Chapter Eleven
Ash
Two Days Ago. St. Louis, MO.
“Glad you’re okay,” Jake muttered as he leaned against the ambulance.
I looked over at him with a raised brow. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He pulled off his glasses. “You just jumped out of a burning building. Two stories, mind you, and landed so perfectly that God is even jealous,” he drawled, cleaning his lenses.
Blue and red lights drenched us both, the siren still echoing in my ears.
“From my point of view, that shit looked like it hurt.”
I stared at him. “It did. Thanks for noticing.”
“Anytime.” He glanced up, shutting his mouth at the sight of the paramedic approaching us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his brows come together in confusion as he stared at her profile.
“Here you go,” she said, handing me a bottle of water with a smile. “Took quite a fall there, didn’t ya?”
I smirked at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the hospital, Gwen? Not on the streets?”
She beamed at me, her brown curls hanging around her face.
“I’m doing a test rotation,” she said, glancing at Jake as she moved to her bag.
“One week a month out in the field. Usually, I’m dealing with the homeless or drug overdoses.
Not bounty hunters jumping out of flaming buildings like this is the TV set of Reacher,” she tacked on.
A small chuckle left me, causing a new wave of pain to course through me.
Yeah, I really should’ve fucking thought before jumping out of that damn window.
“Do I know you?” Jake asked, his glasses back on. He jerked his head at me, pointing at Gwen. “Do we know her?”
“You don’t, but I do,” I answered.
“How’s Carrie?” she asked, pulling the blood pressure cuff off my arm.
“Good.”
“Wait, you know Carrie?” Jake pushed.
I took a small sip of water and surveyed the scene.
The hunt Grayson had assigned me to was supposed to be cut and dry.
My target, Charles Pennick, was known to be a runner, not a fighter.
I’d chased him across the border before he tried losing me in Chicago, hopping on a train to St. Louis. That was a mistake.
“Carrie and I are old friends.” Gwen stuck out her hand. “Gwen Connors. Nice to meet you.”
My eyes slid back over to my friend just in time to see her last name register in his mind. He blinked himself out of his stupor. “Oh shit, right. Connors. You’re the Gwen,” he said, stumbling over his words.
She laughed. “Am I famous at Red Snake Investigations?”
“Pretty sure your entire crew here in STL gives Grayson a fucking migraine every time you guys are mentioned,” Jake deadpanned. “So, yeah, you’re known.”
Gwen smiled at him. “Yeah, well, he hates this city.”
“He doesn’t hate this city,” I corrected.
“He hates the connections in this city. You to your husband, him to the mafia, the mafia to Oasis, and all of that is tied up with the FBI.” I sighed, taking another sip, grateful the pain medication she’d given me was already working.
“And what I mean by FBI is Agent James Garner,” I finished.
She hummed, knowing the story between those two.
As Jake and Gwen fell into a conversation, I rolled my neck. Pain shot up the right side, and I winced.
Fuck, I was going to be sore for a few days.
“Do you two want to come by Sullie’s when all this,” Gwen gestured to the chaos around us, “is over? He made ribs this afternoon. I’m sure everyone would love to see you.”
I stood and put my hand on her shoulder, giving her a soft smile. “I have to talk to the police, and then we have to get on the road. Thanks, though.”
“Eager to get back home?” Jake quipped, chuckling.
Gwen’s ocean eyes bounced back and forth between us. “What’s back home?”
Jake opened his mouth, but I smacked him on the shoulder, clamping my hand around it. “Paperwork and my bed,” I answered as he cussed at me under his breath. “Thanks for tending to me.”
She rolled her eyes and shut the back of the ambulance, her wedding ring sparkling in the sea of blue and red. “Try not to jump out of any more buildings, yeah?”
“No promises,” I called back, squeezing Jake.
“Fuck, asshole, let go,” he growled, shoving me off.
I leveled him with a look. “Cut the shit, Murphy.”
His lips twitched. “What? I can’t tell a stranger about why you want to get home?”
“Gwen fucking Connors isn’t a stranger, and the second she—” I cut myself off, meeting the eyes of my target as he was pushed beside us by two officers.
His hands were cuffed behind his back, his hair matted with blood, dirt covering his sweaty skin. He bared his teeth at me. “This isn’t over,” Pennick pushed out, spitting blood at my shoes.
My jaw tightened, and it took everything in me not to lunge, to take his neck in my hands and break it.
“Shut up,” the officer on the right clipped before tipping his head to me.
I gave him a chin lift and remained silent until they shoved that bastard into the back of a squad car.
“He’s taller than I imagined,” Jake noted, folding his arms over his chest.
“You have the fucker’s specs. You knew he was six feet.”
“Yeah, but his face…he looks short in all the photos we got of him during recon.”
I turned to him, my brow furrowed. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“How much time do you have?” he shot back coolly.
“Grayson could’ve sent anyone else,” I sighed, attempting to roll my neck again.
Instead, he’d sent the one person who would poke me with questions and press for answers when I didn’t give them.
I didn’t have to give answers to Dominic.
Not yet. He was patient. He would wait as long as I needed him to.
Hayes would’ve just been silent the entire time.
And given how things were turning out, I would’ve welcomed his cold shoulder.
Grayson wouldn’t do anything because he didn’t come out into the field anymore unless absolutely necessary.
“Who? Dominic is on his own case, Grayson isn’t allowed to go on hunts per Carrie and his doctors, and Hayes still wants to beat the shit out of you.” Jake held his arms out wide, smiling. “I was your only fucking option.”
“I didn’t need backup.”
Now it was his turn to level me with a look. “Right, sure, yeah. Because if I hadn’t gotten here when I did, someone else would have clued you in about the bomb?”
“I suspected Pennick had a bomb,” I argued as we turned to head to the car, leaving the mess I’d caused behind us.
We were in one of the oldest areas of St. Louis.
It was home to over a dozen empty buildings, old factories from the Industrial Revolution, old breweries, and a handful of haunted churches.
I’d chased Pennick here, keeping him away from the public because I knew in my gut he was going to pull some crazy shit.
He wanted his freedom above all else, and he was the kind of man who would do anything to get it.
Sure enough, when I was in the middle of beating the shit out of him, he pulled out a grenade.
When we were a few feet away from the rental, a black suburban pulled in front of us, blue lights steady on top of it. I looked down at the logo on the door and then, as best as I could, tipped my head back to the dark, starless sky.
“Fuck me,” I whispered.
“Good evening, Chief,” Jake chirped, trying not to laugh at my displeasure.
I righted my head in time to see Amara Harrison-Torrance, chief of St. Louis PD, rounding the front of the vehicle.
Her dark hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, her eyes sharp, hands on her hips beside her gun and badge.
“Didn’t think I’d see Red Snake back in St. Louis this soon after the Hale murder,” she greeted, scanning me. “You good?”
I nodded. “Never been better.”
She clicked her tongue. “Heard you jumped out of a building.”
A wide grin stretched across my face. “Didn’t Leon also jump out of a building?”
She returned my grin with a cold smile. “We aren’t talking about my husband, Mr. Doss. Would you care to explain why you chased one of the country’s most wanted criminals into this building so he could blow it up?”
“First of all, he didn’t blow it up,” I told her, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. “The building is still standing. A little crispy, but intact. Blowing up a building of this size takes skill—”
“Similar to the skills you displayed in Kansas City a few years ago?” she quipped, pinning me with a glare.
I looked over at Jake. “How does everyone know that fucking story?”
He scratched his beard. “I don’t have the energy to go into answering that question.”
My brows shot up. “Oh, so you fucks just talk shit about me?”
“We talk shit about everyone, and so do you.”
“Gentlemen.” We both looked back at Amara. She gave us a thin, hard smile. “Please tell me why Pennick was in my city.”
“I was actually going to tell Officer Davis,” I told her. Her eyes snapped to mine, and I put my hand over my heart. “Scout’s honor.”
My promise went unanswered as she pulled out her phone, tapped it a few times, and put it to her ear. “Officer Davis, you’re off the hook. I’ll be taking over questioning for the Pennick case.”
“You had to go and be a smart-ass,” Jake groaned, checking his watch.
“I’m going to kick yours.”
“Try it, stiff neck,” he shot back as Amara returned her attention to us.
“Right,” she began. “You two are going to follow me to the station. I’m going to get a debrief, and you’re going to answer all my questions without complaint. Then you’re going to call Grayson and have him promise me that none of this Pennick shit will come back to my city while on speakerphone.”
Jake and I looked at each other. “But—” he started.
“Would you rather be put in a damn holding cell for the night?” she prompted, putting her hands back on her hips. “Because I’m tired and had to leave my warm bed for this bullshit.”
An engine, powerful and unmistakable, roared in the distance. All three of us looked over to see a red R-34 pull onto the street, parking just a few feet away. The driver cut the headlights, leaving the engine running, a low, dangerous purr.