Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
“Do we have to?”
“Hell yes,” I groused at him. “Why the hell would you wanna hurt Chickie?”
He collected things as I took a seat in one of my club chairs across from the couch.
“Why’re you mad at Ian?”
He hurled the two plates in his hands at the ground, smashing them into a thousand pieces. “He and Eli got me fired!” he screamed.
I got up, and his gun was out again that fast.
“I wasn’t there that day. Tell me what happened.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so, Jed. I think you’re stalling.” He lifted his gun, leveling it at me. “I apologize for all of this, and I’m truly sorry you’re home.”
I was dead. I saw it in his eyes, like his compassion just sort of clicked off, leaving him cold and empty. But in that same second my front door flew open and Bodhi was there. He was the first one through, and when Brodie turned to fire, he was hit in the chest with a beanbag round—what was known officially by its trademarked name as a flexible baton round. Basically, we had shotguns outfitted to fire beanbag rounds, and yes, it hurt like hell to get hit with one, but they were not lethal. Brodie went down, his bullet hit my ceiling, and Dorsey, Ryan, Yamane, and Pazzi swarmed into my place.
Brodie was flipped to his stomach, which he screamed over because he was just hit in the chest with a beanbag, and they probably bumped his tender nose in the process. Bodhi reached me a moment later.
He was shaking violently, and I put my arm around him and hauled him close.
“Shut up,” Dorsey yelled at Brodie, who was screaming at them, dragging him to his feet, and then glanced over at me. “You good over there?”
I nodded. “Someone let Chickie out of the bedroom, will ya?”
Yamane bolted to the door, and Chickie came through, rushing over to me.
“You gotta pet him,” I told Bodhi, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “I’ve only got the one arm, and I think I need to hold you.”
“Yeah,” he rasped. “Hold me.”
So I did, and he petted Chickie, who stayed right there, planted beside me, surveying all the excitement as Gabriel Brodie was taken out my front door.
Ryan walked over as Bodhi took deep breaths to calm himself.
“We would have been here a lot fuckin’ quicker, but we were spread out all over the city, and there was no way Bodhi could be allowed to breach alone.”
“Of course not,” I agreed, but wondered how they had kept him from coming anyway.
“We had to get eyes and ears here so we could see what was up, and we had to wait for SWAT since Wes and his team were out in Skokie.”
It all made sense. They were outside, and CPD was getting a mic set up and infrared cameras so they could see where I was in my house in relation to Brodie.
“As Miro told your partner, if he’d come in here alone, he could have gotten himself killed as well as you.”
I nodded.
Kage strode in then, directly to where we were standing. “We normally dress for visitors,” he told me, and I smiled because yes, the rest of them were in Kevlar and I was in a T-shirt and my pajama bottoms. Thankfully, I’d put on the blue pair with white stripes and not the Captain America ones.
“Yessir,” I agreed, and he did something he’d never done before and put his hand on my cheek, gave it a quick pat, then stepped back.
“Okay,” he said, exhaling sharply. “We need the bullet from the ceiling, so the crime scene people have to get in here, but afterward, send us the bill, and we’ll get it taken care of.”
“I will,” I replied, watching him pet Ian’s dog. “Sir, is Wes in Skokie because he’s picking up Darren Mills?”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“Brodie was talking about him—said that after he was let go, he contacted Mills. I think that’s how he’s kept tabs.”
“He did. When the FBI did a deep dive on his life, there was a lot of contact between them. I was on both Mills’s and Brodie’s hit lists, but Mills had nothing against Doyle or Kohn. Regardless, he’s the one who took the shot at Kohn.”
“Which makes sense. I never knew Brodie to be any kind of marksman, and I never saw him on the range with a rifle.”
“He never practiced doing anything,” Kage said, disgusted. “I don’t know that we can do much about Standish, since he’s already been fired, but I’m going to speak to a lawyer with the DOJ and see if we can bring charges. Through his incompetence and continual practice of transferring problematic people, he put me, you, Kohn, and Doyle in mortal danger.”
It would be interesting to see if the charges stuck.