Joke’s on You by Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,67

shit and piling it all on top of his clothes.

The rest of us were ready to go, and Dax carried his boots out the door to the armored vehicle.

“What’s going on?” I asked Foster, our team leader.

“What’s going on is a hostage situation at your girl’s donut store,” he said as he put the truck into drive and headed out. “There’s a woman that snuck in the store using a key that was apparently hidden at the back behind a brick. Officers say that the woman is holding a man hostage who’s there to clean.”

I closed my eyes on a groan.

“Son of a bitch.”

The situation turned out to be just as bad as we thought.

When we arrived, Moshe was holding Ken hostage with a butcher knife.

“We gotta get this cleaned up fast,” I found myself saying. “Tomorrow is Dillan’s grand reopening. I’d rather not have to shoot anyone and ruin that for her.”

“No shooting. Got it,” Dax grumbled, wiping his eyes free of sleep.

I rolled mine.

“You’re really going to have to get used to this,” I said. “It’s only going to get worse.”

Derek started to chuckle, but I turned my eyes to him.

“You, too, Mr. Chuckles,” I taunted him. “You’re not much farther behind Dax.”

“Don’t call me Mr. Chuckles,” Derek grumbled.

“How about Mr. February?” I teased.

His eyes narrowed. “Not unless you want me to go announcing you’re Mr. June to every fuckin’ person that I can think of.”

I rolled my eyes.

“We should’ve never done that,” I admitted.

The calendars were still fucking selling.

When the idea of the calendars hit, I’d been fresh on the team, and hadn’t really wanted to admit that I didn’t want to do a calendar photo shoot. I should’ve complained.

Even now, six months into the year, the damn things were selling still.

We were now international phenomenons, and people came up to us on the street as if they knew us.

They didn’t.

And it was damn inconvenient to be writing someone a ticket only for them to whip out their calendar and ask you to sign that, too.

“Has anybody noticed that we’re falling for women in the order of the months that we posed for?” Derek asked suddenly. “First it was Dax, then it was me. Followed by…”

I stopped listening because we’d arrived at the donut shop, and a sick feeling of dread latched onto the lining of my stomach and started forcing it to churn.

“And having babies,” Louis said.

I ignored him and everything as we pulled up two blocks away from the donut shop.

There were lights on at the shop, but I could see no movement.

“Who called this in?” I asked curiously.

“The woman, Moshe,” Foster said as he got out and moved around the back to open the door. “She also told us how she got in, so it wasn’t ‘technically breaking and entering.’”

I rolled my eyes and got out, feeling the deep stretch in my legs as I stood straight.

Everything still hurt.

Technically, I was ‘better’ after being shot in the chest a few weeks ago, but every once in a while, certain movements still reminded me that I wasn’t one hundred percent yet.

“I’ll cover the back,” Louis murmured, taking his sniper rifle and moving.

“I think there’s a hotel that you could probably borrow the roof of. Looks right over the back alley. I saw it the night that everything went down with Kerrie,” I said.

Louis nodded and left, leaving Saint to head toward the first cop car he could find and find out more about the scene.

As our hostage negotiator, he was the one that would be doing all the talking.

At least, I hoped so, anyway.

I didn’t know either of the two employees all that well, and it would benefit us all to allow the person that knew what he was doing to talk the girl down.

Only, the moment that we arrived at the command tent, things changed.

“Let me call,” Saint said to the nearest officer. “Someone get me her number?”

The number was given out, and we all moved so that we could better see inside.

It helped that it was dark out and all the lights in the donut shop were on, enabling us to see everything inside.

I could see straight back to the kitchen, and I could clearly see the girl pacing with Ken in a chair in the doorway that separated the front from the kitchen.

He was tied down with what looked like zip ties, and he looked pissed.

Ken was an in shape man, and I was clearly confused on how he ended up in