Unfinished Hero - Raid Part 12

Keeping up appearances, I stood in it, and when he swung in his Jeep I waved.

Raiden did not wave back.

Then I closed the door and locked it. I switched the outside lights off and turned off the lights that I'd left on in the foyer. That done, I dashed up the stairs as best I could because I was also tugging at the buckles and straps of my sandals to get them off while I went.

I hit the bedroom, tossed my shoes on the bed and turned on the lamp on my nightstand.

Only then did I hear the Jeep pull away.

He waited until I'd made it upstairs and he knew I was settling, getting ready for bed before he drove away.

That was sweet.

G.o.d, I wished he was real.

I dashed back down the stairs and grabbed the phone in the hall. I ran through the dining room into the kitchen, snapped on the light and found the phonebook.

I flipped through it and found the number for the Sherriff's Police.

Then I called it.

Chapter Seven.

Reward.

Raid.

Raid walked down the sidewalk to the s.h.i.+ny, black SUV parked on the side of the road in town. He pulled open the door and angled in.

Blue and red lights flashed into the cab as they did the same outside, illuminating the street.

"You hear the police band?" Tucker Creed asked.

Raid kept his eyes to the three squad cars and one K-9 SUV all angled in around Bodhi's bike shop. Then he s.h.i.+fted his gaze down the street where, at a distance of a little over a block, two more squads and another K-9 unit were angled outside the gift shop.

"Raid, you hear me?" Creed asked, and Raid cut his eyes to his partner.

"I heard it," he growled.

"She called it in," Creed told him something he already knew.

"I said I heard it," Raid repeated.

"You know how she knew to call it in? You said she was clueless," Creed asked, and Raid's eyes moved back to the flas.h.i.+ng squads.

He knew.

She'd played him.

Sweet, shy, cute, goofy Hanna Boudreaux didn't go out for a breath of fresh air to clear her head and try to get rid of a burgeoning headache like she told him she had.

She'd been the one he heard open the ladies room door.

She'd overheard him.

She'd covered it, came back looking freaked, lied that it was a headache and then spent the next thirty minutes acting jacked because she was freaked that her friends were f.u.c.king her over.

Then, minutes after he left her at her house, she'd made a call and blown their whole f.u.c.king, eleven month operation.

"This lead's dead," Creed declared, and Raid looked back at him. "They got both that Bodhi kid and his girl in custody. May luck out and they'll flip for the police, but this guy pullin' the strings, doubt those two goofb.a.l.l.s got the breadcrumbs to lay that trail so they'll probably only give the cops s.h.i.+t we already got."

None of this was wrong.

Creed kept going, "Headin' back down to Phoenix. Sylvie's already p.i.s.sed I've been up here this long. Says I need to haul my a.s.s back to the valley and play Daddy to Jesse, and next time it's her turn to try and track down drug supplying whackjobs."

Tucker Creed had been coming up, on and off, a day here, a week there when things got hot, for the last eleven months.

Whenever it got hot it eventually fizzled out, so he went home to his family.

Raid had met Creed's wife once. She was a relatively new wife, a new mom, but like her husband, she was a seasoned private investigator and a.s.s kicker.

She was the b.a.l.l.siest b.i.t.c.h he'd ever met in his life.

He'd liked her immediately.

Sylvie Creed had a baby boy named Jesse who she didn't like leaving, but she also didn't like her husband leaving. Further, they strangely, considering both of them were bada.s.s, consummate professionals and skilled, really hated being apart in a way you could almost taste how much they hated it.

Therefore, the longer this operation went, the more trips Creed took north, the more impatient Sylvie became.

And she was getting antsy down in Phoenix looking after a kid when she'd prefer to be in Colorado cracking heads with her husband, and she wasn't all fired up about the fact that Creed got to have all the fun.

"You gonna call this s.h.i.+t in to Knight or you want me to do it?" Raid asked.

"You do it," Creed answered, then his lips twitched. "You gonna wait until tomorrow to lay into your new babe for jacking up our action or are you headin' there now?"

"She overheard me talkin'. We didn't say much. She has no clue about the operation."

Creed smiled. "So you gonna wait until tomorrow to lay your new babe or are you headin' there now?"

Oh, he was heading there now.

It was f.u.c.king uncool she overheard him, came to the table, lied her a.s.s off then pulled that tease s.h.i.+t at her house-whatever the f.u.c.k that was about-and called the Sherriff.

He had no idea what was in her head.

He was f.u.c.king going to find out.

Then he was going to drag her a.s.s to her bedroom, which he hoped to G.o.d was as appealing as the porch and foyer of her house, and then "lay his new babe".

Thoroughly.

She deserved a spanking for this s.h.i.+t.

But they were new. He had to break her into that.

Raid didn't answer Creed's question.

Instead, he asked, "You headin' to DIA now?"

"Hotel, book a flight, then I'm out."

"I'll call it in to Knight, then I'm goin' to Hanna's. I'll update you if we get a new lead and we need you or Sylvie to come back up. Though, advice. I'd throw your wife a bone. Knight says she's threatening, we don't find this a.s.shole, then she's gonna come up and do it on her own so she can stop livin' the life of a woman without her baby daddy."

"Right," Creed grunted, his lips curved up.

"Later," Raid said.

"Later," Creed replied.

Raid threw open the door and knifed out. He walked the three blocks to his Jeep, swung in and headed to Hanna's house.

He did this trying to control his temper, and insanely, he did that by thinking about Hanna.

And he did this because, for weeks, he couldn't get her out of his head.

And this was because, over the last week and a half, he'd come to understand Hanna Boudreaux was his reward.

He'd thought it the second he saw her in front of Bodhi's bike shop, looking adorable, jumping around on those long, tanned legs, clapping and crying out excitedly wearing short-shorts and a little white top.

He'd suspected it when she crawled around gathering cat food tins, that sweet a.s.s of hers in the air, making him fight his d.i.c.k getting hard and giving him ideas for their future.

It came clearer when it just plain came clear that she was one of those women that needed a man. Taking care of her grandmother on her own. Paying her mortgage by knitting f.u.c.king afghans. Getting f.u.c.ked over at a car dealers.h.i.+p. Getting taken by her friends.

But he knew it the minute she timidly tossed her afghans over the back of her grandmother's porch chair and smoothed her hand down the soft wool, yards of nothing that, at her hands, looked like everything. Home. Warmth. Comfort. Nurture. Love.

And if he didn't know it then, it was cemented when she opened that mouth of hers under his and let him take everything he wanted.

His reward for his sweat.

His blood.

Their blood.

His G.o.dd.a.m.ned nightmares.

Other than visits to his mother and sister, he had no idea that when he came back to Willow-something he never intended to do-that he'd find it there.

Her there.

What he'd earned.

What was his.

What he knew was months ago they'd traced the s.h.i.+pments to Bodhi and his girlfriend in Raid's own d.a.m.ned town.

That was why Knight had called him in.

That was why Raid came home.

They never got a lock on the supplier. He always sent his minions with the dope, but Bodhi and Heather used the bike shop as a front, s.h.i.+pping it with the bike business as a cover.

Bodhi and Heather were relatively harmless, cogs in a wheel, low-level players they needed to watch and work and hope they led the team to the puppetmaster.

By the time the team was done d.i.c.king around with those two and ready to close in on them to try to squeeze them for information, strong arm or blackmail them into a maneuver that might out the big man, Bodhi and Heather got smart with protecting the bike shop and moved the business to Hanna's s.h.i.+pments.

A local. A third generation Willowite.

Thus a complication.

At that time Raid had no clue who Hanna Boudreaux was. He knew Miss Mildred. Everyone did. He also knew Hanna's older brother, Jeremy, who was a year behind him in school. All he remembered of the guy was that he was a decent wide receiver and he'd bragged overtly, and nauseatingly frequently, when he'd tapped Lori Kowslowski's a.s.s.

But he didn't know Hanna.

Once word got out Bodhi and Heather had moved their operation and involved a local-a local linked to the town's most beloved citizen, a ninety-eight year old fixture of their society-he'd had no choice but to ask around about Hanna.

He'd heard nothing but good things. She looked after her grandmother. She went to church. She was a quiet girl. She read a lot. She liked to go to the movies. She was sweet. Loyal. Funny. Loving.

An easy mark for those two a.s.sholes.

Even though Raid never saw her there, his sister Rach.e.l.le told him she came into cafe all the time.

"But haven't seen her for a while, bro. You see her, though, you'll know. Fantastic figure. Pretty smile. Great legs, but uber-mousy, you get what I'm saying? Has no clue, if she put in a teeny-weeny bit of effort she'd be all that," Rache had said.

But sweet, shy, mousy, reads-a-lot Hanna, who everyone knew and everyone said was always around, had disappeared.

By the time spring hit Willow and Raid first laid eyes on Hanna Boudreaux, weeks before he saw her at the bike shop and took his shot to follow her and "run into her" at the pet store, he didn't know what the f.u.c.k his sister was on about.

Hanna Boudreaux was not mousy.

She was standing with one of her hands on the handlebars of that ridiculous bike of hers, talking to Paul Moyer.

No.