The second she heard a voice, she moved, reached for Elsie to drag her away.
But Tony was too close and he was swift.
Claire was in a headlock with Tony’s gun pushed into her temple.
She grasped at his arm and tried to lodge her chin into the space between his arm and her windpipe. Her sparring partners at Richter had always held on hard, but this was a different level.
Around her, everyone had shifted.
Russell had fallen to his knees, the gun he’d been holding on the ground in front of him.
Milo, the cocky son of a bitch, stood there without a care.
“Everyone, calm down.” Cooper looked Claire in the eye, raw nerves close to the surface.
“Drop your guns!” The barrel of Tony’s gun ground into her skull.
“Calm down.” Eastman, who had burst into the warehouse with Cooper, stood with a gun pointed at Tony.
“Drop your guns now, fucking drop ’em. I’ll fucking kill her.” The more Tony yelled, the closer he sunk into the shadows.
Cooper lifted his hands, slowly placed his gun on the ground. “Okay. It’s cool. We’re good.”
Eastman carefully made the same movements.
Claire knew he wouldn’t have done that if there weren’t other guns pointed at Tony.
“Kick them over here.”
They both did. But Tony didn’t reach for them.
“Come on, Tony. Let’s talk about this,” Cooper coaxed.
“What are you waiting for?” Tony yelled at Milo. “Pick up the gun.”
Claire felt the tension surging through Tony’s body by the way she was being held. He probably didn’t realize that she was gasping for air.
“Pick it up.”
She needed the barrel to leave her temple to escape with her head. Or she needed to know the team was watching her every signal.
Milo turned to Cooper and Eastman. “I want to see my lawyer.”
Tony’s body shifted, dragging her with him. “Fuck you!” He took a step closer to Milo. The gun was no longer pressed right up against her head, but it was still pointed directly at her.
Cooper’s eyes glued to Claire’s.
Too much more of this and she was going to lose consciousness. If she didn’t make a move, she might not get a chance.
I love you, Cooper mouthed to her.
She felt the words in her soul.
“It’s over, Tony,” Eastman told him.
Claire looked up to the rafters, prayed someone saw her lips.
One hand let go of the grip he had on her neck and settled at her side.
One.
“Let her go.”
Two.
“Fuck, fuck.”
Three.
Claire went completely limp and shots were fired.
Cooper couldn’t get to her fast enough.
When Tony went down, his fall took her with him. And for a brief moment, Cooper couldn’t tell if the blood was hers or his.
“Claire? Talk to me.” He was on his knees, hands on her shoulders. “Where are you hurt?”
“Everywhere.” She looked up at him, coughed, and crawled into his arms.
“Oh, baby.” Cooper clenched her tight, didn’t think he would ever let go.
There were sounds of footsteps running toward them and sirens in the distance.
Jax ran to Elsie. “It’s okay. We got you. It’s over.”
Cooper looked around, saw Russell lying on the ground, arms spread out. He was pretty sure the kid was crying.
Milo was on his knees, hands behind his head, Eastman standing over him with a gun out, a phone in his hand. “Two injured, one fatality,” he was saying.
Neil walked past Milo on his way to Claire’s side. As he did, he stopped at Milo, brought him to his feet with both hands. “No one hurts my family.” And with one beefy punch, the man was back on his knees, holding his face.
“Three injured and one fatality,” Eastman corrected himself.
Hours later, when the paperwork was filled out and the bandages had been placed, Claire stood beside Leo Grant in a private meeting room at the hospital shaking her head. “You have no idea how happy I am that you weren’t the dirty cop.”
Cooper hadn’t left her side for hours. She was pretty sure he hadn’t even gone to the bathroom. His arms were around her, on her, holding her, or simply never far away. And she was happy for it.
“I’m pretty pleased I didn’t have to rearrange your boyfriend’s face for the way he was looking at you.”
The three of them laughed.
“What finally tipped you off?”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Remember yesterday, when you talked about the day you would be old enough to make me buy you a drink and reminisce?”
Was that just yesterday?
“You got me thinking. I seem to remember a couple of pretty girls at the end of a bar, one came over and the other slipped away.”
“You saw us?”
“I didn’t put it all together until yesterday.”
Claire laughed, although smiling hurt. “That was pretty epic.”
“Weren’t you speaking German?”
“I’ve been speaking German since I was eight,” she told him, in German. “Isn’t that right, Cooper?”
He replied in a less practiced accent, but she’d certainly give him an A for effort. They had plenty of time for him to practice.
“I’ll be damned.”
“She speaks five languages,” Cooper said proudly.
“What?”
“Six, actually. You have to count English. Classic overachiever,” she said.
“And your aunt?” Grant asked.
Sasha had left the scene without ever showing her face.
“She’s my aunt.”
“Really?” The man had a little too much hope in his eyes.
“Put it away, Grant, she’s happily married.”
“That’s a shame.” He paused, looked around. “Your team is good. Your decoy home, the fights with the aunt.”
“Your decoy home is a pigsty,” Claire informed him.
“You’ve been inside?”
“Not me. My hot aunt.”
Leo shook his head. “Good thing I never had company over.”
They laughed at that.
“Tell us what you know about Tony,” Cooper said.
Leo sat back, arms folded over his chest. He looked less like a teacher and more like a cop. “I was brought in at the end of last year, right before Tony’s ‘graduation.’ I got to know him and the kids he spent time with at Auburn. I saw the reports he gave to Detective Warren. Things didn’t match up. Tony gave bogus leads, had his team running in circles. He used his position to keep the cops from busting teenage parties.”
Claire looked over at Cooper. “I remember Milo being surprised when his party was broken up.”
“I watched Tony all summer. He’d spend every other weekend at a party, playing the role of Tony the teenager. My boss was going to pull me from the school until we realized that Tony was still showing up. He’d convinced Warren there was something brewing and gave him a reason to be there. I knew he was dirty. I just couldn’t find the mud. After the first of the year, I told my boss we needed more people. I was never going to find the dirt as a teacher at the school.”