Page 64 of Fighting for Brielle
“That’s great! I’m really happy for you.” Faith paused. “Sorry for snapping at you. I know your heart’s in the right place.”
“You’re like a sister to me. I love you, and I just want you to be safe.”
“Same here. Listen, I just walked in the door, and I’m tired. We’ll talk soon, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Good night, Faith.”
“’Night, Bri.”
Her face filled with dread as she faced Justice. “We’ve never kept secrets from each other until now. Faith point-blank lied to me. How can we protect her if she won’t tell us what she knows?”
Justice enfolded her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I updated Brendan earlier today. I didn’t tell him everything, but he assured me that Faith couldn’t have better eyes on her than Tex’s. You know that’s true, right?”
Brielle nodded. “He won’t let anything happen to her.”
“Wanna go back to bed?” he asked, brushing her lips lightly with his thumb.
“I’m too keyed up. Let’s take a look at our investigation. Maybe it’s time to shake Carson down.”
“Or Linda Ferguson.”
For the next couple of hours, they examined their evidence and facts but didn’t make any decisions regarding how to proceed from this point. Justice escorted Brielle home and took her to bed for another bout of hot lovemaking.
* * *
Two weeks later Brielle and Finnigan entered the Royal Business Bank on Sunset Boulevard. Within the last few days, a trio of armed, masked men had hit several branches of the RBB, leaving behind six dead and more than a dozen critically injured victims. They’d received a tip that the branch on Sunset Boulevard was next. The vault housed several billion dollars’ worth of diamonds and gold bricks.
Beneath Brielle’s casual clothes, she wore a Kevlar vest and her gun tucked into the back of her pants. The rest of their team waited in an armored vehicle behind a diner a block away. Their commander, Isaiah Mattox, called the shots from headquarters.
Brielle and Finnigan loitered in the lobby, keeping an eye on the entrance, the customers, and the tellers. From the corner of her eye, Brielle noticed a security guard locking the double glass doors. Her pulse kicked up a notch.
“It’s happening,” she murmured into her earpiece.
“Copy that,” Macklin’s voice crackled in her ear. “We’ve got eyes on you.”
The words barely left his mouth when three masked, heavily armed gunmen appeared out of nowhere. They sprayed the lobby with bullets, striking a man in the leg and his wife in the stomach, and narrowly missing Brielle and Finnigan, who yelled simultaneously, “Stop! LAPD!”
“Drop your weapons!” Finnigan shouted.
All three swung their semi-automatic assault rifles toward him, directly aiming at his head, and pulled their triggers. Brielle reacted without hesitation. She fired, killing one of the them, as she threw herself in front of Finnigan. He dropped to the floor, unhurt, and fired his own weapon. Another gunman dropped dead. Glass shattered. Macklin and two other members of SWAT rushed into the lobby and took out the third gunman.
Brielle felt a burning sensation underneath her left arm and in her leg, but she ignored it as she knelt next to the male victim and assessed his wound. She removed his belt and used it as a tourniquet.
“You’re going to be…okay,” she assured him, gasping a little. She felt strange. Her heart fluttered.
He grabbed her hand. “Officer, you’ve been shot.”
“I?I’m all right. Is this your wife?”
“Yes. Lana. Please help her.”
Brielle ripped off her blazer and staunched the blood pouring from the woman’s stomach. “Lana, listen to me. Help is on the way. Do you hear the sirens?”
Lana coughed up blood. “Y?yes!”
“Just hang on…” Brielle heard Finnigan calling her name as if she were under water before she lost consciousness.
* * *
