Page 61 of All of Me

“Go away, boy. Nothing to see here. We’re just talking.”

“But you’re not allowed—”

“Isaid,” Starr snarled and turned to him. “You didn’tseeanything, or do you need to be written up for looking the other way at your buddy’s traffic stop?”

I saw the other cop pale.

Starr scoffed. “Think I don’t know you let him off when he was doing twenty over? Think I don’t have friends here who tell me what’s going on? You’re about to lose your job, maybe even go down if I suddenly find witnesses to say you made perps pay for looking the other way.”

The other cop gasped. “No, sarge I would never.”

He turned and got right in the cop’s face. “And who do you think they’d believe, huh? You, or a decorated officer that served for over thirty-five years?”

I watched this with numb fascination, even as the young cop’s shoulders slumped and he retreated, finally passing through the door they’d brought me through. I knew it had worked. I knew bullies.

“A friend told me about you,” he said conversationally, as if his son hadn’t just died. As if everything was okay. As if my world hadn’t stopped. He unlocked and opened the door, then locked it quickly behind him. “You move fast, but you can’t do anything about the cuffs you’re in or the bolts that fasten the chains to the floor.”

Which wasn’t true. I could get the keys off him faster than he took a breath. But my time for escape had passed. Or had it?

I briefly thought about escaping through the wall but shied away from those thoughts. The feel of the bullet slicing through me was still too raw, and I hadn’t questioned how I wasn’t injured. Running through walls.

Did I care?

For what seemed like forever, I’d wanted nothing more than to heal and get my ability back. Heading to rescue Drake, I’d felt strong for the first time in my life. And look what happened?

More guilt ate at me as I thought about Tammy, but I knew Pink would step up. She would be better off without me, anyway.

“Now that we’re alone, we can get to know each other a little better. He took a step toward me and I stiffened. I’d expected a beating, and I wouldn’t stop him, but I saw his hand drop to his pocket, not his gun. He could shoot me and say I had attacked him. There were still plenty of people that would take the side of anyone other than an enhanced. That was the way the world worked. Even if he wasn’t supposed to be in here. It sounded like he had enough friends on active duty.

I watched as he fingered what was in his pocket. “My boy and I didn’t get on in the last few years,” he said, which completely stunned me.Few years?Drake had said he hadn’t seen them since he enlisted. “I wanted him here, and he wanted the army.” Which wasn’t what Drake had said, but what did I know?

“Heard what happened to you before,” he said. “In the jail. Turns out you were a lab rat.”

I didn’t question how he knew. The media had seen Drake carry me out.

“So, you have a choice,” he grinned and brought out the syringe from his pocket. “You can go quietly now, happy, no pain, or I will personally make sure you go back into a lab and that they keep you alive to experiment on you every day.”

I hissed in a short breath. I would endure it happily to keep Drake alive but it was too late for that. I supposed this way they’d just write me off as an OD. Like they had with Dodson.

Tammy would be okay with Pink. More than okay, I amended. I knew Diesel wouldn’t let her go back into the system.

Drake was dead, which meant I had nothing to live for.

I stared at the syringe. Then I simply bared my arm.

Diesel

“Where the fuck is Shae?” Ringo was in recovery. It had been touch-and-go. Danny said that If we’d been forced to wait for an ambulance, Drake would have been dead, and Danny had patched more of us up in the desert than I could count.

I found the nurse and, stammering, she told me he had admitted to shooting Ringo. If I hadn’t known that boy, and absolutely knew he was in love with Ringo, I might have been gentler with her, but I’d heard the conversation over the earpiece Danny had given Shae and I knew exactly what had happened. We heard the moment the gun had fired, and I knew, absolutely goddamn knew, Shae had reacted, not pulled a trigger he didn’t even have. I didn’t know exactly what happened next, but I knew Shae hadn’t fired the bullet—he didn’t have a fucking gun—despite what the nurse thought she heard.

So, uncaring of her being upset, I grilled her until I got every word of their conversation. Even she admitted she’d been wrong.

“The cops have him,” I told Kane, Gray, Danny, and Jay, and Danny went to work. When we got the name of the station he was at, Danny stiffened and gasped.

“Go, go now.” I was on my way anyway, but Danny’s thread of panic made me halt.

“He’s been taken to the same station Lee Dodson was killed at. I have no idea where David Starr is but if he’s mixed up in all this, and that’s likely, he’ll know where Shae was taken.”

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