Fishy Riot, page 1
Fishy Riot
By Lindsey Black
Most people think riot squad officer Taylor Jameson is an asshole. Little do they know his apparent indifference stems from having a meddlesome family always butting into his business. And little does Taylor know he’s about to stumble into a situation that’ll make indifference impossible.
When everything goes horribly wrong at a political rally on a harbor ferry, Taylor encounters Sietta Salisbury—son of a wealthy politician, revered musician, and presumed-dead enigma —who is so strange, Taylor is compelled to look into his background. What he discovers draws him into a bizarre mess of prisoners, politics, and attempted murder that makes him realise what he’s been missing.
Falling in love isn’t hard. Trying to convince someone else you’re worth loving despite your crazy family and the people trying to kill you? That’s a whole other can of worms.
Table of Contents
Blurb
1: Rocket Launcher
2: Hot Tub Stoners
3: Reinforced Steel
4: Fishy
5: Milk and Apples
6: Whoosh, No Pants
7: Lemonade Barbeque
8: Snow White Picket Fence
9: The Many (Moronic) Faces of Joel
10: Coconut Milk and Alzheimer’s
11: NASCAR Gucci
12: Driving Pam Off-road
13: Pomcorn Air B’n’B
14: Home Invaders
15: Yup, Broken
16: No Secret Desires and Boom.
About the Author
By Lindsey Black
Visit Dreamspinner Press
Copyright
1: Rocket Launcher
“IS THAT an RPG?” Clay squinted through the dirt haze engulfing them. “No, seriously… I think that’s an RPG!”
Annoyed, Taylor finished reloading and traded places, giving Clay the time he needed to do the same while he took a look for himself. It was hard. They were perched midway up the wall on a crate shelf beneath a mezzanine, trying to get a better vantage of the enormous shipping warehouse. Manoeuvring around one another and the crates without giving away their position was proving difficult. Sure enough, one of the morons was hefting a rocket launcher onto another’s back while he sighted. A small, decrepit-looking piece of machinery that had no doubt seen better days, before it had endured several wars and a rebuild in the back of a Cambodian arms house.
“What the fuck.” He took aim and got rid of the shooter in the top right end of the warehouse, not far from where they were huddled. It was hard when you weren’t allowed to fire without risking severe disciplinary action. Needing to be able to prove every bullet that left your weapon was necessary to subdue a deadly threat was almost impossible. Once people started shooting at you, decisions weren’t being made rationally. You were just reacting, and there was always the chance you were going to have the wrong reaction, but Taylor would rather lose his badge than his life.
“I told you. Rocket launcher.” Clay grinned at him, finishing his reload and pushing in hard against his side.
“I’m not sure you can call that a rocket launcher. That’s like calling a slingshot a gun,” Taylor argued, mostly because he could. He shifted uncomfortably around the next crate to get a better line of sight, pleased with the clear view he then had of the main floor.
“Can you see Jones and Hale?”
Taylor shook his head. He’d lost them in the initial fire, somewhere off near the front of the warehouse, when he and Clay had made a run for the stash they had come to find. No matter what else happened, Taylor wasn’t letting them get away with the guns. A whole lot of guns, as it turned out, and that was weird, considering gun laws made it damn hard to get arms into Australia, let alone this many. Or this kind.
“Seriously, who even needs an assault rifle?”
“Some dude with a really small dick.” Clay laughed at him, spotting movement on the mezzanine and firing. They watched the man jerk and wail, and then he fell, hitting the floor hard, knocked out cold from the impact. They stared at the still body, following the strange wire attached to him back to the gun in Clay’s hand.
“That’s a Taser,” Taylor pointed out, biting his lip to keep from laughing because these things were not supposed to be funny. Clay’s Glock was still in his right hand, but for whatever reason, he’d pulled his Taser and shot with his left, his gun still pointed down at the warehouse floor.
“I did not mean to do that,” Clay mumbled, shoving his Taser back in his belt and slipping off the shelf, landing hard on the cement floor. Taylor leapt down beside him, the impact jarring his knees.
Movement by the doors caught Taylor’s attention, and he swore under his breath as he grabbed Clay and hauled him down behind more armoured crates just as the roller doors smashed inward, ripping off the roller and sailing through the air. The doors hit two of the gunrunners in the chest, downing them permanently. The sound was deafening and bullets ricocheted around the warehouse as whoever was left tried a last-ditch effort at the riot squad armoured vehicle.
Taylor waited, because, really, the vehicle was effectively a tank.
The rocket launcher fired, but missed the squad truck and the warehouse was effectively a titanic-sized tin can. The rocket punched a hole through the wall and disappeared, a loud explosion echoing from outside a moment later. The explosion sent the crates inching back toward the wall, pinning Clay and Taylor momentarily.
“That sounded bad,” Clay hissed. “Right?” He was rubbing his knee where a crate had collided with him, but otherwise seemed fine.
“Well, it hit something,” Taylor sarcastically rumbled. “So, yeah. Probably bad.” He checked the mezzanine but couldn’t see any movement through the smoky haze filling the warehouse from the rocket.
“Reckon it was a ship?” Clay was crawling to the edge of the crates and peeking around the edge, trying to see what was going on.
“Seriously?” Taylor focussed on trying to shove the crates back to free them from where they were pinned so they could get back out. “Just, coz the ship might sink then, right? Can you imagine what the boss is gonna say if we sink a ship?” Clay’s hands were moving, indicating where there was still movement happening in the warehouse.
“Can we finish the gunfight?” Taylor interrupted. “Then we can go see if there’s a ship sinking, okay?”
“Of course we’re gonna finish the gunfight….” Clay scowled and nodded his head in the direction he intended to go, still able to find cover behind the crates if it was needed but otherwise ready to push forward. Taylor agreed with the course of action.
Guns up, they forced their way into the fray, aware of the other officers doing the same, the flash of gunfire the only thing they heard for several minutes, until as quickly as it had all erupted, an eerie silence fell over everything.
Dust wafted through the air in lazy spirals.
Amazingly, the dead were limited. Bodies lay scattered throughout the warehouse, mostly foe, blood pooling around riddled forms, men clutching burned limbs and bleeding wounds. A few were loudly demanding help, screaming about their rights at the top of their lungs. The guns sat innocently in their crates against one wall. Taylor glared at the mess all around them while Clay spun in a slow circle, taking it all in.
“Fuck,” Clay swore. “This is gonna be so much freakin’ paperwork.”
THEY STILL sat in the office after midnight, empty paper coffee cups littered the open-plan area, as if it were a requirement of getting work done that they be able to see one another. Taylor added a cup to the pile, wondering if anyone was actually going to bother to pick them all up, or if even the cleaner would be stuck with overtime tonight. He finished the last few lines on his own report and checked it over before printing it off and swapping with Clay.
It was an old habit, developed as children. As twins they’d shared a room, until they graduated university with twin criminology degrees, and even at the academy, they’d requested rooms side by side. The request had been granted. Now they shared an apartment in Crows Nest. As teenagers, when the work had gotten harder at school, they’d gotten into the habit of handing off assignments to each other to read through and check for errors. Taylor refused to submit anything his brother hadn’t checked first, and Clay did the same.
“Typo on page three,” Clay noted wearily, and Taylor looked it up, fixing it in the computer document. Clay’s was fine, and they both hit Send ten minutes later before collapsing back in their chairs.
“Ready?”
“Seriously?” Clay rolled his eyes and got up, stretching. Taylor followed suit, grabbing his keys and heading for the door.
“Don’t forget, the harbour at six tonight,” Mendel grumbled from where he was still writing his report. He was always last to finish. Taylor blamed his size. It was hard to hit one key when your finger was the size of four. Taylor grunted in response because while he wasn’t pleased they were working that evening, it did mean they had the day off, and he intended to sleep like the dead.
“Jameson and Jameson.” The security guard grinned at them on their way out. Clay bothered to say something, but Taylor just kept walking. He didn’t care if the guard liked him. Clay did, so Clay talked and he walked. Simple as that.
“You’re an asshole.” Clay laughed at him when he finally climbed in the passenger side of the Hilux.
“It’s nearly one in the morning,” Taylor pointed out. “No one should be expected to do small talk at one in the morning, especially when they’re leaving work… at one in the mor
“No one expects you to do anything. They all know you’re an asshole. But you could surprise them every now and then.”
“To what end?”
“My own personal entertainment.” And that really would have been enough of a reason, if Taylor could be bothered, but they both knew he couldn’t.
Technically, the Hilux was Clay’s car. Taylor had his own, but his was black while Clay’s was silver. He drove because he was an asshole and refused to be the passenger even in someone else’s car. Clay was used to it and didn’t say anything. He fished the gate remote out of his pocket and hit the button when they approached the entrance for the underground parking of their apartment complex.
“I’m so fucking hungry,” Clay complained, and Taylor grunted in agreement. Each of them was six foot six with a good hundred and ten kilograms of pure muscle to haul around every day. It took a lot to feed them, and while they’d eaten enough through the day, they hadn’t had anything since dinner, and that had been literally hours ago. It felt like his stomach was going to start trying to eat itself.
The apartment sat on the fourth floor, and there was no lift. Most old complexes like theirs didn’t have one, but it kept body corporate fees down and they didn’t mind the stairs, so it hadn’t been a consideration when they were looking to buy. They jogged up the stairs and were careful not to slam the door behind them, not wanting to wake their neighbours. As soon as they were inside, boots were kicked off by the door, and they were hauling off their overalls, stumbling past one another as they tossed filthy clothes in the hamper and headed for the showers.
Taylor had the larger bedroom with the en suite mostly because he was an asshole and refused to let Clay have it, but Clay liked having the bigger main bathroom anyway. Besides, Taylor brought home one-night stands occasionally, and Clay had a steady boyfriend, so it wasn’t like he needed to impress anyone. Not that Taylor felt the need to attempt to impress the twinks he brought home anyway. He walked into a bar; they were impressed. Done deal.
He washed his hair and scrubbed himself until his skin felt raw, but he could still smell gunpowder, so he scrubbed again. When he was satisfied he was clean, he wrapped a towel around his hips and wandered out to find two plates on the bench and Clay already heating up some leftover pizza from the fridge, watching it go round and round in the microwave while he waited.
“Where’s Joel?”
“He had papers to mark so stayed at his,” Clay scowled. Taylor snickered because his brother was clearly not okay with his boyfriend’s decision to not be waiting in bed for him.
“It is one in the morning,” he pointed out. The man could not be expected to keep riot squad hours when he had to teach all day at a university.
“Oh, I know.” Clay waved him off, the microwave dinging. He reached in to pull out the heated slices and tossed them on the plates.
Silence reigned but for the sounds of food being blown on and hurriedly devoured.
Taylor finished first. He dumped his plate in the sink to deal with in the morning and headed to bed.
“Night, Tay!”
“Night, Clay,” he called through his door, but he was already naked, towel left by the door as he stumbled to the bed, landing face-first and descending immediately into the embrace of sleep.
“NO, SERIOUSLY! They had a fuckin’ rocket launcher!”
Taylor groaned at his brother’s raised voice through the bedroom door and pulled his pillow over his head. But it was too late; he was awake. Grumpily, he stumbled to the en suite and took another shower, letting the water run cold to wake him up a little more.
He dressed in comfortable jeans and a T-shirt, and wandered out, not surprised to find his brother on the phone.
“Oh, hey, Tay’s awake, you wanna say hi?” He didn’t actually wait for a response, just shoved the phone into Taylor’s hands and went to finish making his breakfast. Lunch. Whatever. “Tell him there really was a rocket launcher!”
“There really was a rocket launcher,” Taylor agreed wearily, and he heard their older brother laughing hard on the other end of the phone.
“What the hell does anyone need a rocket launcher for?” Brayden was having trouble getting the words out.
“Apparently they’re good for firing on the riot squad,” Taylor grunted in response, and Clay snickered as he made up a second bowl of muesli for him.
“No, but seriously, what would you do with it? Go ’roo hunting? It’s not exactly compact….” Brayden took these things far too seriously, but what could one expect of an ex-military doctor. He had a point, though: if you went hunting with it, there wouldn’t be enough of the kangaroo left to eat. How Brayden’s mind went to that, he had no idea, and he couldn’t muster the energy to think about it himself, so Taylor grunted in the right places and let him ramble until the silence on the other end of the phone told him it was his turn to speak.
“How’s Kel?”
“Huh? Oh, she’s fine. She’s got the kids going to Sunday School or some nonsense, I don’t even know, really. Said I was driving her mad, and they’d be back after the barbeque.”
“They feed you at church?” He looked up at Clay and knew the stumped expression on his face matched his own. That didn’t happen at Catholic Church!
“You can’t go to church just to get a free feed at the end,” Brayden lectured loudly through the phone.
“Not every week,” Taylor agreed. “But you could drop in once a month….”
“You are not going to join a church so you can get free food whenever you pull an all-nighter on a Saturday!” Brayden was screaming at them.
“Sounds legit to me.” Clay grinned, handing over a bowl and sitting down on one of the single-seater couches to eat his breakfast with a happy sigh. “Do you think you have to go to the sermon, or could you just turn up for the last like fifteen minutes and say work held you up?”
“I don’t know, maybe if we wore our uniforms, we could act like we just dropped by on our lunch break or something.” Clay nodded in agreement, and Brayden continued to lecture through the phone. Another call came in.
“Got another call, gotta go,” Taylor said to Brayden, not even sure if his brother heard him before he hung up. “Hello?” He answered the new call.
“Was there seriously a rocket launcher? It’s on the news and everything!”
“If it’s on the news, then obviously there was a rocket launcher,” Taylor explained to the oldest of their younger sisters, Hayley, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, as if. Not everything they tell you on television is true, you know!”
“Of course not,” Taylor agreed, handing the phone off to Clay because it was far too early in the morning to be dealing with her antagonizing voice as it lectured them on the evils of mass media.
Clay laughed in all the right places and was grinning when he hung up the phone thirteen minutes later, leaving Taylor with an empty bowl and nothing to do but stare at him.
“That was oddly… quick?”
“She was at work.”
“And yet she called to discuss a rocket launcher in our raid.”
“Well, she wasn’t doing anything when she called, but then they got a call out so….”
It was a drill they all knew well. He wondered, sometimes, if his family felt they needed to compensate for something, being that they contributed to the public service as spectacularly as they did. Brayden, the doctor; twin Public Order and Riot Squad officers, one of whom dated a teacher; an ambulance driver for a sister; and a baby brother in training with the Firies. His parents had blue collar down to a fine art. The government should put them to good use brainwashing the next generation about duty to one’s country. Hell, Brayden had even served four years in the military when he had first left school before deciding to be a doctor.
The Jamesons had public service mastered.
“So, I was thinking of going to the harbour early, having a wander, maybe stop in at Starbucks and people watch until the cruise tonight?” Clay mused.
The cruise. Taylor wanted to groan on principle. There was some kind of youth rally-cum-fundraising event for animal rights being held by the Salisbury Foundation for the youth of Sydney’s elite. And since lately those events had been growing increasingly out of hand, a few of the more politically minded parents of the youths involved—who needed their names kept out of the mass media for various reasons—had asked for some help from the police.
