I glared at the five-foot-three sack of shit that technically ran the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit for the province. He was a paper pusher, a schmuck that wouldn’t understand fieldwork if a bullet bit him in the ass.
“And I wasn’t suggesting shit. I was telling you that under no fucking conditions will I be involving a victim of abuse and gang violence in my investigation.”
“You don’t run this show, Danner. Your daddy may be Staff Sergeant up in bum fuck Entrance, but down here, in this city, I say what goes. And I say that Harleigh Rose, a far from innocent, born affiliate of The Fallen MC, is the perfect confidential informant to get us inside information from The Berserkers.”
I ground my teeth together and tried that counting to ten thing.
It didn’t work.
“No,” I stated, then turned away from him to see Sterling and Farrow staring at me with dual expressions of awe and irritation.
No one stood up to Guzman. He was completely incompetent, but he was a bully, and he had no problem with making a cop’s life absolutely miserable if he felt they needed to be ‘reminded who was in charge.’
Only, no one bullied me. I’d been effectively bullied by my father for too many years to count and when I took down the Nightstalkers MC, I finally had enough notoriety to get out of Entrance and away from his corruption. Now that I was free, there was no way I was taking orders I didn’t believe in.
Not anymore.
Not ever-a-fucking-gain.
And especially not when following orders meant I’d have to use Harleigh Rose as an inside asset in the most dangerous gang British Columbia had ever seen.
“I’m fine with that, Danner.” Another voice, deeper than any voice I’d ever heard otherwise, sounded over my shoulder and I turned to find Sgt. Renner, the head of Project Fenrir and my immediate superior, at my back. “But if she gives us any indication she still has serious ties to that MC, I want you on her, you hear?”
Immediately my bestial brain concocted an image of me on H.R. the way I’d wanted to be on her since she turned sixteen and went from gangly kid to fucking gorgeous woman; her endless legs wrapped near to twice around my hips, her streaky gold and blond hair laid out across my pillow and her long neck under my teeth as I bit into her, fucked into her, branded her as mine.
Only I hadn’t given in to the urges when I’d had the chance. In fact, I’d run away from them as fast as I fucking could because the thought of her was nearly too much, but the reality of her was impossible.
Guilt slithered through my veins like a toxin, infiltrating my system before I could rationalize the feeling. I’d been too chicken shit to get involved with her then, and she’d lashed out by turning to the worst possible option.
Cricket.
So indirectly or not, I was to blame for her abuse, for his death.
I rubbed a hand roughly over my face, trying to scrub away the weariness there. I’d become a cop because I was born the kind of man that couldn’t sit idly by while injustice was done. I’d known the first time I stood up to a bully, six years old and scrawnier than most of the girls in my grade, and then promptly been beaten on my ass by said bully and three of his friends, that I would keep standing up and fighting wrong for the rest of my life, even if it meant getting beaten down each time.
I’d known there would be setbacks, that a badge and a code of honour didn’t mean I’d be able to rectify every misdeed. What I never could have prepared for was the knowledge that my own father would force me to act out those misdeeds or at the very least, cover them up. That system was in place for a reason yet so many innocent people were condemned and so many guilty slipped through the cracks, their way greased by money slicked palms and handshake deals.
And now this.
Now, Harleigh Rose, a woman who radiated confidence and pure fucking joy, was sitting in an interrogation room coated in her abusive boyfriend’s blood, physically torn by his hands and degraded by his actions.
And fuck if I didn’t feel that worse than all the other transgressions rolled into one.
“I’ll watch her,” I muttered, to the man I actually admired enough to give a response to. “But she’s a victim here, Serge. I’m not feelin’ keen to take advantage.”
Serge’s big hand clapped over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “Don’t like to see a woman, any woman, assaulted sexually or otherwise. But you’ve got to face reality here, Danner. The girl didn’t just make her own bed, she was born in it.”