Page 42 of Time to Bounce

I was back to working where I was needed.

And I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like where my dad wanted to put me.

With the passport burning a hole in my pocket, I headed into the station and went straight to my dad’s office.

I had to force myself to skip past his old office—when he’d held the assistant chief position—and into his new corner office that was upstairs and looking out over the entirety of the station.

If he turned around to the window outside, he could even see the communications building.

That was where Athena worked—when she was at fucking work—and I avoided it at all costs.

Knocking on his door, I tried not to wince at the look on his face.

“You’re late.”

I winced anyway. “I, uh, had some matters to attend to before coming to work. And to be honest, you sprung this on me last night after I already had these plans.”

He took his glasses off his face, the same glasses style that I used when the contacts decided to irritate my eyes, and placed them on the desk.

“Have a seat,” he gestured toward the chair. “Close the door.”

I really wasn’t going to like what he was about to say, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked me to close the door.

He expected a fight.

And when he said what he said next, I realized why he expected a fight.

“I’m sorry, but you want me to what?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t heard my father right.

My father was the newest chief of police for Dallas Police Department.

Technically, in this moment, he wasn’t my father, but my boss.

“The neighborhood watches,” he repeated himself. “I want you to work with the leaders of twelve neighborhood watches.”

I blinked.

And blinked some more.

But nope, the expression on my father’s face didn’t change.

“Why me?” I asked carefully, hoping not to piss him off when I was about to ask for a few days off.

“Because you need to lay low, and this is a good way to do it,” he answered. “You pissed on a hornet’s nest, Gable. I really need you to stay alive.”

He was right about that.

Every last member of the Aided Aimers was out for blood, and they had their sights set on me.

They hadn’t known that Tyrone and I were behind the arrests until Madman was brought in and let them know that a cop had been in their ranks.

They might be locked up right now, but they wouldn’t be locked up forever.

Right now, they were up for bond, and the only thing saving us from having them all back out on the street was that their bail was so high.

High enough that it’d take some serious cake for even one of them to be bonded out, let alone all of them.

Our new DA, the one who’d taken over after our old DA had let out a couple of criminals who’d then hit my sister-in-law with a car, was much better and stricter. He wasn’t going to be caught dead letting out known violent criminals.

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