His hand squeezed the back of my neck. “You with me?”
My withered heart shifted in my chest, the blood pumping slowly, painfully through the distressed chambers. But I could feel it moving, feel it beating again in my chest. It wasn’t as strong as it should have been, but then again, I’d just lost most of my reason for living.
Now all I had left was Lion and Hero.
I reached across the floor to grab Danner’s hand tightly in my own and brought it to my mouth so I could bite his knuckle and kiss his palm.
“Yeah, Lion, I’m with you,” I told him.
And I was, just as I had been since I fell in love with him on my eleventh birthday and just as I would be at my ninetieth.
It seemed life wouldn’t allow me to be loved beautifully and platonically at the same time as brutally and romantically, and I couldn’t say I would have knowingly made the same choice if I’d been given a calculated time to make it, but as I lay there on the ground, Lion on his belly beside me, Hero on his behind me, I knew I’d sacrifice everything I had left just to keep them with me forever.
The next night, I was done waiting.
My family hated me, it was done.
But I wasn’t.
I needed to get the goods on the fuckin’ Berserkers and I needed it done now.
So, I was already in my car, clothed from tip to toe in tight, black clothing including a pair of leather gloves with a toque on my head to contain my hair so I wouldn’t leave behind any DNA when I called Danner.
“Rosie, thought you’d be home by now,” he answered.
I loved that he called his house our home. We hadn’t talked about it, but I hadn’t spent a night without him since the hooded man held me at knifepoint in my car.
“Yeah, about that,” I explained while I chewed anxiously on a wad of Hubba Bubba. “I’m not coming home for a while.”
There was a long pause then a vicious curse, “What the fuck are you up to now?”
“I’m sitting in my car a block away from the Port of Vancouver,” I told him. “I’m going to show up in Grant Yves office pretending to look for Jacob and Honey, and I’m going to get him to tell me which company and cargo containers the Berserkers are using to transport their illegal arms.”
Another long pause. This one artic, frozen solid in a way that kept me from discerning what he could possibly be thinking.
“You remember that conversation we had about you bein’ reckless?” he asked quietly.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, Lion, I do. It’s why I’m callin’ you.”
“You didn’t think to tell me say, last night when we got home or this mornin’ over fucking Cinnamon Toast Crunch?”
I chewed my gum, popped a bubble and tried not to let his anger touch the submissive place in me that wanted to stop, drop and roll at his commands.
“No, because then you’d have stopped me from being involved, and I know I can get Grant to talk about his brother, maybe even turn on the club and become a police asset.”
“Good thinkin’, Harleigh Rose. Only, are there any police there with you right now?” he bit out, already knowing the answer.
“Uh, no.”
“No… so how are the police goin’ to turn an asset if they aren’t involved in this rebel operation you got goin’?”
“Well, that’s where you come in. I thought you could bring your cuffs.”
Danner let out a harsh laugh and I knew he’d be rubbing a frustrated hand over his face. “Listen to me carefully, Rosie. This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to call this in. A truck is going to show up within fifteen minutes with two guys I trust for surveillance. They’re gonna outfit you with a wire, then you’re gonna go have a chat with Grant. If one single thing goes wrong with that chat, you’re outta there, and I mean he even looks at you fuckin’ funny, you’re gone. You with me?”
“With you,” I agreed, trying not to let my giddiness show.
He was going to let me do this.
“Know you’re done with waiting and watching, Harleigh Rose, but we still gotta do this in a way we can bring them down for good. I don’t want you in danger after it’s revealed you were in on this, you get me?”
“Get you,” I agreed.
“Fuck me, but you’re fuckin’ trouble,” he muttered.
“You love it,” I sassed, because sassing the patriarchy was my bread and fuckin’ butter.
He grunted his agreement. “Gonna hang up and get this shit sorted. You wait there for me to call you back, and Rosie, if you move one fuckin’ inch out of that car, I’m going to punish you so hard, you won’t sit easy for a fucking month. You with me?”
“With you,” I whispered through my sudden loss of breath.
He hung up.
I tried to get my breathing under control and flipped on “Gun in My Hand” by Dorothy to get my head in the game.
Fifteen minutes later, a black van pulled up across the street from me.
Two minutes after that, Danner’s Mustang Fastback screeched to a halt behind that and he climbed out of his car wearing tip to toe black that made him look like a fuckin’ biker god.
He knocked on my passenger side window then tagged my hand the second I opened the door to pull me back over the street to the van.
“You do everything I say,” he told me as we power walked. “There’ll be a piece in your ear so you can hear me and a microphone in the camera they’re goin’ to attach to your jacket. If I say move, you move. If I say get the fuck out of there, you get the fuck out of there before you take your next breath.”
“Aye, aye, Officer,” I said, turned on by his no-nonsense cop persona.
I wanted him to use the cuffs dangling from the back of his black jeans on my wrists, push me against the car for a full body search and then fuck me silly.
He turned to me with a glare as we reached the back of the van and he knocked on the door. “I want to hear you agree with me, seriously, Rosie.”
“Yes, Officer,” I said sweetly, hand to my heart. “I solemnly pledge to obey your orders.”
He scowled, but before he could reprimand me again, the doors were opened and I was being pulled into the back of a van the likes of which I’d only ever seen in cop movies. There was equipment everywhere, three computers, speakers and two TVs, a rack bolted to the floor that carried weapons and police armour.
“Cool,” I whispered, touching a vest that read “RCMP.” “Can I wear a bulletproof vest?”
“No,” said the huge black man I recognized as Sterling, one of the cops from the scene of Cricket’s death. “But you can get over here so Johnson can get you set up and I can brief you.”
“Aye, aye Officer,” I repeated with a flick of my fingers in a mock salute.
Sterling cut his gaze to Danner who only sighed wearily.
They attached a camera to the necklace I wore with “Rosie” written in gold, affixing it to the skull and crossbones pendant that hung beside it. They explained to me the rules and regulations of doing a ‘sting,’ and what exactly I was trying to get Grant to say.
If I successfully got a confession from him, Danner, who would be waiting outside the office, would cuff him and bring him into the station in order to offer him immunity in return for becoming a confidential informant.