAL, but I was MARSOC. I’d say we’re fairly fuckin’ equal. AndI’m older and wiser. Trust me when I say that I could kill you just as easily. Plus, I’m local, and I know this area like the back of my hand. You look at my girl again, and I’ll let you know just how well I can hide your body for nobody to find.”
Duke and Trig separated from the Navy unit about four months ago, and came to Dallas to be near their friend, AutryBills, who just so happened to run security, and many other things, for CircusHouse, Keene’s family’s circus.
They were great officers, and I was happy to have them.
But not enough that I’d be willing to share anything with them, let alone my girl.
“Yes, Sergeant.” Duke mimed zipping his lips, eyes alight with mirth.
“Any more questions for today?” I questioned.
“No, Sergeant,” twenty officers said at once as they got up to leave.
SeeingAssman in the back, I called for him to wait, and then held my finger up to Ellodie and Gable. Gable who was about a week away from going back undercover to work on finding a new drug operation that was running rampant throughout the city. It’d already taken out seven high-schoolers and three middle-schoolers.
Which was unacceptable.
Any loss of life was bad. But so much worse when it was a kid.
Assman halted and headed toward me, looking worried.
I shook my head as soon as he got to me and said, “I’m not reprimanding you for anything. How is the kid?”
Assman smiled. “Doing really well, actually. My grandmother is watching him most of the time for me. We got all moved in. She’s staying with him during the day, and when things are getting too much for her, your mom is doing it. Or she’s finding someone to do it. Usually, it’s another cop’s wife. I didn’t know they had this huge network of wives who are willing to just drop everything to watch a kid.”
I grinned and held out my hand. “Good. I’m glad that it’s all working out. Yeah, that network started before I was born. My mom is pretty awesome.”
“She is,” he said. “Thanks again.”
I dismissed him to get out on patrol, then turned to the two people who were waiting on me.
“Assman?” Ellodie grinned.
“It’s an unfortunate name,” I agreed. “What are y’all doing here?”
“Checking to see if you wanted to grab lunch,” Gable said. “She’s running errands this morning and should be done in time for lunch to happen.”
I looked at my tired brother and said, “What happened to sleeping a bit?”
“The roofers next door working on Quinn’s place happened,” he grumbled. “I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. There are about thirty men crawling all over that roof putting it in with about twenty nail guns between them.”
My lips twitched.
“It was really bad. Plus, I forgot I had an appointment today.” Ellodie nodded her head. “I have to go get my birth control refilled. That should take me like an hour max. ThenI have to go pick it up. Run to the grocery store and grab some staples since apparently you have absolutely nothing in your kitchen…”
I snorted. “I don’t have anything in my kitchen because I literally just moved in, remember?”
“I mean, you told me that, but your version of ‘just moved in’ and mine are completely different.” She snickered, her eyes trailing down the length of my body. “Why don’t you wear the same uniform as your other officers?”
“BecauseI’m the boss.” I shrugged. “Let me know where y’all end up wanting to go to lunch. If it’s close, I might be able to go.”
Gable jerked his chin up, but our mother caught his attention across the room, and he said, “Be right back.”
That left us alone to talk, and I couldn’t help but lift my hand and run it along a strand of hair that’d escaped from the loose bun on top of her head.
She was wearing a pair of short blue jean shorts, a loose t-shirt that said ‘Arkadelphia’ on it, and tennis shoes that looked like they’d seen better days.
I fucking loved that, despite coming up here to see me, she didn’t dress to impress. I adored the fact that she was so nonchalant about impressing me.
“Birth control, huh?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes and said, “Someone has to keep us protected seeing as you can’t, HotCop.”
I hooked my finger in the neck of her t-shirt and tugged her toward me.
She came willingly, her body pressing to mine, and looked up at me, waiting to see what I was going to do.
I didn’t disappoint her.
I kissed the hell out of her in front of what was likely about twenty cops, including my mother.
“Child,” my mom called from the other side of the room. “I know she means something to you and all, but let’s not give the entire place a show. Find a room at least.”
I grinned against Ellodie’s lips and pulled away.
Ellodie’s face flushed fuchsia before saying, “I forgot she was in the room.”
I liked that I could make her forget.
“Get out of here, darlin’,” I ordered. “I have to get back to work.”
She reluctantly pulled away before saying, “Yes, sir.”
And why the hell did that make me half hard for the rest of the morning?
“Hey, how do y’all feel about going to that new rage room we saw on Pliler and Fredonia?” Auden asked out of the blue ten minutes before my shift was set to end.
Lunch never happened.
I’d been ready to head that way when one of our patrol officers had been hit by a drunk driver while performing a traffic stop.
He was all right, but it caused a hell of a lot of paperwork, and I’d been swamped up until about ten minutes ago.
I frowned and looked over at him. “I mean, I guess they’re cool. Why?”
Auden grinned and held out his phone.
I took it, and blinked when I saw Ellodie, dressed in a white jumpsuit that was so baggy it swallowed her, with thick science lab glasses covering her eyes, beating on a wall with a sledgehammer.
She was going to town on it, too.
“I guess I feel like we might need to run by there and see what it’s all about,” I murmured. “I need ten minutes to finish up here and then we can go.”
I hopped in the truck with Auden, and it took us ten minutes to get there.
Sadly, just as I got out of the truck to head inside, Tobin called.
“I have some news.” Tobin sounded tired. “Another girl went missing, we think.”
My stomach clenched. “Where and when?”
I walked into the building behind Auden, but stayed far enough back that the woman’s sledgehammering across the room didn’t carry into the phone call.
“About twenty minutes ago,” he said. “A new account, very close to the last ten used, popped up a day and a half ago. He wasted no time finding his next victim. By the time we were able to comb through everything, he’d already gotten her out on a hike. Girl’s name is SageSolomon. Five-foot-nine, one hundred and thirty-nine pounds. Brown eyes, blonde hair.”
“Wait, I thought that his victim profile was brunettes?” I asked in confusion.
“It is,” he confirmed. “But this girl makes wigs for a living. Accident in childhood made her lose her hair for a time. She’s passionate about giving back to those like her and started making wigs when she was eighteen. At thirty, this wig business is one of the biggest in the world. In the photo she had online, she was wearing a brown wig.”
“Shit,” I said. “And she was taken?”
“We think so,” he confirmed. “We have a BOLO—be on the lookout—for her now. Her parents have declared her missing.”
“Fuck,” I growled.
“I’ll keep you updated, but all this info should be circulating through the department now.” He paused. “Have you checked the dating app lately?”
My stomach clenched.
“I did last night,” I admitted.
“Check it now,” he said. “I’ll bet there was contact with his new username.”
Then he hung up, leaving me there to look at my phone.
I went into the dating app that Ellodie had installed for me and clicked on her messages.
I sorted through ten, one of which included a picture of his dick instead of a greeting of any kind, and stopped on the new username.
Hikesforfun.
Stomach clenching, I clicked on the message, and was unsurprised to see the words on the screen.
Hey, my name is Jonah. I’d like to get to know you better. How do you feel about coffee dates?
She probably would’ve gone on it a week ago.
But now I was there, and she’d never go on a first date again.
I’d be her last first date if I had any say in the matter.
Something sick and worried started to fill my chest.
What if I couldn’t protect her, though?
What if this sick fuck found a way to bypass her protection and take her anyway?
And why did the thought of seeing her hurt in any way scare the hell out of me?