Coup De Grâce (8 page)

He ground his hips into me.

I was thankful that he was still wearing pants, because had he been naked, I’d probably be asking him to fill me once again.

“Michael,” I pleaded once again.

He sighed and stepped back.

Immediately, I missed his body heat, but I had a job and commitments.

“Thank you,” I told him, turning around as I settled the shirt onto my body.

He smiled.

“Anything for you,” he said painfully, rearranging his cock in his pants as he buttoned and buckled his belt.

A smile curved the sides of my lips as I walked into the bathroom to inspect my face.

Where I then decided that the ‘just fucked’ look looked good on me.

And it wouldn’t hurt to allow Joslin to see just what she was missing.

“Ready?” Michael asked once I exited the bathroom.

At my nod he led me into the kitchen where I grabbed my bag and headed out the door.

Thirty minutes later, with Michael’s essence still leaking out of me, I ran into work, throwing a kiss over my shoulder at Michael as I sped inside.

He caught it and waved, making me smile.

I’d asked him to wait for me to make sure I still had a job, and he gave me an ‘okay’ sign as he leaned back in his seat and finished programming my number into his phone.

I still can’t believe he ever listened to me.

Hell, it seemed surreal…all of it.

Just a few days ago I was puttering along, trying to stay afloat with classes, work, and studying.

Now here I was, blowing off study time so I could go on a date with a man I never thought I’d have a chance with again.

“Good, you’re back!” Lennox cooed, rubbing her hands together in excitement. “There was a lot of excitement here an hour or so ago. Cops were everywhere, and then there was this man, Michael, I don’t know if you’ve met him but he has brown hair and blue eyes. He
was yelling at someone about his truck being stolen. Then he forced the security guy to go through the camera feed, but the feed was down because the security guard spilled coffee on the hardware last week and completely fried the whole system.”

I blushed. “Did they find out who stole the car?” I asked innocently.

Lennox shook her head. “No. They didn’t, or at least we didn’t see who it was.
They ran out of here like their asses were on fire earlier when they got some call about a BOLO, which I later learned was a
‘be on the lookout’, and we haven’t heard anything since.”

Whew!

That would’ve been bad to have the hospital know what I’d done.

I was already on shaky ground as it was!

“Well, that sucks,” I managed to say lightly while squirting a large dollop of antibacterial soap into my hands. “You heard why I had to leave?”

Lennox nodded and we both looked to where Joslin was standing across the room.

She was with a new intern that I’d never met before, leaning into him and patting his arm while fake laughing.

God that woman was such a hoe!

And I still hadn’t forgiven Michael for touching her earlier.

I didn’t give a shit if that was the only way to get her unsettled. He needed to find a different way.

“I wonder what her problem is?
She usually only reserves that kind of treatment for the women who try to steal her thunder
,” Lennox wondered.

“That’s ‘cause Joslin is a show hound that likes to have all the attention on her,” Melissa, one of my favorite nurses, snarled as she threw down a chart on the counter next to my hand.

“I’m dating Michael,” I told Lennox by way of explanation, completely ignoring Melissa’s pissed off mutterings.

Then a fountain of understanding welled in Lennox’s eyes.

“Well, that’s going to be interesting for you,” she managed to say.

“You can say that again. That woman needs the stick that’s lodged up her ass removed,” Melissa grumbled. “She just told Bryan that I was flirting with a patient, and that I needed to learn to be more professional. Motherfucker, but I was just telling him he had cute kids! I didn’t say he had a cute cock or anything!”

We both looked at her in surprise at her outburst.

“That woman needs to go,” I muttered. “Surely there are enough people around that can complain about her to someone she hasn’t fucked.”

The three of us fell into a fit of giggles at the thought.

There probably wasn’t a single man…or married man for that matter…in the entire hospital that she hadn’t had some of. Which was the entire problem. For all of us.

You touch my tats, I touch your tits.

-T-shirt

Michael

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

The sound of my Glock echoing off the cavernous walls of the gun range made me feel at peace.

Almost as good as I felt when I had Nikki wrapped in my arms, in fact.

Shooting was a peaceful feeling.

One that let me shut my mind down and just have fun.

I had to log so many hours in the gun range a month anyway, so it worked out well that I loved doing it.

What I didn’t love was the man at my back whining about the dirt he was getting on his clothes.

“I didn’t tell you to come,” I grumbled to my brother.

“No, but you didn’t react like I thought you would at dinner when we told you. I expected anger and you gave us nothing. Then left. I just wanted to make sure you were okay with this,” Dean said stubbornly.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Placing the gun on the table in front of me, I took the magazine I’d just ejected from the gun and started to reload it.

“Michael, are you even listening to me?” Dean asked in frustration.

I ignored him.

I didn’t really know what he wanted me to say.

I’d already told him exactly what I thought about the matter: mostly that I didn’t care.

Not one single bit.

And he refused to think that I didn’t.

So we were at an impasse.

I didn’t care.

He cared too much that I didn’t care.

“Michael! Focus!” Dean roared.

I slammed the magazine into the gun, cocked it, and let off eight more shots, trying hard as fuck to ignore him.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Michael! Get out of your fucking head and talk to me!” Dean snarled, yanking my arm with the gun in it around so I faced him.

I holstered the empty gun and exploded.

“I am out of my fucking head, you moron! I’m not that fucked up mess I was when I was fifteen.
I’m not ever ‘
in my head’
!
Now keep your fucking hands off me, and for God’s sake, don’t yank a man’s arm when he has a gun in his hand!” I yelled back, getting into his face.

Dean stood his ground.

We were both the same height.

I was bigger, but only because I lifted weights.

Dean was in shape. Excellent shape. But he
wasn’t
me
.

So when he raised both arms, reared back, and pushed me, I only went back inches.

Whereas when I did the same, he fell flat on his ass.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” I snarled, looking down at Dean.

Dean glared and stood up, brushing off his ass and his ‘brand new suit’ he just got.

“What I want is permission. I want to make sure this won’t cause any contention when she marries me,” he insisted.

I sighed and raised my hands up to my face, letting my fingers curl into what little hair I had.

“It’s not a bone of contention, Dean. I don’t love her and I haven’t for some time. When she cheated on
me, that
was it. Any and all love I felt for her was wiped off the face of the earth
,” I said tiredly.

I never should’ve let Torres have my shift.

I should’ve taken the overtime and stayed at work.

This was bullshit.

I’d rather be doing anything but this right now.

He’d ruined a perfectly good day with his insistence that I wasn’t ‘okay.’

Dean looked stunned. “You’re lying. She told me you wouldn’t have a kid with her, that’s why y’all got divorced.”

I laughed humorlessly.

“I wouldn’t have a kid with her, that’s true. But what made me divorce her wasn’t that she wanted kids. It was because she slept with about fifteen men while we were married, and I only found out because she was sloppy and let some new doctor call her at home. He left a voicemail telling his ‘girl’ that he couldn’t make dinner, and that they needed a raincheck. Which got me curious since she was supposed to be at work at the time,” I told him honestly.

And damn but it felt good to get that shit off my chest!

I’d been holding that inside for a long time now.

It was hard to let my family think I was the bad guy for not wanting kids.

My mom resented me for that, I could tell. But I
didn’t know how else to not tell anybody what had happened without Joslin being shunned from the family, so I kept my mouth shut.

“You’re lying,” Dean said without venom.

I could tell he believed me.

“Want the private dick’s files? I’ve got about two hundred photos of it
happening in real time, too,” I offered.

He narrowed his eyes. “Why would you not tell us this? Why let us think badly of you?”

I smiled without humor.

“Mom loves Joslin. And Joslin has nobody else. I was just being nice,” I told him.

He sighed. “Goddammit. That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

I shrugged. “Sorry man.”

He looked at me for a few long moments before he said, “I love her, man.”

I nodded. “If you want to
be with her, that’s good with me. I don’
t care. Just be aware of her faults. And I won’t tell you I told you so.”

He flipped me off. “Fuck off.”

I smiled and patted him lightly on the back. “Now get the fuck out of here and let me enjoy the rest of my day.”

Grudgingly he left, and I couldn’t help but smile at the big brown stain on his ass from where he’d fallen in the dirt.

Served the fucker right for pestering me.

Turning around, I loaded my gun once again and started firing off shots at the piece of paper floating down range.

I was having a damn good time until I got a call, and what I heard made my stomach nearly drop to my feet.

“What’s going on, Luke?” I asked him as
we walked, side by side, down the hallway to our conference room.

Luke opened the door and ushered me inside ahead of him.

I came to a stop just past the entrance when I was faced with multiple men in suits.

“What’s going on?” I asked again.

Luke walked past me and had a seat next to Chief Rhodes, who I was surprised to see was also in attendance.

“Take a seat, Perez. We have some things to discuss with you. Nothing you did wrong, though, so stop looking at me like that,” The Chief grumbled.

Smiling slightly, I walked to the chair on the other side of the chief and took a seat, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms over my chest.

The chief pushed over a file folder that was nearly an inch thick, and I took that to mean that he wanted me to open it and have a look.

And when I did, I wished I’d at least braced myself first.

“Goddammit, chief. Fuck you,” I said, pushing the file away from me and closing my eyes to control my urge to vomit.

“He’ll do,” the man I sat across from said.

He was in his early fifties and had brown hair peppered with gray throughout.

He was a thin man, and probably didn’t reach much over five and a half feet tall.

The other man at his side was burly with black hair and a deep tan. He was in his mid to late thirties with green eyes and a goatee.

I glared at the two of them.

“What the fuck is going on?” I growled.

I hated fucking games.

Just tell me what the fuck is going on already.

“This is Special Agent Troy Palmer, and this,” The Chief said, indicating the black man. “Is Special Agent Dane Elliott. They’re here to speak with you about the Cox case.”

The Cox Case was the murder suicide I’d first responded to.

“Yeah, so?” I asked tiredly.

Hell, was I tired.
I was living off of only hours of sleep, and I could really use a few hours of shut eye before I had to deal with them and their shit.

Crime, however, didn’t wait for it to be convenient for all those involved.

Which Agent Palmer explained in the next second.

“We’ve discovered a few similarities in about ten murders throughout the Ark-La-Tex involving cops and their pregnant wives,” Agent Palmer said without preamble.

I blinked. “What?”

He pushed the file back to me, and I looked down at it, only now realizing what I’d thought was the murder I’d walked in on just two days prior wasn’t the one I’d thought it was.

It was a different one.

“Holy shit,” I said, surprised. “Are they all positioned this way?”

It was nearly identical.

The only thing different was the color of the tile floor they were laying on.

“We have reason to believe that you might have seen the man who did this on your way to the scene. We’ve had three witnesses saying they saw a man walking his dog down the street just down the road from the crime scene. Black hoodie. Black jeans. Black dog.”

I thought back to the day I’d driven to the crime scene.

Remembered passing the mobile home park sign, then seeing a black dog off to the side of the road that I passed.

I remembered thinking that the owner needed to get the dog the fuck out of the way when he heard lights and sirens blaring.

“Yeah, I saw him,” I confirmed, thinking back to the man in question. “Black hoodie. Black pants. Red shoe strings in the shoes. Dog had a red collar with black lettering on it. Black lab.”

Agent Elliott took notes on his pad of paper as I spoke.

The other one just watched me closely.

“Any cars in the area?” he asked.