Swat Standoff

He raised his hands in surrender, trying to defuse the situation. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone after the suspect on my own. I see that now.”

“Gone off on your own? It’s not that simple. You risked your partner’s life. And don’t you dare tell me it was just a paint-ball fight. This weekend’s exercises are designed to test our instincts and improve our reactions, just as if this was the real thing. If this was the real thing, you just proved you can’t be trusted to watch over your partner or follow instructions.”

“You’re overreacting. If this had been a true SWAT situation, I would have stayed with Donna.”

Dillon shook his head. “You still don’t get it. You can’t act one way in training and plan on acting another way on an actual call. Training is supposed to make things second nature, so you’ll react on muscle memory, without having to think about it. You have to treat every exercise like the real thing. Didn’t they teach you that in the military?”

Blake stiffened and glanced at Thornton. But there was no help from that quarter. Thornton wouldn’t even look him in the eye.

“Are we done here?” Blake demanded, his patience gone. There was only so much lecturing a grown man could take with his entire team a stone’s throw away, witnessing his humiliation.

“Yeah. We’re definitely done. Because you’re toxic—always have been. You’re a lone wolf, a rogue who has to do things his own way. People like you get people like me killed. The chief saw something in you when he hired you. I’ll admit that I never did. But I worked with you, gave you every opportunity to prove my doubts wrong, to figure out how to be a member of this team. But all you’ve managed to do is prove me right. And I’m not willing to risk the lives of everyone here for your ego.” He motioned toward Chief Thornton. “And neither is he. We both agree on this. It’s over. Go home, Blake. You can turn in your equipment Monday morning. You won’t need it anymore. You’re fired.”

Chapter Three (#u4616cb0c-7ce0-5f3c-83fe-5b659724d9ea)

Donna entered the sleazy establishment that passed as a bar in this corner of Sevier County. Back in Destiny, this place would have been condemned and torn down, deemed unfit for even pigs to slop around in.

There was a plus side, though. It was quiet, too early in the evening to have more than a handful of patrons. And none of them had felt inclined to feed any money into the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner of the room.

Wrinkling her nose at the smell of urine and stale beer, she forced herself to step all the way inside, even though she was tempted to make an emergency run for a can of Lysol first.

A familiar figure sat on a bar stool at the far end, accepting what she hoped was his first drink of the night from the bartender. If Blake Sullivan was plastered, that was going to make her little crusade that much more difficult.

When he lifted the shot glass to his mouth, his hand shook and he sloshed some over the side.

So much for hoping that he wasn’t plastered.

He downed the amber liquid in one swallow and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Donna flexed her hand against the pistol holstered at her waist. If it had been loaded with paint balls instead of nine-millimeter slugs, she’d have already shot him. She was that ticked.

“Hey, lady,” the bartender called out. “No guns allowed in here.”

Blake slowly looked at her, his reflexes obviously dulled by the liquor. A sober cop would have jerked around to assess the danger as soon as the bartender mentioned a gun.

She pulled her badge out of the pocket of her jeans and flashed it. “Cop.”

The bartender’s expression turned frosty, his eyes as dark and deadly looking as the ones on the cobra tattoo snaking up his neck. “Makes no difference to me. No guns.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not staying.” She put her badge away and strode across the room, her boots echoing on the scarred hardwood floor. Stopping beside Blake’s stool, she motioned toward the door. “Let’s go.”

He scowled at her. “Another whiskey.” His words were slurred, his face ruddy.

The bartender stepped toward him with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Before he could refill the shot glass, Donna slapped her hand over it. “He’s done.”

“No. He’s not.” Blake yanked the glass away from her and held it out toward the bartender. “Fill ’er up.”

The bartender lifted the bottle.

“He’s drunk,” Donna warned. “You pour that, and he gets behind the wheel, I’ll arrest both of you.”

He hesitated, shrugged and moved down the bar to a patron who promised to be less trouble.

Blake glared at her through bleary eyes. “This isn’t Blount County. You can’t arrest anyone here.”

“He doesn’t know that.” She jerked her thumb toward the bartender.

Blake swiveled around and slouched back against the bar. “How did you find me?”

“Call tree.”

He frowned. “Call what?”

She sighed. “One of many things you’ve failed to learn, even though I’ve told you about it before. Destiny’s a very small town, so—”

He snorted. “No kidding.”

She wanted to punch him. Instead, she forced a smile. “Unlike you, I consider Destiny’s cozy size to be one of its many assets. Case in point, the call tree. Someone goes missing, I can make one call, and pretty soon, half the people in the county are looking out their windows. It’s more efficient than a big city’s AMBER Alert system.”

His mouth quirked up. “You put out an AMBER Alert on me? I had no idea you cared so much.”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know,” she grumbled. “Maybe you should pay more attention.”

His brow crinkled in confusion, but his inebriated brain couldn’t seem to grasp what she meant. Thank goodness. Admitting she cared about the brute while in a bar that smelled like pee wasn’t something she wanted sober Blake to remember.

“My point is that one of the benefits of living in Destiny is that we watch out for each other. After a few calls, I knew you’d left town and what road you’d taken. Unfortunately, just like with my jurisdiction, my useful contacts end at the county line. So I had to do a bit of searching on my own after that.”

He picked up his empty shot glass, frowned and thunked it back onto the bar. When he looked at her again, he blinked as if surprised that she was still there.

“What do you want?” he slurred.

She eyed the few people in the room, noting how closely they were paying attention to the exchange. It was bad enough that they were witness to Blake being drunk. If word got back to Chief Thornton or Dillon, there was no way she could fix what was probably already an unfixable situation and get them to rehire him.

“We need to talk. Alone.”

He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere. I like it here.”

She snorted. “Yeah. It’s real nice. Great ambience. You could mark your territory right where you’re sitting, and I bet no one would bat an eyelash.”

His brow wrinkled again. “Huh?”

She counted to ten and tried to remember all the reasons she liked this man enough not to shoot him with real bullets. But she couldn’t seem to think of even one at the moment. “Just step outside so we can talk. You can drink yourself under the table later.”

“Bar.”

It was her time to frown in confusion. “What?”

“Drink myself under the bar.” He thumped the polished surface for emphasis. “You called it a table.”

“No, I...” She drew a deep breath. “Whatever. Let’s go.”