“We are not doing this again,” she said, nearly kneeing him in the balls as she struggled upright in the tight space.
He braced his foot against the high arm of the love seat, hitching himself out of harm’s way as he grasped for something to keep her there. “I like watching you like that,” he said, but she wasn’t listening. With a haste he would have found hot as hell under any other circumstances she gripped his right ankle to push herself upright.
Except she didn’t get ankle. She wrapped her fingers right around the Kahr in his ankle holster.
The most fundamental component of who he’d been for the last twelve years triggered a harsh automatic response. His hand flashed out, fingers clamping around her wrist so tightly he felt tendons and ligaments grind against bone.
Too late.
Her eyes went huge, and in an instant he knew there was no hope he could pass it off as a leg brace for an old injury. She scrabbled backward, inadvertently kicking him in the ribs with her motorcycle boot. He grunted and released her hand, and she completed her backward crawl off the love seat to stand in the middle of the room.
“That’s a gun,” she accused, jabbing her index finger at his ankle.
He scrambled to his feet. “Eve, let me—”
“Have you been carrying that in my bar? There’s a big sign right on the front door that specifically prohibits concealed weapons on the premises, Chad!”
Fuckfuckfuck. Arms folded, aggressive stance, well on her way through righteous indignation, into fury. “I know, but—”
“So you saw the sign and wore a concealed weapon to work anyway? Who does that?”
Goddammit, those signs don’t apply to me! trembled on the tip of his tongue as his brain jerked into overdrive, trying to find an explanation that wouldn’t blow his cover.
“Explain yourself!” she demanded.
A shadow darkened the glass in the kitchen window, then POP! POP POP! The tinkle of glass shards splintering into the kitchen sink shattered the supercharged moment.
Instinct and training took over. He tackled her, slamming her to the floor behind the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room while someone emptied half a clip into the apartment, taking out the sound dock in a shower of sparks and plastic. She cried out when her shoulder rammed into the bar stool neatly lined up under the counter. The gun was now in his right hand, so he used his left to cover her head and hunkered down beside her.
“Stay down!” he hissed.
No questions, no screaming. She rolled flat on her belly and covered her head with her arms. A scuffling noise on the landing, then more gunshots shattered the glass in the bedroom window. The clearest threat was outside, not in the bar, so he yanked Eve to a stumbling crouch and shoved her toward the windowless bathroom. “Lie flat in the tub and cover your head.” When she obeyed, he spun and sprinted for the apartment door.
Too late. Before he was halfway down the stairs the sound of feet pounded toward the far end of the parking lot, a car door slammed, then tires squealed on a vehicle he’d bet didn’t have plates. Cursing steadily under his breath, he trotted back into the apartment and took up position in the bathroom doorway between the black-leather-clad, chalk-white woman huddled in the far corner of the bathtub and whoever just tried to kill them both.
Gunfire changed everything. He dialed dispatch from his department-issued cell phone and blew his cover straight to hell.
“Dispatch, three Nova eighteen. Shots fired. 1497 East Monroe, corner of Lexington, second floor apartment accessed from the alley behind the bar. Repeat, shots fired. Unknown assailant. Request immediate backup.”
“Copy three Nova eighteen.” The voice on the other end of the line stayed calm, but the pitch jumped a notch or two as the dispatcher parroted back his call sign and the address. A cop under fire and asking for backup would trigger an immediate and formidable response.
“Who are you?” Eve asked, bewildered.
“Three Nova eighteen, advise responding units U/C on scene, repeat U/C on scene,” Matt said, his gaze flickering from the apartment door to the office door to Eve’s face. Best-case scenario, he’d hand her the phone to maintain contact with dispatch while he did any number of useful, situation-appropriate things, like search the apartment, the alley, or the bar. One look at Eve nixed that idea. She was putting together gun and questions, Lyle and radio jargon, and based on the twist to her mouth, the answer tasted like raw sewage.
In the distance he heard the faint wail of an approaching siren, then a second one, the rhythm slightly off from the first. Sorenson was monitoring the radio; she’d be racing for her car, right behind the first responders, along with Lieutenant Hawthorn.
“Tell me who you are,” Eve said, but this time her voice was a cold and flat demand.