Double Standards, page 17
Fuck, I cursed mentally, wishing we wore our vests. We sorely misjudged the severity of the situation. I pulled out my phone and messaged Terry an S. O. S. text.
“Liam,” Callie whispered. My head snapped toward the direction of her voice. She must have snuck in behind me, because she was two rows higher than I was. Damn it. I didn’t want her in the line of fire. Only one of us needed to be put in a compromising position.
“He won’t listen to reason right now,” I whisper-shouted. “Stay down.”
She scowled at me. “No, I’m your partner. If you get in the line of fire, so do I.”
I shook my head, knowing she wouldn’t obey orders. I winked at her as I sprang up and aimed my gun at him. “Ilya, we don’t want to shoot, but we will. Please, just come with us now.” I saw Callie dart down another row, staying low.
“You guys don’t understand,” he cried, tears beginning to flow from his eyes. “I loved her, man. I loved her. And she was going to sleep with that… that disgusting kid. She told me she wanted an older man. Why wasn’t I enough for her?” He was wailing animatedly, waving his gun around.
I took a deep breath and descended a few more stairs. “Ilya, I know what it feels like to get your heart broken. To feel like you’ve found the one person you could always trust,” I told him, watching his every movement as I crept towards him. “And then for them to strip all that away by one action. Your whole world falls apart around you and you’re not sure how to begin picking up the pieces. I get it, I do.”
Sobbing, he brought both of his hands to his head, the gun aiming upwards now. Okay, now I just have to get close enough to disarm him.
“It’ll all be okay, Ilya,” I soothed. “You just need to come with me. I can protect you,” I said. I quickly glanced over my shoulder at Callie, who stood halfway down the stairs, crouched low but her gun ready. She eyed me, her expression aware but slightly fearful.
“No, no, no. I can’t do that. If I do, I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison!” He screamed, bringing his gun down again to point directly at me.
My first reaction shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. I dropped my gun, turned, and dove towards Callie, tackling her to the ground as Ilya pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. She was my partner, and we watched out for each other.
I didn’t look at her as I bounded to my feet again, grabbing her gun. I aimed and fired, my bullet clocking him in the left shoulder and knocking him to the ground. I ran down the stairs, jumping over the last row of chairs as I bolted toward him. He cried out in pain and clutched his shoulder as he fell on his back.
I confiscated his gun, tearing it from his grip and kicking it across the floor. I pressed my hand to his wound and applied pressure. He cried out again, his skin even paler than before and beading with sweat.
“Please don’t let me die,” he moaned.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. He wasn’t going to die from where I shot him. He’d bleed quite a bit, sure, but he’d be fine. “I won’t. You’ll be alright.”
“Is your friend—I mean, will your friend be okay?” He wondered between breaths.
I shifted so I was facing the stairs, suddenly afraid I didn’t move quick enough earlier to protect Callie. She was sitting up on the step I’d left her, cradling her arm as blood dripped down her fingers. I wanted to race over to her to see if she was okay, but I knew I had to secure the suspect first.
“I’m going to put handcuffs on you now, but we’ll get you medical attention, alright?” I told him, reciting his Miranda rights as I cuffed him.
“I called for backup,” Callie said as soon as I got close to her a few minutes later. “They should be here any second.”
“I did too,” I responded instinctually. “But fuck the backup. Are you okay?” I asked her frantically, kneeling down and prying her fingers away so I could see her arm.
She winced. “I’m fine, Liam. It just grazed me. See?” She replied, lifting her hand to show me. The bullet had sliced open her blazer, and her skin was definitely grazed judging by the singed skin. It was bleeding quite a bit, not lethal by any means but no doubt hurting like hell.
I took a seat next to her. “When the ambulance arrives, you should have them bandage that.”
Callie looked at me, an unnamed emotion flitting across her face. “I’ve been shot at before, Liam, but always when I was wearing a vest,” she paused, releasing her arm again and holding my hand with her bloodied, uninjured one. “You saved my life.”
I swallowed thickly. I didn’t want to think about any of that. I only wanted to think about how intimate and comforting her touch was. “This is turning into a Hallmark moment. That’s not our style,” I teased, but I wasn’t fully invested in the sarcasm.
She laughed, then looked at our suspect, who was in a chair two rows down from us. I made sure to face him in case he tried to make a break for it, but I had a feeling he was too injured to run. I had wrapped his suit jacket around his wound to help the bleeding.
“We were here after Dean Wilson told us to get a warrant. What are we supposed to tell Terry?” She wondered.
“We tell him the truth,” I told her as I bit my lip nervously. At her admonishing look, I chuckled. “Well, almost the whole truth. That we were here, she told us to get a warrant, so we walked around strategizing, and then saw the suspect.”
Callie flinched and released my hand to hold her arm again, which was still bleeding through her jacket. “Fine, but I’m not getting checked out by the ambulance, Liam. They take forever and impede on report-writing time.”
I scoffed. “You’re such a nerd, Eden.”
It was nice that she was calling me Liam again. After the last few weeks, the formal names were getting to be a little much for me.
Just then, the doors opened and four officers rushed in. We pointed toward Ilya. Two of them took Ilya by his arms, ignoring his pained cries as they escorted him out. The other two guided us to the front of campus. Ilya confessed immediately to murdering Melanie Sanders, claiming he did it out of anger before leaving her body in the apartment he was paying for. He didn’t bother coming up with an alibi, and we had no reason to suspect otherwise.
As we stood in the grass, Dean Wilson approached us. “I suppose I owe you an apology,” she said.
I shrugged and Callie smirked. “Thanks, but we were just doing our jobs.”
The Dean cocked an eyebrow at us. “Well—,” she started before Callie interjected.
“We were following our instincts.” I gaped at Callie in awe.
The Dean cracked a smile. “I will use discretion about your, uh, intimate moment given how many lives you potentially saved today. Thank you for protecting our community.” She gave a slight nod before walking towards the news vans.
“That somehow worked in our favor,” I murmured as I watched the Dean walk away.
Callie giggled. Despite her getting shot, she was surprisingly bubbly. I was beginning to suspect she was feeling less tense.
Chapter 10

Liam
When Callie and I were released from the crime scene over an hour later, we walked back to my car. She still clenched her arm, wincing every now and again. When we got in the car, I made the executive decision to bring her back to my apartment.
And no, I didn’t mean that in a sexual way. I was going to clean up her arm and bandage it for her since she refused to get it professionally treated.
After a few minutes of driving, she frowned. “Where are we going? Oh wait, let me guess, you’re lost because you don’t know your way around this city yet.”
I chuckled. “I’m taking you to my place to get your arm bandaged.”
“Liam, I’m fine,” she insisted.
“You’re not getting out of this,” I scolded. “I know from personal experience how painful those are. You have to take care of it.”
“You’ve been shot before?”
I smirked. “I was a cop for years in New York, Callie. Yes, I’ve been shot. I’m surprised you didn’t see the scar last year.”
She blushed. “I was focused on other things. So what’s the story?”
I shrugged. I didn’t care to discuss the sordid details of it at the moment. “It certainly wasn’t doing what I did today.” I pulled into the parking garage of the apartment building I’d moved into my second week in Newark.
“One day you’ll tell me,” she responded confidently.
I guided Callie up to the fourth floor and unlocked my door. Inside was modern and masculine, the colors dark, the floor-to-ceiling windows eliciting a spectacular view of the city.
“Wow, this place is amazing,” Callie said, awed.
“Thank you.” I sat her down at my table and went to my hall closet to pull out some supplies: rubbing alcohol, antibiotic cream, gauze, and a washcloth to help clean up. I poured some rubbing alcohol on the washcloth as I stood beside her. I noted the small hickey forming on her neck from our intimate moment in the closet and fought the urge to mention it to her. She’d see it at some point, but her hair would cover it for now. “This might sting a bit.”
She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut as she removed her hand from the wound and pulled off her jacket. It was about three inches long, the skin around it burned. It looked nasty, so I was surprised that she didn’t want any medical help. I pressed the washcloth onto it. She hissed through her teeth and tensed up as I cleaned the wound. I felt her prodding eyes on me as I worked.
“Thank you for saving my life. I didn’t actually say it earlier,” she said, her voice soft.
My eyes flickered up to hers as I knelt beside her. “I was just protecting my partner,” I told her, but it was a half-truth and I wanted to be honest. “But that’s not entirely true. It was my first instinct to protect you, and not just because you’re my partner. Because you’re… you,” I admitted, hoping I wasn’t being too candid.
Callie’s eyes widened and her mouth formed an O, but she didn’t say anything.
I rubbed some antibiotic cream on the graze and began wrapping it.
“What you said, back in the lecture hall… how did you know when you stopped loving your ex-wife?”
I frowned. No response to my previous statement, I guess. “Once the anger and pain had passed, I just knew. I didn’t look at her the same anymore. I felt… nothing.” I finished wrapping her arm, cut the gauze, secured it with medical tape, and then stepped back to admire my work.
She twisted her lips, lost in thought. I wanted to ask her what was on her mind, but she looked like she needed to figure it out on her own. Instead, I decided to make her laugh. I’d say anything to see that smile, and I knew just how to bring it out.
“Are we going to talk about what happened in the supply closet?” I prompted, leaning back against the wall leading into my kitchen.
Callie reddened and laughed nervously. “Like you said earlier, at least one of us is getting laid.”
I nearly laughed at how wrong she was. I hadn’t slept with many people in the last year, only a small handful, but she didn’t know that. She also didn’t know I hadn’t slept with any of the women who’d given me their numbers since she became my partner. “I’m not a man-whore, Callie.”
She grinned at me. “You called me Callie,” she observed, then shook her head. “Anyway, I’m sorry if I was,” she paused as she thought of the word, “too brazen earlier. Turns out I’m a little desperate for human contact these days.”
I tilted my head. “I think you know I didn’t mind it.” Before I let her respond, I continued. “Why don’t we head back and wrap up this case?”
Callie nodded and stood up, stretching her arms above her head, wincing slightly from her arm. Her shirt rode up and revealed a sliver of skin, just enough that I could see the bottom of her naval ring. Good God, that damn near drove me crazy. “Yes, please.”
Callie
I knew better than to engage with an armed suspect if I wasn’t wearing a vest, and I knew that in order to protect my partner I had to be right behind him. He couldn’t be the only one in the line of fire, and he knew I wouldn’t abide by that.
I watched Liam slowly walk down the stairs, leading with his gun as he talked down our suspect, Ilya Harris, who was sobbing uncontrollably. Ilya suddenly pointed his gun at Liam again, and my partner acted quicker than I could have imagined.
I was crouched halfway up the stairs, aiming my gun at Ilya, but Liam was blocking my line of sight. Liam dropped his gun, turned, and bolted up the stairs, diving on top of me and knocking me backwards before I could react, just in time for Ilya to fire his gun at us. As we fell back, I felt a bullet graze my arm, but I refrained from crying out; I was too surprised at how Liam just saved my life. I gaped up at him, but he was already back on his feet, my gun in his hand, and discharging his weapon to take down the suspect.
I was equally terrified, shocked, and attracted to Liam all at once. After all, I was still reeling over what happened in the utility closet, but that paled in comparison to him saving me.
I shook the memory from my mind as I tried to wrap up my case for the day, but my mind was swimming from the day’s events. Once my body had come out of shock, and I’d processed how I went from a mind-blowing orgasm to nearly getting a bullet in my head in about three minutes, I crashed. Hard.
My arm was feeling stiff and swollen as I typed up my report, and it was making my neck ache. I was hurting like a fucking bitch everywhere, but at least I wasn’t as tense.
The recent memory of Liam’s kiss ghosted my lips. I smiled slightly and lightly touched my fingers to them.
Liam appeared before me with a coffee in hand. “You look like you need this.”
I moved my fingers away from my lips and reached out to pick up the coffee. “Is it that obvious?”
He sat on the edge of my desk. “I hate to say it, but yes. You’ve had a long day. You should go home.”
I smirked at him. “And give you the satisfaction of being here the longest today?”
He grinned at me, and for the first time all day—the first time in weeks, even—I saw his dimples. It made me want to stand up and kiss him again, but I was so tired I wasn’t sure my legs would work. “We’ve been working over ten hours a day for nearly three weeks. I think we can end this weird competition.”
I snorted. “It’s what’s keeping me going at this point. I prefer being here than being home.”
Liam’s eyes darkened morosely. “Why?”
I shrugged. “My boyfriend.” I realized it was the first time I’d thought of Owen all day.
“So dump him, then.”
I hesitated. “It’s not that simple.”
He raised a single eyebrow at me. “So your solution is to make out with your partner in a closet while out on an assignment?”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, but it flustered me. “I just—”
Liam shook his head, effectively interrupting me without saying anything, stood up, and walked over to his desk. He began to pack up his things before turning back to me. “You deserve better than him, Cal. You may drive me up the fucking wall half the time, but at least I can appreciate how wonderful, funny, and smart you are.”
Whoa, what a mercurial mood shift, I thought, appalled. “Liam—”.
“I’m headed home for the night. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he muttered and paused on the threshold of our office. “At eight.” He stormed off, the intimacy we shared earlier that day leaving with him.
“Callie, is that you?” Owen called from the kitchen as I walked through the front door.
“Who else would it be?” I grumbled, gingerly prying off my jacket and blazer. My sleeveless blouse exposed my bandaged arm, and I smiled fondly as I recalled Liam gently wrapping up my wound.
Owen laughed as he rounded the corner, but it just made me want to smack him. I wasn’t trying to be funny. His face paled when he saw my arm. “Oh, my God, Callie, are you alright?”
I glanced down in annoyance and grimaced. “I’m fine. A bullet just grazed me,” I said nonchalantly. I tossed my hair over my shoulder as I leveled with him.
“Honey—”
“I gotta go change,” I said over my shoulder as I walked directly to my bedroom, somewhat stiffly. I was sore and wanted to rest. As I headed to my room, I could feel Owen’s eyes on me, but I failed to recognize him zeroing in on my neck as I pushed past him.
He grabbed my uninjured arm and spun me around. My eyes flew open in shock when his grip tightened. His normally soft eyes were hard, his jaw flexing as he reached up with his spare hand to brush my hair over my shoulder. I wanted to fight him, to wriggle out of his grip because I didn’t want to be touched by him, but the look on his face told me I had to handle this precariously.
“Is that… is that a hickey?”
My blood froze and I stilled. I couldn’t tell if it was guilt or fear lodging itself in my throat.
Now’s your chance to be honest.
I could end it all right now. I could tell him the truth and let this unravel on its own.
Before I could respond, he grabbed my other arm below its wound and flattened me against the kitchen wall. I swallowed thickly as Owen’s eyes rose to meet my own. Anger, dark fury swirled there, something that sounded all my internal alarms.
It wasn’t guilt, at least not this time. It was fear. I couldn’t reach my gun with my arms pinned, and my grazed wound was throbbing painfully under its wrapping. I felt defenseless and caught off guard by his level of aggression.
Think logically. How would I handle this in the field?
I blinked twice and forced a small smile. “It’s not a hickey, but probably a bruise. Liam saved my life today by tackling me to the ground when our suspect fired his weapon at us.”
Owen scrutinized me for a moment through a narrowed gaze. I held my breath and prayed that was enough for him to let me go.
Seconds later, that dark fury seemed to dissipate as he released me.
