Chapter 9
nine
. . .
Logan
The next morning, Reeves and I sit at the booth nearest the front window, working through positioning plans. No one has seen Volkov, which means we need to cover all possibilities. The tension in the air is thick enough to taste, a low hum of readiness that every man in the room feels.
The bell chimes over the door.
I glance over.
Fucking Chaz Volkov stands in the doorway wearing a black leather jacket. He scans the room, and I nearly laugh, knowing what he must see.
Mason at the corner of the counter. Four Ridge men at the booth in the back. Two of Reeves’s team stand by the kitchen pass-through. Two in another booth. Me at the front with a Seattle PD officer across the table.
Sophie stands behind the counter at the espresso machine. Roz carries a tray out of the kitchen. Dani is refilling Mrs. Callahan’s coffee at her usual booth.
The calculation that the room is wrong happens in real time based on Volkov’s expression. He reaches into the jacket, pulls out a compact handgun, and moves toward the counter faster than the room is set up to handle.
“Sophie,” I yell.
She stands behind the counter, her hand on the espresso machine.
I’m moving.
The Ridge men move. Jesse is on his feet, carrying a sidearm and heading toward Roz, who is frozen with the tray in her hands. Jesse brings her to the ground and covers her body with his.
Gideon stands with his weapon drawn and his back to a booth with a sightline on Volkov. He’s the only one in the room with a clean angle, but he’s holding fire because of Sophie.
Wells has Mrs. Callahan and Dani covered in the booth. He also has a gun pulled.
Cole is angled on Volkov’s flank with his weapon at his side, waiting for the order.
Mason holds his revolver and braces his other hand on the counter, six feet from Sophie, holding fire for the same reason as Gideon. No one wants to risk hitting Sophie.
Reeves stands between Volkov and the front door. Reeves’s men are out of the kitchen pass-through. I assume they’re covering the back door.
All of this happens in the time it takes me to clear the booth.
Volkov vaults the counter, and his weapon is at Sophie’s temple before the heel of his boot touches the floor. Cover and leverage in the same beat.
Sophie doesn’t flinch. The diner goes silent.
“King.” His voice is even. He’s done this before.
I want to kill him, but I can’t put Sophie at risk. “Volkov.”
“Stand down, Sheriff. You and your friends. Then Miss Wilde and I are going to walk out of here. And the next time you see me will be never.”
No fucking way. I keep my gaze on Volkov, my weapon ready, my breathing slowed to the count I learned at the academy and re-learned every time I waited for evidence on a case Dale Miller didn’t want me to solve. I’ve done this before, too.
The room waits.
I take one step closer. “You misread the morning, Chaz.”
His grip on Sophie’s arm tightens. The tendons in his hand show. The watch on his wrist glints.
“Step. Back.” He grits his teeth.
“You misread the other day, too. If you hadn’t, you would have come when I had her at the house alone. You came today because you wanted witnesses. You wanted me to step back in front of the town. A story you can tell. You didn’t come here ready to die.”
His jaw twitches.
I see the calculation in his eyes. He must realize the only move is to fire.
He might even be realizing the man who built a case against the town’s beloved sheriff doesn’t break eye contact with a gun-toting hostage taker even when said hostage-taker is twelve inches from killing the woman the new sheriff loves.
I should’ve told her that I love her this morning. Hell, all those years ago.
Sophie’s hand moves an eighth of an inch. The only thing near her is…
The steam wand on the espresso machine.
Good girl.
I keep my gaze on Volkov.
“Last chance.” His finger on the trigger moves.
Sophie hits the steam release and brings the wand up in the same motion. The blast of steam catches Volkov on the side of the face and the hand holding the weapon. I rush toward them.
He flinches. The gun angle shifts a quarter inch, and he fires.
The round catches me center mass.
I have time to register the impact against my vest. It’s like being kicked by a horse.
The force knocks the breath out for a full second and makes the next breath the hardest one, but I keep moving before the second breath comes.
I’m over the counter in three steps and on Volkov in two more.
I tackle him to the floor behind the bar with my full weight on his wrist, holding the gun.
The gun falls to the floor. Gideon is right there and kicks it across the floor toward Mason without me having to ask.
Volkov fights. He’s good. Strong. He’s been built for this longer than I have. He goes for my eyes with his free hand, and I get my forearm across his throat. His free hand finds my vest where the round hit, and he digs his thumb into the bruise.
The air rushes from my lungs again.
Wells is on his other arm, Cole has his legs, and Jesse has Volkov’s other hand pinned at the wrist. Gideon has his gun aimed at Volkov’s head. Mason is by Sophie. Reeves reads him his rights with the cadence of a man who has practiced it for years.
Volkov doesn’t say anything.
I get to my knees.
Sophie is three feet from me, her back against the cooler. Her left wrist bleeds from the inside of her forearm. Her face is pale, and her eyes are on mine. But she’s breathing. Thank God, she’s breathing and alive.
That is the only thing I need to know right now. “With me?”
She nods.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s a cut.”
She’s still bleeding. “Stay there.”
She does.
The four men holding Volkov down let go of him one at a time. Slow. Controlled. He stands wearing cuffs. He’ll be taken to Seattle now.
Reeves’s men walk him out past Mrs. Callahan’s booth, where she and Dani sit.
Mrs. Callahan picks up her cinnamon roll. She looks at Volkov, then at me. “It’s about time.”
With his arm around Roz, Jesse walks her back to the kitchen. Gideon sits at the counter with Mason, studying Volkov’s weapon and not touching it. Wells stands at the front window watching Volkov be driven away. Cole is in the booth I came from, stacking the paperwork in a neat pile.
I steady Sophie with one hand at her elbow. With the other, I touch the center of my vest because the bruise has decided to be a problem now that the adrenaline is dropping.
She sees my hand. Her expression changes. “Logan. You took a—”
“Vest. Held.”
She doesn’t believe me. She’s lifting my shirt to check the vest. I let her because I’m not winning this argument and because every man in the room is watching Sophie Wilde unbutton my shirt over a vest in the middle of her workplace, and not one of them is laughing.
She finds the impact crater in the panel and the place where my skin will soon be a deep, dark purple. She breathes out and doesn’t cry.
Instead, she lays her forehead on my sternum, under where the round hit. Her hand comes up to my shoulder and holds on. “You protected me.”
“I said I would.”
Roz brings me a chair. She pushes me into it with her hand on my shoulder, and Sophie sits on the mat at my feet with her back against my shin.
A few minutes later, Doc Hensley arrives with his medical bag. He’s been at this since before any of us were born and doesn’t ask permission to walk behind the counter.
He checks Sophie’s wrist, then looks at my vest.
“You first,” he tells Sophie. “His vest held. He’ll be purple by lunch. You need stitches.”
He cleans and stitches Sophie’s forearm at the booth in the front of the diner. Four stitches, neat, country-doctor work he could do with his eyes closed. Sophie watches the needle straight on and stays in the booth.
Doc Hensley turns to me. “Shirt off.”
I take the shirt off. He inspects the vest, undoes the side straps, lifts the panel, and places two fingers on the bruise blooming across my sternum.
I don’t flinch. He doesn’t soften the pressure.
“Vest did its job. Skin’s intact. Ribs are bruised, but nothing seems broken. I’d like to get an X-ray today or tomorrow just to make sure. You’ll be ugly for a week, sore for two. Ice it tonight. Painkillers if you need them, but I know you won’t take them.”
“I won’t.”
He hands me my shirt. “Your father would be proud of you, Logan King. I’ll tell him so the next time I see him at the cemetery.”
He leaves the diner. Sophie looks at me from the booth. The wrap on her wrist is white against the dark wood of the table.
“My house,” I say.
She nods.
I drive us home.
Sophie sits in the passenger seat with her bandaged wrist in her lap and her eyes on the road. I hold her hand. We don’t say anything until we’re inside with the door locked.
She places her good hand on the front of my shirt. “You took a bullet for me.”
“The vest took a bullet for you. I just happened to be wearing it.”
She sighs. “Logan…”
“Okay, I did. And I’d do it again.”
She rests her face on my collarbone and holds on to me.
Chaz Volkov is in custody. Dale Miller’s mug is on my desk at the office. Sarah Jenkins is home.
And most importantly, Sophie Wilde is here with me. Home. She’s breathing.
I didn’t wait. All the training was for this.