CHAPTER FOUR
Raina
M y nostrils sting from the smell of a backed-up toilet and body odor. Crouched down behind a stack of wooden crates of booze, I have a Glock in my grip and two knives sheathed on my thigh.
I fucking love my life.
Steam wafts up from the damp concrete floor, sweat dripping into my eyes. It’s still ninety degrees even though the sun’s gone down.
I have a clear shot of the douchebag I’ve been hunting for six months. Havok is a drug distributor with a nasty reputation for cutting off fingers before asking questions. With an MO like that, he can only be a contract dealer for the Colombians.
ATF, NYPD, and the local Fed office called the DEA to track down this psycho. My death-wish-loving boss assigned me and my team.
With Havok doing a solo drop-off, this raid should be simple. A textbook-controlled takedown. Get the exchange on video for the DA and then move in for the arrest.
My earpiece crackles with Ruin’s voice.
“Riot? Sitrep?”
I grit my teeth, hearing my call sign: Riot. With a last name Riatt, I sort of walked right into that one when I joined the task force.
But my team calls me that because when I work an op, things tend to break, blow up, or burn. Sometimes all three. Right now, my cheesy nickname feels like a bad omen.
“Havok is in play,” I murmur into the mic sticking out from my right ear. “He’s made the sale. He’s counting the money.”
“You were right about this place being his new drop point, Riot,” my partner says from our van outside.
“Careful, Rage. Meyers might hear you compliment me.” I gag, mentioning our agent in charge, who hates me.
“That’s what happens when you fuck the boss and then get bored three weeks later,” Ruin, my backup, who rounds out our trio, taps into the conversation.
I didn’t get bored with Meyers, he got blown out of the waterbed by the stallion who fucked me senseless that night in June after another op to take down Havok went sideways. I left Ruby’s club when she disappeared into the VIP room with a client.
I found a dive bar and a set of blue eyes I couldn’t turn away from.
I knew I’d never see that place or the guy again.
It was only one night, but that tall, handsome stranger with tattoos, muscles, and soft mahogany hair left his hooks in me.
Once you devour a New York Porterhouse steak, ground beef won’t do.
Ignoring Ruin, I say, “I got Havok handing over the drugs and counting the money on my body cam. We move on my—”
“Shooter locked on you, Riot!” Ruin warns sharply into my ear. “It’s the buyer. Move now!”
Gunfire explodes to my right, ripping through a crate of Jack Daniels, splashing sweet-perfumed whiskey all over me.
What the hell?
A trigger-happy junkie blew my element of surprise. Now, I’m in the middle of a warzone and ducking bullets that are shredding crates of booze.
“ Buyer down! ” Ruin reports with a shocked voice, like she can’t believe her eyes.
“Who iced him?” I struggle to see past the gunfire smoke.
“Havok killed his own buyer.”
“What?” I whisper, curled into a ball, trying not to die. “Dealers don’t off their customers.”
“It had to be him,” Ruin’s voice wobbles. “The gunfire came from somewhere. I lost visual.”
Havok flies out a side door that leads to an apartment upstairs with a duffel of cash slung over his shoulder. His buyer lies on his product with one bullet hole in the forehead.
“Ruin, I’m on the move. Following the target,” I bark into my comms and vault over the smashed pallets to take off after Havok. “DEA!”
I pound the rickety stairs up to the second floor. The warm, stale air grows denser with every step. At the top, a door slams, darkening the stairwell.
“I lost visual,” I report. “I’m activating night vision.”
A hollow wooden door stands between me and the dealer no one in the city wants to touch. Armed to the teeth, I kick in the door. Sharp eyes tell me no one lives here. I’m not interrupting someone’s dinner or a kid playing video games.
I scan around the sad living room and keep walking. “DEA!” I yell again.
Havok jumps into my path from a closet with a pistol raised at my forehead.
“We meet again,” he grounds out in a smooth, regal voice that rattles through my bones for some reason.
Staring down a gun barrel locks me in place. “Throw down your weapon, Havok.”
His lips curl into a gleeful grin. “Come to the dark side with me, Riot.”
“Nice try.” My finger wobbles on the trigger. I’ve come this far to trap Havok. I’ll get another chance. But not if I’m dead .
Distant sirens turn his head toward the window. “How many times do we have to do this dance?”
I breathe in to answer with a lengthy tirade, but a familiar wheeze steals my voice. Fucking asthma.
Havok cocks his head, eyes zeroing in too closely. I jam my mouth shut to take short breaths through my nose. And say nothing.
Backing up to the open window, he says, “This is your last warning, Raina.”
Hearing him use my real name stops my heart. “How do you—”
“Soon you will know everything.” He cuts me off and smashes a window with his foot. With his duffel of cash in hand, Havok climbs out onto the fire escape.
Out of pure self-preservation, I grab my inhaler from a pocket and suck down a hit.
What the hell just happened? Getting my breath under control, I remind myself that it’s not uncommon for drug dealers to refuse to kill cops.
But I don’t live by that code.
“Rage!” I yell into my mic. “East side of the building! Fire escape!”
“There’s a car waiting for him,” Ruin warns that we’re outnumbered.
Fuck this. I dive for the window and see Havok jogging down the metal steps. A horn honks from his getaway car, and he yells something in another language.
I burst onto the fire escape just as Havok hops into the open door of a late-model, rusty SUV.
“No, you don’t,” I mutter.
Crouched down, eyes peeled through metal bars, I aim my Glock right at the rear left tire and pull the trigger. The rubber explodes, the rim grinding against the pavement, but the driver guns it anyway.
“Damn it!” I rush down the steps to take another shot, but land in the path of a guy who swings a knife at me.
The bouncer. Great.
I duck but catch a vicious slice to my arm. Pushing past it, I hook the guy’s legs to take him down to the ground. His knife clangs against the concrete, and I push it away.
Now, he’s wild-eyed and desperate. He swings at me, hitting my jaw a few times.
“Rage. East side of the building,” I yell into my mic. “Where the fuck are you?”
Something’s wrong.
My new enemy’s gaze flicks to my Glock. Screaming, he grabs for it. Sizing him up, I let him get his grimy hands on my gear. But it’s only to get him close enough to drive my knee into his nose.
With him doubled over in pain, I push him down. His knife is thankfully within reach, so I snatch it from the ground.
“See how you like getting stabbed, asshole.” I jam it into his thigh to keep him down.
It’s not a fatal wound, but it should hurt and bleed like hell. Like mine is. I can’t kill this guy, I just need him out of the way.
The guy howls and grabs his leg. “Bitch.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m leaving.” I back away, holding his knife.
Panting, I wipe my brow, feeling a warm smear of blood on my skin.
Rage pulls up in the van, our frightened intern opening the side door. “What the fuck happened?” Rage hollers at me.
“Havok escaped,” I choke out. Again
But he invited me to go with him.
Come to the dark side.
Again, not unusual for cartels to turn DEA agents .
As if I’d join a criminal organization.
“NYPD’s inbound,” Ruin reports in my ear and rounds the building. “We need to wait for Meyers.”
Great. Another mess. Another botched op.
“I have to ditch this knife. I’ll meet you on the corner,” I say, hiding how annoyed I am from my team.
I jog down the alley and hope to spot a dumpster. The knife has my prints and matches the bouncer’s wounds, who can also ID me.
But a figure steps into my path, his familiar voice stopping me cold. “Jesus Christ, Riot. Do you ever not make a colossal scene?”
My jaw clenches, taking in the angry and unimpressed gaze of Supervisory Special Agent-in-Charge Greg Meyers, who runs my HIDTA unit.
Even without those three bad dates and a shitty fuck, he’s the only person in the world who grates on my nerves and makes me want to punch a wall more than the criminals I hunt.
“Hello to you, too. Do you see I’m bleeding here?”
Meyers crosses his arms, surveying the wreckage behind him and the ravaged state I’m in.
He hisses, “Get in the car. We need to talk.”