Burnout_ A Legal Heat Novella - Sarah Castille Page 0,46
you can.” She leaned forward, a bubble of excitement flaring in her belly. “I know you’ve got someone inside. He could get a message to Jason, obtain his consent. He could get him out…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her bubble burst and she deflated. “But Ice…”
His eyes widened and he jerked back as if slapped. “Ice?” Skinner snorted. “Goddammit, he has his finger in too many pies.”
“You know him?”
“Waste of one of the best damn cops I ever knew,” he grumbled. “Now he thinks he’s some kind of Robin Hood. One day his meddling is going to get someone killed.”
Hope flared again, and she gripped the edge of his desk, ready to ride the roller coaster again. “Or save someone.”
“If we did have someone deep undercover…” He lowered his voice, and Sophie held her breath so she didn’t miss a word. “And I’m not saying we do. Getting that information in and out and arranging an extraction could risk exposing such an undercover agent, or worse, get him killed. He would have to be worth it.”
Sophie could almost taste victory, but she quashed her excitement and struggled to maintain a professional calm. “You know he is. I only had a brief look at the file, but the chief constable of the Investigative Division will know all the details. Jason is very well connected. He could bring a lot of people down. Save a lot of lives.”
“You’d never see him again,” Skinner said. His gaze seemed to penetrate, shuffling through her motivations.
“I won’t see him again if we don’t do this, but at least this way I’ll know he’s alive and justice will be served.”
His lips twitched at the corners. “Good to know you’re on the right side.”
“I’m a police officer.” She stood, her body thrumming with a confidence and conviction she hadn’t felt in years. This was what she was meant to do, where she was meant to be, who she was.
Sophie Nichols, police officer. With a little streak of wild.
And since she did have that bit of wild, why not ask for one more thing? “I have one more request.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to Skinner. “A real missing person. His name is Sam Logan. He was separated from his brother in foster care about twenty-five years ago. I want to find him.”
Chapter Eleven
“I want to leave the MC.”
Ace sipped his beer, keeping his gaze on Ice keeping watch at the far end of Rusty’s Blues Bar on Granville Street. If things went bad, he was pretty sure he could take Ryder despite his injury, but Ice was a whole different ball game.
Ryder froze, his glass halfway to his lips, his beer vibrating to the steady beat of FitnessGlo’s Biker Blues, playing through the speakers. “No one leaves. You made a life commitment when you pledged to join the MC.”
“I made that pledge to Hades MC. Not to the Rogue Riders.” He hated relying on technicalities. He was a straight-up kind of guy, but he’d thought long and hard about his future for the three days he’d been laid up in bed, and he’d come to the conclusion that if he wanted a chance at the kind of stable life he had craved as a child, with a woman like Sophie, he would have to give up the club that had been his family for almost ten years.
“You’re gonna throw that at me, brother?” Ryder’s eyes narrowed, and guilt speared through Ace’s chest. After Ryder, Ace, and a group of like-minded brothers broke from Hades MC to form their own club, they had struggled to gain a foothold in the already crowded underground black market. In the interests of getting the club up and running quickly, Ryder had dispensed with the formalities of patching in brothers who had already been through the process when they’d patched in to Hades.
“It’s not personal, brother. I just got a need to do something different with my life. You bury as many friends as I have, and you realize how short life really is. When I decided to follow you out of Hades, I didn’t see a future beyond the club. I was happy to live the life, stick it to the man, and turn my back on civilian law. And then I met Sophie. She’s everything we stand against, and she’s everything I want.”
Ryder gave an irritated huff. “You want to leave your brothers for a woman?”
Ace’s pulse kicked up a notch, and