Stripped, page 24
Sawyer eyed him warily as he brought the glass to his lips.
Jack tapped the table, leaning forward. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re going to keep a low profile until the dust settles, and then you’ll be reinstated. You didn’t break any laws, and you did the best you could in a shitty situation. And as for Brooke . . .” He trailed off.
“What about Brooke?”
Amelia cut in. “What happened, exactly, with you guys?”
Sawyer drummed his fingers on the table, trying to figure out the quickest way possible to tell the story. “We . . . connected. Got involved. I fell for her, and she didn’t fall for me. Basically told me to fuck off after the suspension.” The ache in his chest flared up as he remembered just how much that rejection had hurt.
Jack sighed. “Look, I like Brooke, but if she wants to go, let her go. It’s not like you guys have any kind of future, anyway. It sucks, man, but you’ll get through it.”
Sawyer nodded slowly, staring down into his beer. A silence fell over the table and Sawyer swallowed thickly, trying to contain the pain churning through him at the idea of not having a future with Brooke.
“Holy shit,” said Amelia softly, and he glanced up at her. “You really do love her, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then give her some space. She’s been through a lot. She lost her grandmother. Got shot at and then suspended less than a month into the job, all while putting up with your grumpy ass. Give it all time. If it’s meant to work out, you’ll find a way.” She bit her lip, toying with the ring on her necklace. “Love—real, true love—is rare and special, and if that’s what you guys have, that’s worth fighting for. Give her space, but if you love her, don’t give up.”
“Oh my God, barf,” said Jack, before making loud gagging noises like he was going to throw up.
Amelia ignored him and pointed at Sawyer with a nacho, salsa dripping onto the table. “Do you want to give up on a future with Brooke, yes or no?”
“No.”
She smiled. “Then you’ll figure it out. You’re smarter than you look.”
“Do you think Ben and Jerry are actually two recently single women who enjoy eating their feelings as opposed to being hippies from Vermont?” Brooke asked around a mouthful of Cherry Garcia.
Dani nodded, pointing at her with her spoon. “Solid theory. Entirely possible.”
Hey, at least her theories were still solid even if nothing else in her life was. Setting the half-eaten pint of ice cream down on the coffee table in front of her couch, she leaned forward, reaching for both the remote and her glass of wine.
On her way home from the gym—where she’d spent hours over the past few days trying to sweat out her troubles—she’d grabbed a bottle of wine, but the idea of drinking it by herself had been too depressing, so she’d finally taken Dani up on her offer to come over. The TV played quietly in the background, some stupid horror movie where teenagers got chased through the woods before getting hacked to pieces by a psychopath.
It fit Brooke’s current mood perfectly.
Readjusting the blanket on her lap, she took a sip of her wine. It felt odd to sit still. She’d been trying hard to keep busy so that her brain wouldn’t pull her down a rabbit hole she was scared she wouldn’t emerge from. She’d been working out. Her apartment was spotless. She’d walked around the city, not wanting to be alone in her apartment once it was clean. She’d checked out a stack of thick books from the library. She’d even treated herself to a mani-pedi.
And temporarily, it had worked, and for little pockets of time she’d been able to forget how much she missed Sawyer. How much she missed Nan. How worried she was she’d never get her job back, that she’d be demoted, even fired. That her life as she knew it was over, everything good gone. In the past.
Something broke open inside her, the pressure of everything too much to hold, and she started to cry.
“Oh shit,” said Dani, hastily setting her own ice cream down. She waved her hands in front of her in a panicked motion. “Uh . . .” She moved closer and rubbed Brooke’s back. “Blink twice if you want me to hunt the bastard down and kill him.”
That was enough for Brooke to choke out a laugh, and she grabbed some Kleenex from the half-used box on the floor. “No, but I appreciate the offer.”
“I hate seeing you like this, Brooke. This isn’t you.”
Brooke frowned. “Yeah, well, this is me right now.”
Dani studied her for several seconds and then sighed. “Listen, you want some tough love?”
“No,” Brooke said, her voice sounding maybe a little pitiful.
“Too bad.”
Brooke pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her head on them, looking at Dani, waiting. Dani reached forward and pushed Brooke’s hair out of her eyes.
“I’m not gonna lie. There are several things that really, really suck right now. I’m sorry that you lost Nan. I’m sorry your cover got blown. I’m sorry you got suspended. All of that really fucking blows. And yes, Sawyer screwed up. But what you did, pushing him away like that, just ending it, was kinda the emotional equivalent of burning your house down because there’s a spider in it. I’m not saying that you don’t have shit—some heavy shit—that you’re justifiably upset and pissed and worried about. All I’m saying is that maybe—just maybe—throwing your relationship with Sawyer into the garbage disposal because of it wasn’t the best move.”
“You think I overreacted.”
Dani smiled sympathetically and held her thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart. “Maybe a little, yeah.”
Brooke pursed her lips, thinking. “Maybe, but I think the way you’re summing it up is overly simplistic.” She sat up, worrying the blanket between her fingers. “I can’t change Nan being gone. It hurts, but I know with time it’ll hurt less. I can’t take back how the mission went sideways. So the only problem I can really address is the suspension, and I just don’t see how I have a hope in hell of being reinstated if I’m still in the relationship that got me suspended in the first place. I can’t get my career back on track and be with Sawyer. End of story.”
Dani frowned, staring at the carpet. After a second, she rubbed a hand over her mouth and shook her head. “Yeah, no, I call bullshit.”
“You call bullshit on my logic?”
“I do. Because it’s not logic. You’re scared and looking for an excuse to run.”
Brooke clenched the blanket in her fists and let out a frustrated groan. “Why does everyone keep telling me that?”
Dani shrugged. “Because that’s what you do. You love Sawyer, and that so obviously scares the shit out of you.”
“No, I don’t,” she lied, not wanting to admit that Dani was right and face what she’d done.
“Yeah, you do. And guess what, B? Not everyone you love will die or leave you. Sometimes, love really does mean forever and always.”
And in that moment, it hit her. Everything became crystal clear, and she felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. The reason she’d always dated loser guys, the reason her relationship with Sawyer scared her so much, was because she was afraid to love. Because loving meant excruciating pain when you lost that person. She’d loved her parents, and they were gone. She’d loved her grandfather, and he was gone. She’d loved Nan, and now she was gone too. And so while insisting that she didn’t want to end up alone, she’d dated guy after guy who she couldn’t possibly fall for, because when it ended, she’d walk away with her heart intact.
“You sound like a diamond commercial.”
“If you keep running scared, you’ll stay closed off to ever finding diamond commercial love. It could be Sawyer. But you’ll never know if you don’t give him the chance to try. And I get it. Giving him the chance means being vulnerable. It means trusting. And those are hard things.”
Dani’s words hit home and it felt as though someone had ripped Brooke’s chest in two. With a gasping sob, she started to cry again. She’d found a man who loved her for exactly who she was, and she’d thrown it away because she was scared to let him in. After her years of complaining about ending up alone and never finding anyone, she’d found someone, maybe even the one, and she’d gotten in her own way and torn it to pieces.
“I broke it. I broke us and he probably hates me now,” she said between sobs. For a minute or two, Dani let her cry before tucking her fingers under Brooke’s chin and forcing her to look up.
“So get him back.”
“You don’t understand. I was so angry about everything, and so scared, and I was really shitty to him.” Her stomach turned as she remembered the hurt he’d tried to hide. The way he’d told her he loved her. The tender way he’d looked after her when she was a mess over Nan.
“What would Nan tell you if she was here?”
Brooke forced herself to take a deep breath, wiping at her eyes. Remembering her letter, and the way she’d known what Brooke would need to hear before she’d even known it herself. “She’d tell me not to be afraid to let him in. That sometimes love is messy, but you can’t make an omelet without a few broken eggs along the way. That if it’s worth fighting for, I should put on my big girl panties and fight.”
“Damn right she would.”
Brooke took a healthy gulp of her wine. Maybe by morning she’d have figured out a way to unbreak what she’d broken.
Sawyer stepped out of his truck into the cool evening air, his sweaty workout clothes sticking to his skin. Jack was a member at the Buckhead Fight Club and had invited him to come hit stuff with him, and he had to admit, hitting stuff had felt really freaking good. Hadn’t made him hurt any less, but the temporary catharsis had been a nice distraction from the fact that his heart felt like it had gone through a meat grinder.
The past few days had seemed to stretch on interminably as Sawyer had tried to lift himself out of his funk. With nothing to distract him—no work, no Brooke—every minute felt like an hour. He’d wanted to head up to the cabin, but had thought the recent memories of Brooke there might make it suck, and he wanted to give them a chance to fade before going back. He’d been following Amelia’s advice, giving Brooke space. He knew they’d walked away angry, but he wasn’t angry anymore. He just missed her, and hoped she was okay. More than once he’d been tempted to call her or text her, but that wasn’t exactly giving her space. So he waited and checked his phone obsessively. Hoping that maybe she missed him too and they could figure their shit out. She’d told him that she didn’t love him, but he knew that was bullshit. She did. She wouldn’t have freaked the hell out if she didn’t.
He slowed his steps as he strode through the parking lot, keys jingling in his hand. Pausing, he did a slow visual sweep of the area. Something had made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. A creeping sensation, almost as though he was being watched.
Which was stupid. The parking lot was empty. It was just the chill in the night air and his overactive cop brain. Shaking his head at himself, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and headed toward his building.
Nothing new from Brooke. He’d have to ask Amelia how much longer he was expected to give her space, because damn did he want to call her just to hear her voice.
Sawyer felt something hit his back, and then his entire body went stiff as pain shot through him. He dropped his phone and even though he tried to move, tried to prevent himself from falling to the ground, he couldn’t make his body obey.
He knew this sensation. He was being Tased.
Pain thundered through him as the shock continued and he hit the ground, hard. A black cloth sack came over his head just as the amps stopped tormenting him. He yelled as he kicked out and swung, but he couldn’t see anything, and he only connected with empty air. He felt the pinch of a needle in his arm and wooziness hit almost immediately.
“Get him in the van,” he heard someone say just before he passed out.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Brooke yawned, flipping through the channel guide and looking for something to watch besides lame sitcoms, trashy reality TV, or unrealistic cop dramas. She shut the TV off. It was no use. She was out of distractions, and needed to figure out a plan to get both Sawyer and her job back.
She opened up the note-taking app on her phone and typed in the words “Step 1” and then stared at the screen. As she stared, her phone started to ring with a call from an unknown number.
She swiped her finger across the screen. If this was her cell provider trying to get her to upgrade her plan again, so help her God . . .
“Hello?”
“Hiya Brooke.”
Her blood ran cold as everything inside her went very, very still. She recognized that voice. That smooth, sarcastic baritone. The Sheriff.
“How’d you get this number?” she asked, her fingers gripping her phone tightly.
“It was in Matthews’s phone.”
Her heart beat with a heavy, sick thudding in her chest. “Why do you have Sawyer’s phone?”
“Because he’s here, hanging out with us. Say hi, Sawyer!”
A pain-filled scream came from somewhere in the distance and then the Sheriff came on the line. “Sorry, he’s a little busy right now. Being tortured.”
“Why did you call me? What do you want?” she asked, shooting to her feet. She moved around her apartment, tugging on her shoes and unlocking the safe in her bedroom to remove her Beretta M9. Just because she’d handed in her service weapon didn’t mean she was defenseless.
Another scream from Sawyer in the background, unmistakably his voice. Her stomach lurched.
“I called you because it’s fun to gloat. I don’t want a damn thing from you, sweetheart. Just wanted to make it clear what happens when you try to fuck us.” He laughed. “We fuck you right back, and our dick’s so much bigger, so it might hurt a little.” Sawyer screamed again. “Or a lot. Toodles.” The line went dead.
Panic started to rise, but she shoved it down, forcing herself to detach the way she would on the job. Immediately, a checklist formed. Grab an extra clip for the M9. Call both Jack and Amelia on her way to the station. Do whatever it took to trace the call, find Sawyer and get him the hell out of there. Open a can of whoop ass on the cartel. Beg forgiveness for it all after.
Having a plan and a purpose for the first time in almost a week made her eerily calm, despite the danger of the situation. Despite the fact that she’d just heard the man she loved being tortured. She shoved the extra ammo in her back pocket, slipped her gun into her waistband and sprinted for her car, phone in hand.
As she ran, two things occurred to her. One: there was a high probability that this was a trap. Why else would someone as savvy as the Sheriff contact her? He probably wanted her to trace the call in order lure HEAT into a dangerous situation where the cartel would have the upper hand. But trap or not, Sawyer needed them and she sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him in Baracoa’s hands. Two: how had he known her name? Jesse had introduced her as Britney in the hotel suite.
Clearly, the cartel knew more than they’d let on. Maybe a lot more.
Brooke pulled out of the parking lot, her tires squealing as she turned onto the street. As she wove through traffic, she dialed Jack, who answered after a couple of rings.
“Hey, I was wondering when I’d hear from you.”
“Baracoa has Sawyer. I need your help.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The Sheriff just called me, taunting me, saying that they have him. I could hear him screaming in the background.” Bile rose in her throat at the memory of Sawyer’s anguished shouts.
“Jesus fuck. I just saw him like . . . like less than two hours ago.”
“Where?”
“We went to a boxing gym together.”
“Did he say he was going anywhere after?”
“No, I think he was just going home.”
“Okay. We need to try to trace the call so we can find him. Also, see if there are security cameras in and around his condo complex. If we can’t trace the call, maybe we can trace plates or something. Shit.”
“Why would he have called you?”
“I don’t know. He said it was to gloat, and to warn us. I think it might be a trap.”
“Yeah. That was my thought too.” She heard the roar of an engine in the background. “I’ll meet you at the station. I assume you’re on your way?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
There was a pause. “You know showing up at the station while suspended breaks the code of ethics, right?”
“I don’t give a shit. Sawyer needs us. And besides, I already broke it when I started dating my partner.”
“I’ll call Ames. I think she’s still at the station.”
“Good. Trap or not, we need to figure out a way to get him back.”
“We will, Simmons. I promise.”
A few minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot, threw her car into Park and ran toward the building. Just as she realized she wouldn’t be getting far without her keycard, the door opened. Amelia waved her inside.
“What the fuck’s going on?” she said as they headed for the stairs, not wasting time on the elevator.
“The Sheriff called me. I think it’s a trap, but it doesn’t matter. They have Sawyer.”
Amelia nodded, a grim expression on her face. “Not for long, they fucking don’t.”
The bullpen was only about half-full, many of the detectives either on assignment or gone for the day. As they moved toward Amelia’s desk, the captain came out of his office.
“Simmons! Want to explain what you’re doing here?”
Jack stepped out of the elevator. “Baracoa has Sawyer. We need to trace the call they made to Brooke’s cell phone so we can get him back.”
The captain rubbed a hand over his head, his eyes bouncing back and forth between them as Brooke silently prayed he wouldn’t fight them on this.
