Page 137 of Long Way Down

“I know.Thistime. But who knows which direction your bosses will point you innexttime. I’m not saying any of this as a personal insult, Melissa, but I need to say it. Dogs and cops exist on opposite sides of the law. We use each other, from time to time, sure. There’s cops with strong ties to other chapters, helpful voices on the inside, even. But being a friend to the club is very different from being an old lady.”

Pongo searched her profile for a reaction to that phrase –old ladyhit him less like a sucker punch and more like a love tap – but her jaw stayed tight, lips colorless in their compression.

“If you and Pongo were keeping things casual,” Maverick said, “then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But there’s either casual, or there’s all-in. There’s no half-in, when it comes to the club. A man helps his old lady when she needs it” – here he turned to Pongo – “but the club doesn’t get tangled in civilian business for someone with a foot in each camp.”

“You’re not gonna let one of your boys go to jail because he was helping me with a case, you mean,” she said.

Maverick smiled. It still wasn’t threatening; was apologetic, in fact. “It doesn’t give me joy to play the hardass, but. This is the reality of it. You waded in, honey. Time to sink or swim.”

Dixie let out another deep breath, and Pongo wished he could spare her this moment. Or at least go back in time and warn her it was about to happen; he should have anticipated things coming to a head, at some point. She didn’t do feelings well; it had taken him this long, and a rough night, to get her to open up as much as she had only an hour ago. He still didn’t know if she loved him, and here was Maverick, his long knives waiting in the shadows, telling her to choose.

Another breath. And then she collapsed forward.

“Dix!” He made a grab for her, thinking she’d fainted – but she pressed her elbows into her thighs, spine curled forward, and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook, and Pongo started to panic.

She’d finally snapped. After the day she’d had, the night, and now this, Mav’s big ultimatum, the cherry on top of the shit sundae.

He laid a hand between her shoulder blades, felt the tremors moving through her…and then heard hersnort.

“Oh my God,” she groaned, sat up, wiped at her eyes – and she waslaughing. “Holy shit.” A high, thready, cracked and half-crazed laugh, but she was grinning with all her teeth showing, and the way she shook her head looked like an expression of relief.

She turned to Pongo, lips still curved in a smile, still chuckling in the back of her throat. She hooked a thumb toward Maverick. “Is he always like this?” Before Pongo – gaping at her – could respond, she turned to Maverick and said, “Was that rehearsed? Did you practice it on the ride down? Or is there, like, a script that gets read to all the new girls?”

Mav’s grin bloomed slow and pleased. “Nah, that was all new material. It just came to me, out on the road.”

She chuckled again – they both did – and Pongo had never been so lost in all his life. “Um,” he said, intelligently.

Dixie let out a deep, deep sigh, as her laughter faded; scraped her hair back and wiped her face thoroughly on her sleeve. “I’m a Sex Crimes detective, sir.”Sir. Holy shit. “The only thing I care about is nailing rapists to the wall. I would say, ‘Let me prove to you that I’m looking out for the Dogs,’ but I think what happened at the Beaumont raid speaks for itself. I didn’t ever expect to wind up in this position, but here we are, and you can’t say I’ve jeopardized your club in any way, ‘cause I haven’t. If anything, I’ve jeopardized my investigation.” Here, all traces of laughter bled from her face, replaced by a steely, determined sort of anger. All her shaking had stilled. “I didn’t study criminology in school, move to New York, and become a cop so I could write parking tickets or worry about the gang wars. I’m here for the, like you said,badpeople. The people who make other people’s lives hell for their own sick enjoyment. Three women were brutally assaulted and raped, one’s dead, and another’s being stalked and thinks she’s losing her mind. If that puts you and me at loggerheads, then that’s stupid, because we’re both on the same side, here.” She seemed to be building to a crescendo, and when she delivered it, he thought he must be having an auditory hallucination, because…

She said, stabbing a finger through the air in his direction, gaze fixed on Mav, “Pongo’s the best man I know. Why would Ieverwant to hurt him or the people he calls family? The way I see it,” she said, chin lifting again, “we aren’t on opposite sides of anything.”

They stared at one another, Dixie and Maverick; measured one another up, a silent stare-down that had all the fine hairs standing up on the back of Pongo’s neck.

Maverick stood…and offered a handshake across the table, one that Dixie stood to accept. “Maverick. Good to officially meet you.”

Dixie offered a small, tight smile, and then, most shocking of all. “Yeah. Melissa Dixon. Only Pongo gets to call me Dixie, but my friend calls me Missy.”

Still holding her hand, he lifted his brows. “Just the one?”

“Well. Maybe more than that.”

~*~

It was official: she’d lost it.

That was how it had to look from the outside: her laughter, the handshake. But the little twinkle in Maverick’s eye, as they nodded, and parted, and stepped back, reinforced her epiphany that, in some cases, inthiscase,losing itwas actually a good thing.

When she’d first sat down, she’d run hot and then cold with anger and terror, flashes of both pulsing and warring for supremacy. The man sitting beside her had smelled of cigarettes, and motor oil, and traces of something dangerous, like the vicious heat rising off the swamp just before nightfall; the scent of a predator who’d caught wind of blood.

Then the Russian – Toly – had taken her whole bag, with her phone in it, and it had felt like she’d been dropped into an interrogation room at the precinct, stripped of her belongings and at the mercy of her questioner. Only more basic, and more brutal: no Miranda rights, no appeals for an attorney. The very real possibility that they would kill her if they deemed her a threat. There was no safety net with the Dogs. You couldn’t sue them if they trampled your rights; in their world, there were no rights. No defense attorneys, no strategies; nothing but the baring of your soul, your honesty, and the hope that they believed you.

Heart hammering like that of a rabbit caught in a snare, exhausted down to her bones, in need of hours and hours of sleep, and sandwiched between the man she was probably in love with, and a stranger with the obvious bulge of a knife at his hip, the moment had felt precipitous; like the held breath before the final, fatal fall.Sink or swim,Maverick said, and everything…just…

Stopped.

Maverick sat with his hands resting loosely on the arms of his chair, studying her with a father’s stern concern, telling her the way things worked in his kingdom. Warning her off from it, yes, if she was the type to spook easily…or, in truth, trying to figure out if she was someone who valued written rule over loyalty. Who would gladly trade allegiance and justice for orderliness and status quo. Cop first? Or simply herself.

Yes, they’d taken her things, and sat her down, and laid a threat at her feet.

---