Page 74 of The Wolves Come at Night
There was never going to be the right time to quit, but she hadn’t wanted to burn down the house when she did.
She’d call her union rep tomorrow and deal with the fallout, but for tonight, she’d decided to smolder in her righteous indignation.
Taylor had at the very least wanted to touch base with Carson’s mother, feeling a sense of responsibility, but knew better. Not only could it make the department liable, but it could also open Taylor up to a civil lawsuit. She trusted someone on Huston’s new team would do that, was pleased that it was Huston herself.
So she was surprised when Avery Conway had called her instead, though she felt like a heel telling the woman she had nothing for her. Then Conway had whispered something about a game and hung up. Taylor had no idea what that meant, and she was too tuned up not to agree. This was a game to some, and that pissed her off.
Baldwin had left several messages and texts, having seen the news about an explosion, and when she finally connected with him on a video chat, he was about to teach the evening session and couldn’t talk for long. If he felt dismayed at her decision, he was smart enough to keep that to himself. When she finished the recitation, including the explosive end to an already explosive day, he didn’t hesitate to reassure her.
“You’re okay, and that’s all that matters. You can talk to Huston tomorrow, once you both cool off. She’ll ask you to come back. You watch.”
“Doesn’t matter if she gets on her knees. I’m not going back.”
Baldwin’s brows furrowed, but that was the extent of the reaction.
“I’m serious. This wasn’t a fit of pique. You know I’ve been unhappy for a while.”
“I do. And I support you making a change.” Taylor appreciated the vote of confidence and told him so. He was quiet.
“But?” she asked.
“But.” He laughed gently. “It’s me being overprotective, but I’m worried about you going to work for Macallan.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned that before?”
He glanced at his watch. “We need to have a nice long chat about this, but unfortunately, I have to go. Just promise me you won’t make any sudden moves before I get home, okay?”
“Any more sudden moves, you mean?” She twisted the simple diamond band around her finger, feeling closer to him as she did.
He laughed again. “You do keep things exciting, my dear. I’ll call you later. Love you.”
“You too.” Then she called Sam, who whooped and hollered and cheered so loudly Thor woke up and started barking madly in the background. They had a good old-fashioned bitchfest about everything, and she hung up grinning.
Talking to them both made her feel better enough to have some dinner, though she pushed away her plate of spaghetti halfway through. Huston was right, she had screwed up royally. Though damn the FBI for not letting her know about their operation. And damn Huston, too.
She cleaned up the kitchen, showered, took a Unisom, and climbed into bed. She managed almost three hours before her eyes flew open, and she spent another hour restlessly staring at the ceiling, replaying the day, saying small prayers for Carson Conway and Georgia Wray.
Her beloved pool table had been a bitter casualty of the move—their building had a games room she could access any time, so she and Baldwin decided it was easier to leave it behind for the folks who bought their house. The billiards room here, with its dark oak paneling and bookshelves with green- and brown-spined leather books, was very British and very enjoyable, but taking the elevator down just wasn’t the same. In the wee hours of the night, instead of playing, she’d developed the habit of pacing the condo. It had a similar soporific effect on her brain, an almost trance-like detachment that allowed other thoughts to rise and fall naturally instead of being forced into being. Like a novelist who gets a great idea in the shower, the mindless activity rewired the avenues of her brain. Movement meditation, Sam called it, and Taylor thought her best friend wasn’t entirely wrong. Lord knows Taylor couldn’t stay still long enough to reap the benefits of an actual seated meditation—she’d tried, it was not for her—but the walking meditation worked wonders.
She climbed from the cloud of a bed Baldwin had bought and started into the living room. She smelled something subtle, the gentle notes of hyacinth and rose. She stopped, senses suddenly on high alert. The scent was familiar in the abstract way of olfactory memories—she recognized it but didn’t know why.
She eased back into the bedroom and lifted her backup weapon from its spot in her night table drawer as quietly as she could, chastising herself as she did it—you’ve become too paranoid—but felt better with the weight of the small Glock in her palm. She hugged the walls as she moved toward the living room again. In the reflected lights from the building next door, which beamed blue and red slats in her shadows, she saw a bouquet of flowers lying on the living room’s glass coffee table.
Her first thought was Baldwin and a brief moment of joy sparked within her. Just as quickly, she thought Maryland, and her gun was up, pointed at what now looked like a female shadow on the couch.
“Hello, Captain.”
Thirty-Nine
Heart thundering, Taylor tamped down the adrenaline rush, fighting the urge to simply squeeze the trigger. There was a glint of metal, and she realized she was looking at the wrong end of a pistol. Shit, she thought, finger tightening just as Baldwin’s face flashed in her mind, and she was comforted that the last thing she’d ever see was an image of him, the one thing in her life that truly mattered, had a heartbeat to think Oh, Baldwin, I’m so sorry when Angelie Delacroix stood, gun in hand but now at her side, and said, “Please don’t shoot me. I am here with a business proposition.”
There was a beat. A pause. A moment.
A million responses flowed through Taylor’s synapses at the same time, mainly the fact that she was already pressing the trigger and needed to stop, but was this a trick, some sort of weird assassination, and if so, why hadn’t Delacroix just shot her the first time she started into the room, and what the hell was up with the flowers? Realized just as quickly it was an advance warning system so that Taylor could be armed before she faced her assassin, because Angelie Delacroix somehow knew—understood on a basic level—that if Taylor had come across a woman with a gun sitting in her living room unarmed she would have felt like a failure, and though it could have been Delacroix’s way of laughing a bit, it was also a way to let Taylor save face. Taylor didn’t know if that was better than being killed outright, or if it was just one of those stupid things that her brain latched onto in the moment, the beat, the pause, before she released the pressure on the trigger. She didn’t lower the gun, but she relaxed her stance and slid her finger out of the guard.
When faced with a terrifying situation, a normal person panics, and often freezes. When a professional who’s been trained over a lifetime to be able to laser focus in a life-or-death situation is faced with the same, it would be a lie to say there isn’t fear. Of course there is. But the amygdala of a modern, trained combatant is more in tune with its ancestral brain chemistry. If a caveman hesitated, he or she would be eaten by the saber-toothed tiger that caught them unawares. They lived in a state of constant readiness. Always ready, always alert, always on—that was how Taylor had lived for almost her entire adult life, and she knew the woman across from her had as well. There was fear, yes. But there was also a burning curiosity about why she was still breathing when an assassin of Angelie Delacroix’s caliber had drawn down on her at close range.
“What in the hell are you doing in my house?”
