Sin (The Waite Family) (7 page)

Coop nodded.
“Yes.
He said that there was a doctor who would see me whenever I needed and that the place was a fortress.
He said there was no way anyone could get to me.”

Wickett
had been caught the same night that Coop had been shot. But that
hadn’t
stopped the attempts on the
c
hief’s life. Nor had they been able to pin anything on the mayor.
But if his approval rating was any indication, he would
n’t
be living in the governor’s mansion for much longer.
That made Coop smile again.

“Will I be able to contact you
?
” she asked bringing him out of his
thoughts.
“
See how you’re doing at least?
Or is that too much for a mother to ask?”

Coop laughed.
It was the first laugh he’d had in almost two weeks.
The pain shot though his belly
,
but it had been worth it. It was the first time he’d heard his mom laugh too.
And it suited her to laugh.

“I’ll get us both cell phones. They’ll have to be disabled and the number can’t be written down. Once we use it, you’ll have to toss it.”
They’d done this before when he’d been undercover.
“And I’ll have Thomas send you whatever you need by the same route we used before.”

He would give her a name
. A
t the end of the call she would set up a post office box name for it under the guise of a vacationer and he’d send the phone there with only his new number programmed in. Mom had friends at the post office that helped her set this up and he was glad for it.
In the meantime, he was going under the new identity of Payton Cooper. He’d been told stick to the truth as much as possible.

“I know how to use a disposable phone
,
young man.
I didn’t spend twenty-one years with another detective to have his son tell me how to keep someone I love safe.
I’ll expect weekly updates or else.
You tell Thomas that I mean it or he’ll have hell to pay too.
And you don’t want to know what the ‘or else’ means.”

“Yes
,
ma’am. Weekly.”
Coop waited until she left to call Thomas.
He
was pretty sure his mom knew he was leaving today. She’d hugged him a few extra minutes before she’d left.
Within an hour Coop left the private hospital and was on his way to the home of Doctor Cain Waite.

~Chapter 5~

Sin finally found her headphones. Why they were under
her dish in the sink she didn’t know. She’d had them yesterday when she ran and today someone had hidden them.
She closed the door behind her before she remembered to check and see if she had a key.

She wasn’t adapting well to living in the civilian world and she knew it.
It was hard enough trying to simply not have someone telling her what to do every second of every waking hour, but all this free time was making her insane.

Stretching for twenty minutes, she set off at a slow pace to make her body wake up.
At four in the morning she knew her sister wouldn’t be awake
,
but some of the others on the street would be.
She tried to avoid talking to them by wearing the headphones though there was nothing coming through them.
But
some people, people like Mrs. Carson down the street about halfway through her run
,
couldn’t seem to get it
that
she didn’t want to talk to her.

Sin hadn’t spoken to many since she’d gotten back seven weeks ago.
She didn’t know what to say to them.
Mostly she tried to hide in the cabin
,
but her family, especial
ly
Alyssa
,
wouldn’t take no for an answer. She frowned when she remembered the way they’d fought the other week.

“Damn it
,
it’s just dinner.
Get out of that house and come over or so help me
,
Sydney, I will come there and drag you here.”
Alyssa was getting frustrated and Sin could hear it in her voice.
Well
,
damn it, so was she.

“What part of ‘I’d rather be alone
’
did you not
understand? I
fucking like it here.
Let me be.”

She heard Alyssa count to ten, then to twenty before she said anything. “You’re becoming a hermit. That can’t be good for you. The doctor said you need to get out with—
“

“I know what that fuck-tard said.
He told me that I needed to
acclimate
myself to people better. What the fuck?
I like it alone.”
Sin took a deep breath before she continued.
“I’m thinking this isn’t working out. I’m going to start looking for another place to stay.
It’s
not your fault, I understand, but I can’t keep having this argument with you
every day
.”

“Please don’t.
Sin…please don’t leave.
Cain needs…I need you.
Please don’t. I’ll…I’ll leave you alone. I promise. If you have dinner with us tonight, I swear I won’t bother you again.
”

And she hadn’t, not in seventeen days.
There had been texts from Cain, a note left on the door by Jazz
,
and even a card from Drew and Quinn, but nothing else.
She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she knew something was up.
She was rounding the
corner
when she noticed Mrs. Carson’s lights off.

Usually by the time Sin got here Mrs. Carson’s entire house was aflame with lights.
Today
not even the porch light was on.
It took her three minutes to get to
the
front
of the house before she decided that it was none of her business. She was nearly a block away
when
she turned back.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. This can’t end well.
I’m going to knock and she’s going to be laying in wait for me. I just know it.”
Sin went up on the
porch
and looked in the window. “Mrs. Carson,
its
Sin Waite.
Are you in there?”

Nothing. Not even her stupid little dog barked.
She thought she heard something
,
but wasn’t sure enough to break down the door yet.
Like I could.

Moving around the house she saw the neighbor leaning against the porch rail smoking a cigarette.
Sin started to ask him what he knew about Mrs. Carson, but he threw his butt at her and went inside his house.

Sin
pulled out her cell phone when she heard something. Going up on the back porch
,
she leaned against the door and listened hard. Since she’d gotten hurt she couldn’t hear anything in her right ear, but her left was fine.
There! She’d heard it again, a mewing sound.
When she heard the door open next door she ignored it and called the police.

“You need to step away from her house.
She ain’t home.
I mean it
,
girl, you need to back on outta there now.”
Sin didn’t turn
,
but did lower the phone
from her ear when she heard someone answer.

“I’m going to call the police. I think I heard a noise from within Mrs. Adele Carson’s house.
My name is Sydney Waite.”

“I don’t give a good fuck who you are
.
”
T
he sound of a gun being racked shattered the otherwise silence of the morning.
“I told you she ain’t in there.
Now you back on up and we’ll pretend you was out for your run like you always are.”

Sin decided she needed to change her route at that moment.
She turned around slowly and could just make out the man with the smoke from earlier.
“Fuck.”

“You got that right.
Now, I want you to drop your phone on the step and then come on down from there. You ain’t got no reason to be making the call. I done told you she was gone and I’m…I’m protecting her house. Yeah, that’s it, I’m protecting her house for her.”
His laughter made her skin crawl.

Sin started to say something when she saw what looked like Mrs. Carson’s dog
lying
on the ground next to the neighbor
’
s steps.
He looked over where Sin was looking.

“He met with an accident.”
Again
,
the chilling laughter.
“You ain’t dropped that phone yet
,
girl.
You deaf?”

Sin knew he was going to sh
o
ot her. And she’d had enough bullets taken out of her in one lifetime
,
thanks.
She knew her chances of jumping out of range were slim to none, not with her bad leg, but she knew she could take him out.
Gripping the phone, she
threw it at him.

She had expected it to hit him; from the short distance of only about ten feet she’d throw hand grenades further.
But what she didn’t expect was it to hit him in the nose and to hit so hard
that
the gun discharge
d
.
She stood on the other step for a few seconds
,
shocked at the amount of blood that had erupted from his nose before she thought to rush him.
Lucky for her, Mrs. Carson had a nice
clothes line pole right next to the door and Sin scooped it up and wacked the man full on the head before he had a chance to recover.

He
was dropping to the ground as she heard the police sirens. She didn’t know if they were coming to her or somewhere up the street, but she did know that Mrs. Carson was in trouble.
Picking up the shotgun she was careful not to touch the trigger
as
she walked back over to the house and slammed it against the glass at the back door
,
shatter
ing
it.
She set the gun on the top step before she reached inside and opened the lock, cutting her arm open on the broken glass.