One of the uniforms standing guard shared something with Quaid that made Nasa smile slowly, and it wasn't a very nice smile.
Whatever the uniformed officer said made Quaid curse, but he uncuffed Nasa in rough, jerky motions and waved a belligerent arm.
As soon as his wrists were free, Nasa headed straight for her. Dillon turned to meet him, walking right into his open arms. Nasa bent his head and touched a kiss to her throat, his fingers buried in her hair to keep her close.
“They finally confirmed I am who I say I am, but Detective Jerkoff over there still thinks I'm a one-percenter. Duke is in the crowd of rubberneckers, which means Tobias is around here somewhere. This'll all be over soon, and we can go home.”
Dillon nodded, turning her cheek to Nasa's chest, scanning the crowd across the street to see Duke in deep conversation with an old man in a ratty baseball cap while both of them watched the show.
Finally, the bomb squad guys came out and gave the all-clear, which made Dillon's shoulders drop from around her ears.
“Thank god.”
The news vans would be pulling up any second now, and all Dillon could think of was Ghost had taken away the safety of the shelter. Now all the women huddled up on the street were in danger again.
“Detective Bolton?” Dillon called out wearily. Rain stepped into her field of vision, and Dillon lifted a hand to point at the women.
“The shelter will foot the bill to put them all up at a hotel, but they need to go now before the news crews show up.”
Thankfully, Dillon didn't have to explain why. “Patti has already talked to everyone, and they know a hotel is an option, but every single one of them wants to go back inside the shelter. They don't feel safe anywhere else.”
Dillon sucked in a ragged breath, shocked to hear it, and unbearably relieved at the same time. The address wasn't a secret anymore, the news crews would see to that, and all her fortifications, all the money she'd spent on the extra security measures would only go so far. Ghost made it perfectly clear, there was always a way in if someone wanted it badly enough.
“I'll need all our stuff back,” Nasa reminded Rain.
“You'll be allowed to take everything but the guns,” Rain answered, lifting her chin as though daring them to argue.
Nasa didn't argue. He answered in a calm, reasonable tone, with facts no one could refuse. “You have no reason to keep them, especially as Dillon and I both have permits to carry.
"From the videotapes provided to you by the owner of this private establishment, you can clearly see they haven't been fired; therefore, you have no legal right to keep them.”
Rain tried to come up with some way to refuse. Dillon watched the mental struggle play out in the other woman's gaze.
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“Licensed and registered with the BAR association,” Nasa told her with a triumphant chuckle. “I got tired of people telling me their word was law, without any actual legal precedent to back it up. So, we'll need our personal effects, Detective who lied about calling my woman to tell her two murderers might be coming after her.”
Rain's cheeks mottled with mortification, and so unprepared to be called on the carpet, she had no comeback to defend herself.
“Why lie about something like that when it was so easy to trace the phone records?” Nasa pressed ruthlessly. “It couldn't be that you were trying to hide just how much of a coward you are, covering your own ass to avoid another run-in like the one you had as a rookie, swinging Dillon's ass out there by scaring Patti into not getting Dillon involved sooner, could it?”
“I'll get your things,” Rain said stiffly, her shoulders hunched up around her ears as she spun on her heel and walked off.
Dillon tipped her head back to look up at Nasa in confusion, tired beyond comprehension, “That's all it was? She's a coward?”
Nasa's expression softened, his gaze gentle and apologetic. “Luckily so. I dug around in her personal and professional life and found out a friend of hers in the department arrested a Leviathan for a drunk and disorderly back before you came to Dallas.
“The charges got bumped up to possession with the intent to distribute once the cop found a butt load of heroin in the guy's saddlebags. That cop, his partner, Rain, and three other officers were called to an active shooter scene, which turned out to be an ambush.
“The Leviathans killed the officer who arrested one of theirs, the cop's partner, and one other guy. In the incident report, there was footage from one of the officer’s body cameras that showed all the uniforms except Rain exchanging fire and trying to get out of there.
“Rain ducked behind the squad car after firing only three rounds. The only reason she wasn't kicked off the force was because she was still a rookie, and one of the wounded cops fell down right next to her. While everyone else kept fighting, she kept pressure on his nonfatal wound.
“There's a notation in her file that says she transferred out of that precinct because the rest of the guys didn't trust her to have their back anymore. But she kept her nose clean after that and got the highest scores on her tests out of all the guys gunning for a gold badge. That one incident wasn't enough to get her benched forever.
“She didn't want Patti to press charges because her name would go on the report, and the Leviathans might have targeted her. She said it was more important to protect the shelter from possible retaliation—and that was probably true—but it also benefited
