Chances Are - By Christy Reece Page 0,6
easy. Never again.
His attention moved to the present as a tiny, whiskered face peeked out from behind the fridge. Holding his makeshift mousetrap in readiness, Jake stood statue still. A colander might seem like an odd device to catch a mouse but it was his best bet for a live capture and release. Giving up the cheap kitchen utensil was no problem, especially since he’d never used it.
The creature scurried to the cheese chunk lying in the floor. Jake waited till the twitching nose touched the cheese. Quick as a cat, he dropped the colander over the small heap, scooped up the now squiggling mouse and dropped it into a waiting shoebox.
Grabbing his keys and jacket, Jake tucked the shoebox under his arm and headed out the door. The abandoned building two blocks away seemed the perfect relocation and should offer plenty of company for the little guy.
The cellphone in his pocket played a familiar ring, telling him that his boss, Noah McCall, was calling. He pulled out the phone and held it to his ear. “Mallory.”
“Can you come in?”
“Yeah. Half an hour okay?”
“Yes.”
The line went dead before Jake could say anything else. Phone etiquette wasn’t high on McCall’s ‘must do’ list. Most of the phone conversations they’d had consisted of one or two sentences but the tone in his boss’s voice sounded ominous and grim, more so than usual.
His head low to battle the icy, brutal wind, Jake strode to his car. Opening the door, he deposited the box on the front passenger seat and cranked the engine. As he pulled onto the street, he reflected on his boss. Before coming to Paris, Jake had thought Noah McCall was an urban legend. As a cop, he’d heard stories about LCR’s successes but had dismissed most of them as someone’s wishful thinking. It wasn’t until he’d gotten caught up in the middle of an LCR undercover operation that he realized everything he’d heard was true.
Jake had been a typical tourist the day he’d met McCall. He’d been in Paris for two weeks, staying at hostels, roaming the streets, soaking up the atmosphere. He’d stopped in for a cold beer and a cheap meal at a not-so-high-class establishment. What he had gotten was a busted mouth, a black eye, and a job offer.
LCR had been running a sting. He hadn’t known that. All he knew was two men were attempting to pull a young woman out of the bar and no one was stopping them. Jake had intervened and ruined the mission. Thankfully another sting had been set up a few days later that brought down a human trafficking operation.
Even though Jake had blown the op, McCall had been impressed with his intervention. Days later, the LCR leader had called and asked to speak with him. Though wary, Jake agreed to the meeting. And after listening intently, Jake’s world seemed to right itself at last. For two years, he had been mired in bitterness and grief, with no real purpose other than to get as far away as he could from the life he’d once lived. McCall’s offer had shown him a new path. Now he couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Making a quick stop at the abandoned warehouse, he unboxed his uninvited houseguest and watched it scurry away before he got back into his car. Not his usual kind of rescue, but what the hell. Killing something just because he could wasn’t his way. If it had been, there’d be at least five less sons of bitches serving life sentences in Danville.
Twenty minutes later, Jake pulled into a parking lot five blocks from the LCR office. Probably could have gotten closer but he was counting on a long walk in the frigid air to keep his mind from wandering where he couldn’t let it go. The moment he walked into the office, he would be greeted with what he told himself he shouldn’t want and couldn’t have. Maybe this new assignment would get him out of the city for a while. Lately that had been the only way to keep his hands off Angela Delvecchio.
The light-hearted flirting was becoming more than he could handle. The other day, she’d said something particularly provocative—dammed if he could remember the words. All he remembered was how he had responded. He’d been within a half second of pulling her to him for a hot, deep, thorough kiss—an open-mouthed, tongue battle while their hands ripped at each other’s clothes. She had been turned away from him