A Matter of Time 07 - Parting Shot (MM) (2 page)

He nodded. “Please.”

I tried to smile but it didn’t come off, more a grimace of pain than anything else, I was sure. “Okay. I’ll see ya.”

“You don’t need my driver to—”

“Nah. I got a cab waiting outside.”

“Oh,” he exhaled.

I didn’t want to say “okay” again, so I opened the door and left.

It felt wrong to leave him. Staying seemed right, but I was too scared to tell him. And even though I had only known him for twelve hours, since dinner the night before, the thought of leaving him was physically painful.

I never stayed. I always ran the next morning. Sometimes I went home with people, but as soon as we were done, I made an excuse to bail. I had to leave. I never wanted to sleep with and hold someone until first Nate, my ex, and now, suddenly, a man I didn’t expect.

Sharing a bed with Aaron Sutter was something I couldn’t get out of my head. After a week, the desire was getting the better of me. I was dying to see him.

“H
ERE
we go.”

Jolted back to the task at hand, I watched as two men walked into the club. The second one was familiar, but I couldn’t instantly place him.

“Visual confirmed. Everyone move.”

I watched Evanston weave his way through the crowd at the dance club and stop in front of Joaquin Hierra’s table.

“Wait—wait, new player, new player! All units hold.”

As soon as I saw the third man pushing to get through the throng, I recognized him immediately. Once I did, everything fell into place, and it was a mess.

Goddamn it!

Moving fast, I was behind Joaquin and leaned down to whisper in his ear before I had time to apprise anyone of my intentions.

“This guy with your boy is hot, Boss,” I said softly. “He’s got a federal marshal right on his ass.”

He stiffened, grabbed the lapel of my suit jacket, and held tight as he took in the sight of Evanston and Dr. Kevin Dwyer, the man I thought looked familiar. “You’re sure?”

“Yep. Right there behind him, you see?”

Joaquin leaned close, looked around Evanston, and had to see Sam Kage barging his way by people in the teeming club, dressed as he always was at work: in a suit with a top coat over it, badge on his belt, and a holstered gun on the opposite side.

“Can you get me out of here?”

“I’ll create a diversion; you go out the back with Benny and Andre.”

He fisted his hand in my dress shirt. “Is it Evanston? Is he dirty?”

I had a second to decide if I was going to be the guy. Was I going to be the one wired for sound, or would I pass the baton to someone else?

It had been so simple: I was undercover to wait for Evanston to show up. He was an enforcer for the Delgado cartel and had been sent to Chicago to clean up two loose ends. Unfortunately, Jared Gibson, 15, got caught in the crossfire. I promised his mother, when we figured out how her son died, that I would bring the man to justice. She counted on me.

Riley Evanston had been dispatched by Esau Modella who was in charge of security and enforcement for the crime family. I followed Evanston to New York because it was my priority, to bring him in so he could stand trial. It was my department’s chief concern.

In New York, where our fugitive had run to, the police there were following Arjun Ruiz and the drugs he moved into the city. They were out to bust one of the largest drug suppliers in the city of New York. We were after a killer. I understood our goals did not meet, but my captain, Lorena Gaines, had been sure Chicago homicide and New York vice could find common ground. But it was not to be.

Because no interdepartmental cooperation happened in this instance, the feds stepped in to coordinate a task force that would supposedly let us all reach our goals. Since I was already in place shadowing Joaquin, working as his muscle, I stayed, along with others I didn’t know. It was strange to think some of the men I had met were undercover, just like I was.

I had been hired by Hierra based on a faked background, and several incarcerated criminals had vouched for me in exchange for new privileges and other concessions. It had been easy to pull off, and even though I was on the fringe working for Hierra—the man himself a pawn on the vast chessboard that was the Delgado crime family—it gave me access to Evanston, who had been sent to collect payment from Joaquin for his sloppy work in Chicago. Why the higher ups had sent Evanston to get the Delgado family money from Joaquin, I didn’t know. Evanston moved drugs; his end wasn’t murder, so it didn’t make much sense. Perhaps he was being tested, groomed to move up—it hardly mattered to me. The important thing was, Evanston was in my sights. I could break cover and bust him. And that seemed like the plan until right that second.

It would take months to get another guy close to Hierra, and I was there, right there, ready to show my loyalty in a huge way, poised to become his most trusted man or simply disappear at the end of the bust.

I could go home, or I could stay and work with vice in New York. If I saved Joaquin from a federal marshal, I was in, and he would want me permanently on the payroll. Because yes, getting close to Joaquin Hierra had netted us Riley Evanston, but if I got in deep with Hierra, we could get access, eventually, to the whole operation, the big fish, the top tier of the Delgado drug cartel. Right now I was low level, but I could be in, just because he thought I was saving him from federal custody. Maybe Sam Kage showing up was not such a bad thing.

And maybe it was the worst.

I had only seconds to decide.

“He’s gotta be dirty,” I said flatly, staring back at the man with unwavering regard. “He led the feds here.”

“How do you know?”

I tipped my head toward Sam and lied. “That’s the same fed who took Javier Musa into protective custody. I saw him at the courthouse when they picked him up after he testified against Pascal.”

His eyes widened; and he stood and slipped around me. “Tonight,” he said, and then he moved away through the crowd.

“Where the hell is he going?” Evanston snarled at me.

I came around the table, Andre squeezed my shoulder as I moved by him, and Benny patted my back as I faced the mob enforcer. “What the fuck are you doing bringing a goddamn federal fugitive into Joaquin’s place?”

“What?” he gasped, head swiveling to Kevin Dwyer. “You’ve got a tail?”

“No,” Dwyer scoffed even as Sam yelled
Freeze!
over the driving trance music.

“You stupid fuck,” I snarled at Evanston, swinging on him.

The man had a good fifty pounds of muscle on me, and at six four, two twenty, I was not small myself. So when he blocked my throw and drove his fist into my face, I knew it was going to hurt.

It was a fight then, with yelling and screaming, stampeding for the exits, punches flying, and finally guns being drawn.

I wound up on the bottom of a pile, stepped on, kicked, punched, and cut. I had no idea who had the knife, but the diversion created an irresistible opportunity for someone looking to take out a rival. My money was on Pedro, who had never liked me. I was the one who had taken his friend Musa’s place in his boss’s circle after his buddy went to prison for trafficking in stolen goods. He had never made it a secret he didn’t trust me, and even though he did, in fact, have good reason, since I was undercover, he didn’t know that.

By the time I was pulled out from under all the other bodies, I was bleeding enough to know I needed stitches.

“This one’s gotta go to the hospital before booking,” Sam Kage yelled, pulling me to my feet fast, but more gently, I was certain, than anyone would be able to discern.

When he shoved me up against the wall, I groaned.

“Broken?” He asked, leaning in close, talking in my ear as he pinned me there.

“Bruised,” I muttered, giving him the lowdown on the state of my ribs. “Just losing blood.”

“Hold on,” he said so only I could hear.

Like I had a choice.

Ten minutes later, I was in an ambulance, on my back, looking up at Sam Kage.

“Asshole,” I barked as the EMT tried to stop the bleeding.

He shrugged his massive shoulders.

“How the fuck does your guy know my guy?” We couldn’t do names in front of the tired-looking EMT.

“Before your guy was hired muscle for the family, he worked for my guy.”

“Who’s really the doctor,” I grunted.

“Actually, the doctor
is
the bad guy,” Sam mocked me. “I mean, if you’re concerned about being precise.”

“How the fuck is Salcedo walking around to begin with?” I yelled, using his name before I could stop myself. “I thought he was in federal custody?”

“We had one more leak,” Sam informed me. “But we’re all good now, obviously.”

“What if you lose him again?”

“
My
team is on it,” Sam assured me. “
Mine
. You understand?”

I was quiet, the pain getting to me. “Yeah.”

He stayed with me, which I didn’t expect. As the hours rolled by in the hospital, as I got twenty-seven stitches down my left side over my ribs, as the drugs made me a little loopy, and as a full inventory of cuts, bruises, and a split lip was taken, Sam remained.

“Why are you here?”

“’Cause nobody else is,” he said frankly, one eyebrow lifting like I was stupid.

And because he’d made me feel like crap with that answer, I took a shot at him. “So, how does Jory feel about you working with your ex?”

“I’m not working with him, asshole, I’m recapturing him, and Jory’s glad he’s back in custody.”

“And that’s all?”

“He knows me, Duncan; he knows who I love and who I don’t give a shit about.”

I squinted. “Yeah, but you and that Salcedo guy, that was on like
Donkey Kong
in Colombia, huh?”

He was horrified. “What did they give you?”

It had to be something strong, because I was smiling like an idiot and using Nintendo references. My instinct for self-preservation was MIA.

“And no.” He shook his head.

“I heard all about it, Kage,” I huffed out. “You were with the good doctor for a year while you—”

“For your information—” Sam cut me off, his voice low and dark, making me just a little nervous. Yes, we were friends, but the man was menacing, no way around it. “I screwed the doctor for three months while me and Jory were apart. It never meant shit. If I could take it back, would I? Oh hell yeah, I would, but not why you think.”

“Why do I think?”

“I never thought of it like cheating on Jory,” he explained. “A year had gone by. He was sleeping around by that time, and so was I. The reason I wish it didn’t happen was because of how it made me feel.”

“How’d ya feel?”

“Like crap,” he barked at me. “You know when you confessed to me that you screw guys at bathhouses and places like that?”

“Thanks for bringing that shit up,” I groused.

“Just—do you remember?”

“Yes, I fuckin’ remember!” I flared.

“You know how gross you feel when you do it?”

“I do.”

“It’s was like that,” he confessed. “I didn’t care any more about Kevin Dwyer than you do about all those guys you fuck and forget, but—”

“Even from the little I know of Jory, I bet he doesn’t think it was nothing.”

“Because it lasted longer than one night,” he grumbled. “Jory fucked a ton of guys while we were apart, but the one he spent any time with—”

“Aaron,” I supplied.

“Yeah. Aaron he had feelings for.”

“So since Jory cared about Aaron, he figures you cared about the doctor.”

“Yeah.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No,” Sam sighed. “I really didn’t.”

“But you were together how long?”

“Three months.”

“So, that’s kind of a dick thing you did there.”

“Yeah, I know!” he barked at me. “I told you that already.”

“Okay, so Jory thinks what?”

“Jory thinks I was as attached to Salcedo as he was to Aaron, because he thinks we have the same kind of heart. In fact, he thinks everyone’s heart works just like his.”

“They don’t,” I said sadly.

“No, they don’t. But that’s why I’m here, to protect him.”

It was funny to hear gentle words from such a fierce man.

“I’ve never loved anyone but him, and that’s why I had to get him back. When you’re faced with the truth, you have to act on it.”

It seemed like he was trying to get me to admit something.

“Did you love your professor?” he asked.

He was talking about my ex, Nathan Qells, the only man I had ever been in a real, grown-up relationship with.

“Did you love him the way I love Jory?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

He shrugged before leaning back in his chair. “Sorry, buddy; you’re the one who wanted to go swimming in the deep end.”

I studied him a minute. He was right. I had been the one to try and pry out secrets. And I knew why. I was all hopped up on drugs. If I weren’t, I would have never had the balls to talk to Sam so openly. “No.”

“No what?”

I cleared my throat. “No, I wasn’t in love with Nate the same way you love Jory. I chose my job over him. You chose Jory over the job.”

“I actually never had to make that decision,” he said thoughtfully. “I was fortunate. By the time Jory and I were ready for me to say what we were; I had a captain who got it and a new partner who didn’t care who I slept with. Right after that, I became a marshal.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m pretty much set. I do my job well and no one screws with me. If they look, they see I have a domestic partner, but why would they even look?”

“Your own little don’t ask, don’t tell, huh?”

“That’s belittling a lot of pain there.”

“I ain’t belittling anything. I just don’t have the luxury you did. I didn’t get to go off and work with the DEA for two years and switch from homicide to vice or become a marshal. I like my job. I like catching the bad guy. This is all I know how to do.”

“So do it, but don’t forget that I’ve seen how you look at Jory.”

My heart almost stopped. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Not like that, idiot.” He glared at me. “I’ve seen you look at Jory and how he looks at me, and I know you fuckin’ want that. You want a man to come home to. I get it.”