Page 7 of Sinner's Secret

When the cop just continued looking at him, Baz lifted his left foot and shrugged. “He shot my boot, man.”

Two of the cops, the ones in uniform, handcuffed the silent kidnapper, then stuck him in the back of one of the cars.

The kidnapper glared at Baz with a promise of death in his eyes.

He’d been promised death countless times in his life, but no one had delivered on it yet. Baz smiled at him and waved.

“Stop that,” the lady cop ordered, then exchanged significant glances with the cops in suits.

“Well, shit,” the older one said. “How are we going to salvage this?”

The lady walked over to Baz, studying him as if she could see all the way down to the bottom of his soul.

It was damned dark down there and full of nasty shit. He was screwed if she had a flashlight.

“The other waitresses say you’re a decent guy.”

“No, ma’am,” Baz told her, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. “I’m an asshole.”

A couple of the cops in suits chuckled at that.

“Why’d you get in the way of whatever those two had planned?”

“I’m an asshole, not a creep, and what those two guys had in mind was all kinds of wrong.”

“How do you know what they were going to do?”

Baz barked out a humorless laugh. “It was written all over their faces. They wanted their hands on you so bad they were shaking.”

The lady tilted her head to one side, then glanced at the older cop.

Whatever her expression was, it brought him over to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. “You got a plan?”

“A police report and a press release about a cab driver who prevented a sexual assault. Nothing splashy, just a little story saying chivalry isn’t quite dead.”

“Ah, come on,” Baz protested. “You’re going to ruin my badass reputation.”

“You don’t have a badass reputation,” she told him with a shake of her head.

He looked from her to the cop standing next to her. They were going to do it, make him a fucking hero. “Fuck my life,” he muttered, wiping one hand over his face.

“Let’s play this straight. Get a patrol car over here and call an ambulance,” she ordered.

“You got it.” The older cop told the rest of the suits the plan and in a remarkably short amount of time a patrol car pulled in. An ambulance arrived five minutes later.

“Can I go now?” Baz asked, not bothering to hide his disgust with this plan to un-demonize him.

“Nope,” she said. “You’re going to give your statement down at the station, then you’re going to drive me home.”

He turned away, shaking his head and muttering, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Her responding chuckle didn’t make him feel any better.

Baz leaned against his car and stared at the bullet hole in his boot. The newspaper article better be awfully short or his family was going to hear about it. He’d had enough of their interference in his life to last him the rest of his years.

Which was a long fucking time.

He should have let those assholes shoot him.

---