LineofDuty (3 page)

“Here.” He scooped her up, mindful that this moment was so
much more than just a simple act of sex. He laid her down, smoothing her hair
away from her face and pulling a throw blanket over her while she returned to
herself.

Nicole’s eyes were closed, lips parted as if she were some
erotic Sleeping Beauty.

She was so precious to him. He loved her, but these last few
months, they’d become strangers. Could they bridge the distance? Was this the
beginning of a new chapter for them? He wanted it to be so.

From across the room his phone blared a siren bell.

Shit.

Nicole’s eyes flickered open, only to narrow once more.
“Go.” She waved her hand at him.

“You sure?” He was torn between drawing this moment out and
answering work’s call.

“Yes. Go.”

Jake grabbed the phone on his way into the bathroom to do a
quick rinse. The job always came first, and while he loved his job, sometimes
it was damn inconvenient. Tomorrow, though, maybe it was time Nicole and he had
a little chat.

Jake parked his SUV in line with nearly ten other vehicles
already at the station. He knew every single one of them belonged to the rest
of his SWAT team, and judging by the number, he was one of the last people to
arrive.

He retrieved the rest of his gear from the back of his truck
and hefted it into the garage, which they used as the initial prep location
when they weren’t meeting at the scene of a crime or situation. The door was
rolled up on one side and several team members had their gear spread out as
they went through the final stages of preparing themselves.

Cole, the lone man in full gear, was standing near Aaron,
who was sliding into his bulletproof vest and situating the tools of the trade.
While all the members of their team could perform every position if need be,
they each gravitated to a specialization. Aaron was their breacher, the point
man when they had to break down a door or enter a place by force. Jake was
often kept in reserve, as a sniper, though he also took over shooting nonlethal
rounds, like gas or bean bags, when the need arose.

“Evening,” he drawled as he reached the two men.

“Glad you could join us, old man. Haven’t seen you in a
while,” Aaron said with a grin. Jake had seen both Aaron and his fiancée Angel
at Cole’s barbecue earlier that day. Chances were several of the guys had come
straight from Cole’s house.

“Pleased you invited me,” Jake replied. To Cole, “Sarge,
what’s the situation?”

“Got an anonymous tip about a meth lab. Narc just got the
warrant an hour ago to raid the place, so here we are.” Cole looped his thumbs
into his belt and glanced around.

“Huh.” Typically, the narc officers planned a raid well in
advance, but every so often a hot tip came in they had to move on as fast as
possible. Given the rise of meth addicts on the street and the increase in
crime among the lower-income neighborhoods, any meth tips were getting first
priority these days.

Cole glanced at his watch. “As soon as Becca gets here we’re
rolling out. She should be here any second.”

“What kind of entry are we doing?” Aaron asked.

Cole cleared his throat. “We’ve got the unmarked van. Going
to slap a plumber decal on the side and go in quiet, use the small ram to take
the front door. The house only has one entry point. I’ll draw it on the
whiteboard in the van. Looks like a small operation.”

“Do I bring the gas?” Jake asked. Since they were dealing
with a meth lab, they couldn’t shoot gas into the actual house, but if a
situation arose in a neighboring house they might need it.

“No, Eric’s on gas this time. I want you behind point,” Cole
replied. Another pair of headlights illuminated the parking lot. “There’s
Becca. Let’s load up.”

The other officers who had gathered around them turned as
one toward a standard white van, the likes of which any number of service
companies used. It had a single entry door on either side just behind the cab,
and a pair of doors in back. Inside, it had benches running the length with
poles and handholds in the ceiling. The benches served as storage for gear and
equipment.

Jake took a seat near the double doors, leaving enough room
for Cole at the very end. He wasn’t just their team leader, he also insisted
being point on almost every entry, meaning he was the first person to step into
danger on these missions.

“Thank you all for joining us tonight.” Cole stood at the
front of the van, his back to the narrow entry to the cab. A whiteboard was
mounted on the wall behind him, where he’d drawn a quick diagram of the house
and surrounding streets.

“I’m not going to your parties anymore. Every time you throw
one we get a call,” Becca groused as she dropped her helmet in place.

“I do apologize,” he said, though his grin spoke otherwise.
He outlined the mission in greater detail than he had outside the garage.

The van rumbled out of the station and onto the highway.
Eventually Cole finished explaining the mission and answering questions, and
dropped into the space Jake had left him on the bench.

“How’s Nicole doing? Tanya said she wasn’t feeling well and
left early,” Cole said.

Jake shifted. He’d been attempting to not think about his
wife, the way she’d sighed and moaned, but all the sensations came roaring back
to the point he even thought he could smell the candles on the air. That would
be amazing, since most of the gear was permanently perfumed with sweat and body
odor.

“She’s fine, just a little too much heat for her. Redheads.”
He chuckled, though his mind went back to that fiery little strip of hair on
her mound. Next time he would taste her.

“She was looking a little flushed.” Cole rested his head
against the van wall.

“Things with Tanya seem to be going better.” Jake remembered
Cole’s stress all too well around the Olympics before the terrorist bombings
derailed everything. He didn’t know if the strain of almost losing Tanya had
changed their relationship or if it was something else. He just knew his
sergeant seemed a lot happier the last few months.

“Yeah, yeah they are.” Cole smiled, warmth easing the
tension in his face.

At least half the men and women on their team had gone
through at least one divorce. It was never easy on a relationship when a cop
was involved. The hours were shit, the pay was never enough and the risks high.
And yet, every person in the van had made the commitment to serve. For many of
them, it was just a part of who they were. Jake didn’t know how to be anything
else.

For Nicole and him, things were tough right now, but he had
faith they’d get through it. He didn’t know how or when they’d put the past to
rest, but he knew he didn’t want to become another statistic. When he’d pledged
to love Nicole until the day he died, he’d meant it. He was a
one-woman-for-the-rest-of-his-life kind of man. And Nicole was it for him. He
wanted to grow old with her, retire and annoy the shit out of her and when they
died, he wanted to be buried next to her.

“ETA five minutes,” the driver called back to them.

“Look alive, everyone.” Cole stood and grabbed the bar
running along the ceiling of the van. The shield he used for entering a house
as point hung on the wall next to the doors.

Jake checked his handgun once more. All around him people
began to shift, the growing restlessness communicated in fidgeting hands and
bouncing knees.

An adrenaline rush came with the job. The thrill of chasing
down a bad guy, the way the world became sharper, more vibrant in the height of
a chase.

The van took a right followed by a left turn. Jake and Aaron
stood as Cole settled the shield on his arm. Aaron hefted a twenty-pound door
ram, his gaze glinting with a dangerous light in the dimness of the van. Behind
him, Becca was a slight, dwarfed figure with her rifle in hand. While some of
the team would enter the house, others like Becca would be covering them from
outside.

Undercover officers were already on the scene watching the
house, and uniformed officers were on standby at a staging area a few blocks
away where the narcotics team had set the whole thing up. Many of the officers
were old friends of Jake’s, who had begun his career after patrol in narcotics.
He didn’t miss it, but he did regret some of the unfinished business, the cases
he’d never been able to close.

The earpieces everyone wore to communicate chirped to life.
“House will be on the passenger side, blue with white shutters. There are to
our knowledge six people inside, all male. Two Caucasian and four Hispanic.”
The voice was that of the commanding officer over all of SWAT, Thomas O’Neil.

The van eased to a stop, brakes squealing slightly with the
evening humidity settling in. There was rain in the forecast for tomorrow,
well, today since the clock had rolled over midnight somewhere between when he
arrived home and found Nicole spread out like a buffet and now. What he
wouldn’t give to still be there.

“Let’s go,” Cole said and pushed the back doors open.

Jake’s heart beat in triple time, blood pounding in his ears
as Cole, then Aaron, then he jumped out of the double doors.

The subdivision at a glance was the kind of run-down area
where bars covered every window and door.

An anonymous tip from this neighborhood? It sent off all
kinds of warning bells in Jake’s head, but they had boots on the ground.

He jogged silently up a cracked sidewalk to a small blue
house with cracked siding and enough junk in the yard to start a scrap
business. There were two stairs, then a tiny porch. Cole leapt from the ground
to the porch, keeping as silent as possible, shield up and at the ready.

Aaron jumped and swung the ram at the same time, hitting the
flimsy door with the full twenty pounds plus everything his thick build could
bring. The first blow knocked the topmost hinge back. Aaron hauled back and
kicked, sending the door sailing inward.

“Police,” Cole called out, filling the doorway with the bulletproof
shield up.

Jake pressed in behind Cole, his gun up as they both entered
the house.

All hell broke loose.

The unmistakable
rat-a-tat-tat
of automatic gunfire
sent both men lunging for the relative shelter of a sofa. The old house seemed
to be built on squares and rectangles, with the entrance leading into a large
square that served as both living room and dining room.

Jake rolled to the farthest end of the couch and aimed for
the legs of a man leaning out of a hallway. The night was alive with yelling
and gunfire. He couldn’t even hear the bark of orders in his earpiece.

He squeezed off two shots, but the shooter dropped before
the bullets hit their mark.

Jake pushed to his feet at the same time Cole recovered and
together they advanced through the dining nook into the kitchen, other officers
rushing down the hall.

Two Hispanic men huddled on the floor by a beaten-up
refrigerator. Their jerky motions and glassy eyes gave them away as addicts.

“Stay on the ground,” Cole ordered. Another officer on their
heels took over securing the two meth addicts.

From the other side of the house gunshots erupted and the
acrid smell of chemicals Jake could never forget wafted in on the air.

“Cole—” he began to say.

“Fire, the meth lab is on fire,” Aaron shouted from the
living room.

“Shit,” Jake spat.

He kicked what had once been the back door of the house. The
door and pieces of the jamb flew into a cinderblock and cement addition.

Someone moved.

Jake squeezed the trigger and the figure flailed, falling
against metal storage lockers. He jumped over an overturned chair and boxes.
Papers were strewn everywhere and a goddamned pile of money sat on a desk,
complete with automatic bill counter blinking a total of one hundred.

He ignored all of it and grabbed the downed suspect by the
back of his jacket.

“Get everyone out now,” Cole’s voice came over the earpiece.

Jake yanked his cuffs out and wrenched the man’s arms around
one at a time, reciting the man’s rights as he sped through cuffing him,
ignoring the yelling threats. He’d heard it all before. If he kept count of how
many men promised to ruin his life or see him dead, he’d never sleep at night.

Another officer entered the safe room and helped secure the
suspect. Together they hauled the man to his feet and hustled out of the house.
Thick smoke billowed out of the hallway, fumes of the various chemicals used to
cook meth heavy on the air. Jake held his breath, eyes beginning to water, and
charged out of the house.

The street, which had been silent and dark upon their
arrival, now teemed with officers, firefighters and other first responders. The
two meth heads from the kitchen were handcuffed and sitting on the curb. The
first shooter was strapped to a stretcher.

“Need EMT,” Jake said and pushed his suspect toward another
ambulance.

“Watch it, jackass,” the suspect snapped.

An EMT waved them to the back of another ambulance and
opened both doors, spilling light out. The suspect turned, glaring at him, and
Jake’s world narrowed to the age-worn profile.

He knew that face.

Jose Garza.

One of the open cases Jake had left behind when he moved to
SWAT. The man was a high roller in the narcotics world, and Jake had just taken
him down.

* * * * *

Nicole lay on the bed, swaddled in her fleece robe, hair a
sopping mess from her postcoital shower. As soon as Jake had left she’d needed
to scrub the sweat from her body. A bone-deep ache pierced her chest. She’d cry
if she had anything left in her, but there were no tears left.

Tanya had been wrong. Sex hadn’t made a difference to the
great chasm yawning between her and Jake. It was still there. He hadn’t even
bothered to kiss her. What man made love to his wife and didn’t even kiss her?
They’d fucked and that was it. No emotions, nothing at all. Maybe this was a
good thing. Now she knew the love they’d shared was dead.

She swung her feet over the edge and rose. It was time she
did something for herself, because Jake wasn’t going to be her plaid-wearing,
truck-driving hero this time. That ship had sailed. It was time to get out of
Dodge, because this wasn’t just a transition like when he’d transferred from
narcotics to SWAT. They’d had a whole week of interrupted lovemaking sessions
that erased all the tension that had been strangling their marriage. They’d
laughed and copped a feel every chance they got, unable to keep their hands off
each other. The sex that week had been some of the hottest, most impassioned
she’d ever experienced. When she married Jake, she’d wanted someone who defied
normal, and that was the life they’d had together. The sex, their passion, was
anything but normal. But they’d fizzled—just like everyone else.