“Fuck!” Shane punched the accelerator and pulled the truck into a hard U-ey. Another round hit the back quarter panel.
“Get down, Becca,” Nick said as he reached for the Glock at the small of his back. But she was way ahead of him, tucked in a ball on the floor behind his seat. He didn’t have a clear shot of anything, especially with chaos already breaking out around the ER’s entrance as people dove for cover and the couple of on-site police officers rushed into defensive positions.
In what felt like long minutes but was only a few seconds, they were clear of the area. Shane ran a red light to get them away from the hospital altogether.
Twisting in his seat, Nick looked out the cab’s rear window. “Watch for a tail.”
“On it,” Shane said. “You need to alert the team, Vance, Chen.”
“Yeah,” Nick said, but first he needed to check on Becca. Christ, every reassurance he’d offered the past week had just been blown to shit. His gut was a wreck, his mind unhelpfully crafting one horror story after another about what might’ve happened if Chen hadn’t called. Or if Nick hadn’t returned to the hospital immediately. Or if Coleman hadn’t been able to pull Becca off the floor. “Becca, are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice shaky. When she looked up at him, her skin was ashen.
He reached back and clutched her hand as he dialed Marz.
“Yo, hoss, wassup?” Marz said.
“We’ve got a situation,” Nick said, filling him in. “Let everyone know what’s going on. And if you have a chance, scan the security feeds around our neighborhood looking for anything potentially suspicious. We’ve been keeping an eye out for the wrong damn car.”
“You got it,” Marz said.
Nick had just hung up when his cell rang again. Chen. Nick put it on speaker.
“I heard about the hospital. You okay?” Chen asked by way of a greeting. Nick wasn’t surprised that Chen had information that was only minutes old.
“Yeah, we’re in one piece,” Nick said. “But it was fucking close. Too close.”
“Damnit. Wanted to let you know we have a lead on where Woodson’s been staying. Putting together a raid for tonight as we speak.”
“Well there’s a bit of good news,” Nick said. “You need backup?”
“No, you stay hunkered down. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”
“I need you to take this guy out,” Nick said, anger lancing through the words. If it had just been him in danger, it would have been one thing. But now it was Becca. Now it was his family. And that was a whole other goddamned thing. “I need this situation to go the fuck away.”
“I hear you,” Chen said. “And I’m working on it.” He clicked off.
“If anyone can take care of this, Chen can, right?” Becca asked from the backseat. A little color had returned to her cheeks.
“Yes,” Nick and Shane both said at the same time.
When they got back to Hard Ink, Marz had everyone else assembled and briefed in the big unfinished space across from their apartment that was part gym, part war room. It was where they’d run the whole of their investigation against the Church Gang and the mercenaries who’d killed Becca’s father and smuggled heroin from Afghanistan into Baltimore. Nick wasn’t thrilled at all about the similarity of this meeting to the many they’d held during the investigation they’d thought was done. Closed. Behind them once and for all.
Except it wasn’t. Because sometimes the past wouldn’t fucking die.
“Chen’s people think they’ve discovered where Woodson has been holing up. They’re going after him tonight. His actions at the hospital demonstrate his intention to get revenge, so until we hear from Chen, we’re back on lockdown again. I don’t want anyone leaving the building today,” Nick said.
“What if they don’t get him?” Becca asked from where she sat on a folding chair near Marz’s improvised desk.
The other team members traded looks with Nick. “I don’t know the answer to that yet,” Nick said.
Becca nodded. “Do we need to think about postponing the wedding?”
The question was like a punch to the gut, especially because he’d been asking himself the same thing. Fuck. “Not yet,” Nick said. A bleak sadness filled Becca’s baby blues, and the fact that this scumbag had managed to hurt her yet again lanced boiling hot rage through his blood. Enough was efuckingnough.
The meeting broke up, and the day crawled by like an inchworm moving in reverse.
Nick spent hours worshipping every inch of Becca’s body, hoping to keep them both distracted from everything that was at stake as long as he could. The women made six batches of homemade chocolate chip cookies. They watched movies until they were all cross-eyed. And still it wasn’t time for the raid.
Finally, a little after ten o’clock, Nick’s cell rang with a call from Chen. The devastating news was that they’d apprehended a number of former Churchmen—but Woodson hadn’t been among them.
“Well, what’s next?” Nick barked into the phone. “This guy came after Becca three times. He’s not going to stop.”
“I know, Nick,” Chen said. “We’re interrogating the Churchmen we brought in. We’ll find him.”
But how fast would they find him? And would Chen find Woodson before Woodson found Becca again?
Because Nick would never survive if something happened to the only woman he’d ever loved.
CHAPTER 10
Chen showed up at Hard Ink Friday morning. His people still hadn’t caught Woodson. And Becca was beside herself. She couldn’t believe . . . so many things. That Woodson was back. That they might have to cancel the wedding. That maybe she really had seen Woodson some of the times she’d chalked it up to her imagination.
The whole group gathered in the gym, and Chen sat in the middle of them, wearing his usual, nondescript khaki pants and light blue button-down. Chen wasn’t his real name, but it was the only one they knew him by—the one that had been on the nametag fastened to the stolen doctor’s coat Chen had been wearing the first time Nick had seen him. They’d been at the hospital where Jeremy and Kat had been treated after the funeral.
“I have a proposal for dealing with Woodson,” Chen said, scanning the group and finally settling his gaze on Nick and Becca.
“Let’s hear it,” Nick said.
“I get the word out on the street that Becca is going to be at the restaurant tonight for her rehearsal dinner. We lure Woodson to us rather than wait for him to come at you.” Chen’s matter-of-fact words hung there for a long moment.
“No,” Nick said. Just as matter-of-factly.
This wasn’t the first time it had ever been proposed that they use Becca as bait. Nor was it the first time Nick had reacted negatively to the idea. “Nick, Becca said.”