Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 70458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70458 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
When we’d gotten out after the wreck, she’d taken the fall because that was the only way the rest of us didn’t see jail time.
I wasn’t the smartest kid in the world when I was sixteen.
Thankfully, I’d changed my ways.
That wreck had been a wake-up call and a reminder that we were one of the lucky ones.
It could’ve been so much worse.
So, so much worse.
“What all will you be asking?” Malachi asked then. “I’m okay with answering stuff about SWAT. Just not stuff about… other stuff.”
Meaning, he wasn’t okay with talking about his time in captivity as a prisoner of war.
I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have wanted to talk about that either, had it been me.
“Agreed,” Hayes said.
Hayes and Malachi had been in the same place. They’d moved to Kilgore, Texas because they’d followed their friend, Luca Maldonado. Luca who’d also been a POW—prisoner of war—and was working at the Kilgore Police Department.
“I think I’d like to know about the SWAT call that happened last week,” she said softly.
All of us groaned.
That’d been the SWAT call from hell.
“We’re not allowed to talk about that one yet since it’s an ongoing investigation,” Nico murmured.
Calloway sighed. “It was worth a try.”
Nico grinned at her, making me want to punch the old man square in the jaw.
He may be married, and he may be old enough to have grandchildren, but he was still hot—or so I’d been told. And Calloway wasn’t blind. She knew he was hot. Just like I thought Calloway’s mother was still beautiful.
Not that I would ever say that to her. I liked my balls exactly where they were, thank you very much.
“What about anything you want to tell me then,” Calloway suggested. “Anything. Whether it’s what you like about the job. What you don’t like. Your hopes for the future. Whatever. You can even tell me your funniest SWAT call.”
Malachi got a gleam in his eyes, and I knew exactly what he was going to tell her.
“Don’t you dare,” I ordered.
Malachi’s eyes turned to me. “This is her, isn’t it?”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Who is her?” Calloway asked, sounding confused.
“This is her,” Sammy confirmed.
Calloway narrowed her eyes. “You better not be talking about him and me.”
So that was how we ended up spending an hour around the old bar with the stripper pole in the middle of it. Malachi started retelling the story of when he first got on the team. The very first SWAT call we ran, Malachi and I had been partners of sorts. He’d had my back and I’d had his, and he’d seen the goddamn braid that I carried around with me everywhere.
“So there I am, walking around a corner when something soft as fuck slaps me in the face,” he continued. “When I look over at this motherfucker, I see this long braid of hair poking out of his shirt, and he’s holding his hand up in the universal sign of ‘don’t move.’”
That’s when I know that Calloway’s already caught on.
She stared at me, her eyes hot with anger.
“He carries that thing around like a lucky rabbit’s foot,” Malachi said.
My brows rose. “And you don’t carry around a picture of your fuckin’ dog?”
Malachi sat back in his seat and raised his brows at me.
“Oh, this is going to be great,” Calloway said. “I think I’ll write about this. What y’all bring with y’all on duty every day. What do you bring?”
That question was aimed at Nathan.
But before Nathan could say a word, I ripped my shirt off and showed her the tattoo that I got.
I did it for two reasons.
One, I didn’t want Nathan losing the calm and chill vibe he had going on. Because Nathan carried a stuffed animal around that was on a keychain. One of those Happy Meal things that kids got.
Nathan had been putzing along one day in the strip club during training and had somehow lost it. He’d been… inconsolable. When we’d tried to get any information out of him about it, he’d been forthcoming, to a point anyway—telling us that someone important had given it to him.
Needless to say, I didn’t want Nathan having to explain that. That’d likely been why he hadn’t wanted to talk to Calloway at all.
Secondly, the reason I’d taken my shirt off was that I wanted Calloway’s eyes on me. The idea of her staring at my body felt like something I needed.
“This is the goddess Soteria. The spirit of safety and deliverance and preservation from harm,” I said as I showed her my back. The tattoo itself started at my lower right rib cage and crawled all the way down into my pants.
“Holy shit,” Calloway breathed. “That’s big. How long did that take?”
“Three sessions and eight hours a piece at each session,” I answered, turning around and pulling my shirt back down.
Nathan’s eyes caught mine, and he looked at me with relief.