Officer Talbot’s heavy breath plumed in the cold night, giving away his nerves.
“Drop the shit, McKenna, I’ll put you down,” Officer Travers postured.
I laughed, but I’d never had a very good one. It was loud and hollow, like shell casing releases hot and hard out of an exploding gun.
“I’ll put you down if you take one more step on my territory,” I warned lightly.
A stand-off ensued, one that leaned heavily in my favour.
“Got a call about a possible assault here,” the rookie tried to explain. “We have a duty to check it out.”
“By all means, check it out from the property line,” I allowed, graciously, running a finger lightly down the razor-sharp blade. My skin opened up under even that pressure, a quarter-inch gash on the pad of my thumb. I popped the clean cut into my mouth, ran the iron solution against my teeth, then flashed another smile at them, this one tinged in blood. “You get a warrant before you take one more step toward me.”
The rookie took a step back when he didn’t have one, his back slamming into the car so hard, he yelped.
Fuck, it was fun to play with cops.
“We got a right to check out the perimeter, McKenna,” Officer Travers pointed out gruffly, lowering his voice as if that would make me change my mind.
He didn’t get there was only one alpha in play here.
“Do what you want,” I agreed pleasantly, shrugging slightly to distract them as I adjusted my hold on the knife. “Already gave you my warnin’. You don’t get even that’s outta character, take whatever risk you want.”
Officer Talbot’s hard swallow was visible in the red light of his cop car lights, the vicious pull of his Adam’s apple dragged down by terror.
I pulled harder so he’d know for sure I wasn’t just some fish on his line.
I was a motherfucking shark.
“Come closer,” I beseeched, gentling my expression, swiping my tongue over my teeth to erase the eerie blood. “Please, do what you need to.”
Talbot hesitated, his survival instinct kicking in. Even though he couldn’t articulate it, his body knew what his mind disallowed. I was a threat he was not equipped to deal with.
Travers, on the other hand, was too much of an eejit to save his own hide.
Boldly, he stalked forward three large, exaggerated steps.
I smiled deep inside, but it didn’t grace my lips.
The knife in my hand was a comfort weight as I flung it end over end toward the advancing cop.
He yelled after it was already impaled an inch in front of his work boot. I watched placidly as he reared back, catching himself on the hood of his car as he lost balance in his hasty retreat.
“You’re under fucking arrest for assaulting an officer of the law,” Travers bellowed at me, but I was already stalking forward, collecting my knife before I swung back onto my Harley.
“I’ll meet ya there,” I shouted over the roar of the engine as I gunned it into life then peeled out of the drive, the tires spewing gravel onto their car.
Seconds later, the sound of sirens erupted in the night, and the chase was fucking on. I laughed into the glacial wind, the icy fingers tugging through my overlong hair as I kicked the engine into high gear and raced the fucking pigs to their pen.
* * *
* * *
It wasn’t my first time in the Entrance Police Department, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be my last. As far as interrogation rooms went, it was run of the mill: a grey box with a one-way mirror the length of the left wall, four chairs, two on either side of a black table.
I sat in the chair facing the door, thighs spread, hands linked on the table, gaze fixed to the mirror and the people I knew lurked behind it.
There had been chaos when they brought me in, more people in the pigpen than there usually was.
The serial killer and his love for Entrance had brought the big boys to the yard.
I knew there were Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) special unit officers in that adjoining room watching me.
Trying to learn me.
They’d learn nothing.
Cops put people in these rooms with one objective. They hoped the shake-up of being arrested and paraded through a cop’s den would carbonate them like agitated soda, all those guilty emotions fizzing and popping to the surface so when they sent in the interrogator, all they had to do was crack open the cap and confessions would flood into their hands.
They weren’t expecting a man to sit there like it was his living room and watch them like they were the entertainment playing on the television, like they were the subjects under observation.
I cracked a little smile, then cracked my knuckles as I slouched lower in the chair, getting cozy.