Page 63 of Take Me, Sir

Dean

“You can't do this!! Please, listen to me!! Please!!”

When I'd insisted on going with the police to the club where they planned on arresting Stanley Maverick, I'd been told in no uncertain terms that I was there as a courtesy. Fortunately, Juliette had contacts high up in the police department, and she'd had no problem throwing her weight around.

Especially when we all knew there was a good possibility that Kyndall was there.

The anguished yells coming from inside the nightclub told me that I'd been right. I ignored the cop assigned to stay with me and ran toward the sound. The other officers I passed shouted at me to stop, but nothing short of divine intervention was going to keep me from getting to Kyndall.

“You don't understand! Please!”

“You need to stop, or I'll have to make you stop.”

A cop yanked an overly-muscled man in handcuffs out of my path, and that was when I saw Kyndall, tears streaming down her face, arms behind her back, pleading with a stone-faced cop. He yanked on her hands, nearly pulling her off her feet.

“Back off!” I grabbed his shoulder, just barely stopping myself from yanking him away from her.

He gave me a hard look. “You're going to want to take your hands off me right now.”

“Dean!” She was sobbing now, the most heart-wrenching sound I'd ever heard. “Anthony. Maverick has Anthony and now they arrested him, and he's not going to tell them where–”

“Anthony's okay,” I interrupted as I stepped around in front of her.

Her eyes were still wide and wild, and I could see that she wasn't hearing me. I grabbed her upper arms.

“Look at me.” I kept my voice low, but firm. “Anthony is okay. He's safe.”

She stopped struggling, her gaze meeting mine. I watched awareness dawn, and then her shoulders slumped. Her head fell, and the officer behind her took a step back.

“He's okay?”

I reached out and hooked a finger under her chin, lifting her head until I could look at her face. “He's okay. The police found him. Juliette and Dalton are meeting him at the hospital so he can get checked over.” I brushed my knuckles across her cheek. “He's safe. You're safe.”

She nodded, then looked over her shoulder at the cop behind her. “I'm sorry, Officer. I won't fight you anymore.”

It hadn't hit me until that moment that she was being arrested. I'd seen the cuffs and the cop, but I'd been focusing more on getting through to her than anything else.

“Why is she cuffed?”

The cop's eyebrows went up. “Because this is an illegal poker game being run by a kidnapper with known ties to organized crime. Everyone's getting arrested.”

I shook my head. “Not her. She was here under duress.”

“Above my pay grade.” He shrugged.

“It's okay, Dean,” she murmured.

All of the fight had gone out of her, and as much as her earlier pleas had broken my heart, this was so much worse. This wasn't sexual submission or an emotional vulnerability between two people who cared about each other. Her fire, her confidence, had vanished, and she looked beyond sad. She looked...broken.

“It's not okay.”

She raised her head, but wouldn't look at me. “It's my fault that I'm in this position. My fault that Anthony was kidnapped. I wouldn't waste your time.”

I ignored her for the moment. First, I was going to get her out of those handcuffs, then I'd work on the guilt issues while we were on our way to the hospital.

“She's the informant who led the cops to Stanley Maverick.” I tried again. “You can't arrest her.”

“Look, James Bond, I don't know how they do things across the pond, but here, we don't let private citizens tell us who we can and can't arrest.”

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