inside.”
Rather than risk their lives or any innocent bystanders’ lives by confronting Vaughn at his house—where guns, drugs, lieutenants and a reputed fighting dog stayed—they’d wanted to arrest him when he slipped out to pay a nightly visit to one of his girlfriends. “You watch your back, Jack. Don’t take this guy on by yourself.”
“Too late for that.” Jack had been spying on Vaughn’s house, tracking his routine for weeks. The closest they could figure was that Vaughn was getting his drugs stashed inside one of the new vehicles that seemed to show up at his house about once a month. The plan had been to grab the man, grab the car, and break both down until NPD had the proof necessary to bring down one of the city’s biggest drug rings. But their precisely timed plan was turning into a flat-out road race. “You’re coming to save my ass, right?”
“We’re coming,” Eric assured him. “Let’s get moving. Now!” he shouted to the other team members who were closing in on Jack’s lead position.
Jack switched his radio to an all-call channel and reported his location. “Officer in pursuit. I could use some backup.”
Flying through intersections and leaving streetlights and startled drivers in the dust, Jack needed to think fast. He glanced at the name of a side street, pulled up a map inside his head. Hell, yes. Flexing his fingers around his truck’s taut leather steering-wheel cover, Jack took a deep, steadying breath…and jerked the wheel to the right. He cut through an alley, skidded around the corner and pressed on the gas, his eyes peeled for any sign of pedestrians or civilian vehicles as he zoomed ahead of Vaughn’s position on a less-populated parallel street. He couldn’t safely outrace Lorenzo Vaughn, but he could damn well outsmart him.
Spotting the cross street he wanted, Jack spun left. By the time his two left wheels hit the pavement again, he had his target in sight. He floored it. “Gotcha.”
Forty damn years old and Jack Riley could still play a gutsy game of chicken. Vaughn’s head turned. He saw the inevitable rushing toward him and Jack grinned. He was either going to turn Vaughn toward the highway entrance ramp or T-bone him.
Only Vaughn didn’t understand the rules of the game he was playing.
“Turn, you son of a bitch. Turn!”
Vaughn’s SUV loomed larger and larger. He was close enough to see Vaughn’s oh, shit expression now, close enough to count down the seconds until impact or victory, close enough to—
A blur of blue and red flashed through Jack’s peripheral vision. In the same instant a bold, taunting voice blared across his radio. “I’ve got this one, old man! Back off!”
A black-and-white unit whipped around the corner in front of him, almost clipping Jack’s right fender. Adrenaline whooshed out of his body as Jack stomped on the brakes to avoid the crash. “Shit. Billington!”
Vaughn jerked his vehicle to the left as Jack skidded through the intersection behind him. In the seconds it took Jack to regain control of his truck, Vaughn’s SUV and the black-and-white unit had careened onto the highway ramp. He was blocks behind the chase already. But Paul Billington kept his speed steady, falling into close pursuit.
He’d asked for backup, hadn’t he? But Jack had been looking for his seasoned drug enforcement team to show up and save the day—not this fast and furious wannabe who’d answered the call from street patrol.
Cursing the young hotshot, Jack closed the distance between them, slipping into the unfamiliar role of playing backup on the arrest he was supposed to have made. “Damn it, Billington!” Jack watched the black-and-white police car slide into position to tap the rear of Vaughn’s vehicle and slam him into a spinout. They were going too fast. Too damn fast. “Billington!”
The kid was cocky. Reckless.
Perfect.
In a matter of seconds, the perp’s car had rolled to a stop in the ditch and Billington was dragging a dazed Lorenzo Vaughn from behind his deflating air bag. Jack pulled up in front of the wreck and climbed out. “Nice driving,” Jack conceded. “I appreciate the help.”
“Happy to save your ass anytime, Grandpa.”
Damn schmuck.
With Eric Mesner and the rest of the team finally reaching the scene to set up traffic control around the accident, Jack lowered his voice and reprimanded the young officer for the unnecessary risk he’d taken upon himself. “Speeding through a residential neighborhood where collateral damage is a definite possibility is not the way to prove you’ve got the cajones to make the drug squad.”
Billington jerked Vaughn to his feet and turned him toward the black-and-white. “Back in the day, when you set the police course driving record I’ve been trying to break since my rookie year, you would have gotten the job done yourself instead of calling for backup and giving me a lecture. Maybe it’s time to step aside and let some new blood into vice.”
“Back in the day?” Jack winced at the mix of awe and sympathy in Billington’s tone. “I’m hardly ready to retire.”
“Oh, yeah?” Billington’s expression blazed with an arrogance all too reminiscent of Jack’s earlier days on the force. “Who just made this arrest?”
“Good work, buddy.” Eric Mesner patted his shoulder as Jack eased the tight clench of his fists. “It’s good to see that bastard finally going to jail.”
Nodding, Jack replayed the night’s events in his head, trying to figure out where he’d lost that half-second advantage to Vaughn—and Billington—and wondering just how many other young bloods in NPD had taken to calling him Old Man and Grandpa.
Eric nodded his approval to Billington as he closed the back door of the official vehicle on Lorenzo Vaughn. “I’ve got the rest of the team securing the Suburban. We’ll check the accessible places for any hidden drugs. Otherwise, it’ll be up to the lab to break it down. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to putting him in an interrogation room and finding out how he’s getting his supply into Nashville in the first place.”
“You still coming over to the house for barbecue tomorrow afternoon?” Eric switched topics as smoothly as Jack eased through the gears on his truck. “I figure it’ll be the last weekend we can be outside before the cooler weather sets in. The kids and the missus haven’t seen you for a while. Not since you and Rosie broke up.”
Hell. His ego was taking it in the shorts tonight. There was no woman at home for him anymore, waiting to listen to his troubles, willing to ease his doubts and frustrations with the lush warmth of her body. Jack’s live-in lover of over a year had moved out a month ago because her job offer in St. Louis had been more tempting than a marriage proposal from him.
He liked Eric’s kids, was godfather to his oldest son. Even Eric’s wife welcomed him like a long-lost brother. But he didn’t feel much like celebrating with the family right now. Jack turned and headed back to his truck. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?” Eric followed. “Hey. We got our guy. We’ll find where the cars and drugs are coming from. The rest will fall into place. We did good.”
“No, Eric, we sucked.” Jack pulled up and turned to his partner. “I sucked. If it wasn’t for Hotshot’s help back there, Vaughn would have gotten away. He could
