Deadly Promises (Tracers #2.5)(32)
“They know,” Vinny told her and held her firm in his grasp while she struggled and beat at his hands like a wild woman.
The gunshots stopped.
She held her breath, afraid to think of what had happened to Jeremy. Vinny wrapped a coat around her.
FBI and a SWAT team poured in from everywhere, swarming the building from all sides. New shots were fired inside but the battle was over in seconds.
An ambulance tore into the lot, spraying water off the tires.
Vinny tried to guide her away.
“No! I want to see Jeremy.” Her heart had shattered at Jeremy’s admission, but she had to know if he was alive. She gripped her hands together, praying for a miracle.
The EMTs stood ready. What the hell was taking the FBI so long? Jeremy could be bleeding to death if he’d been hit.
Special Agent Denton emerged from the back door. She hadn’t realized he was here. Denton waved the EMTs forward. “Interior is secured. We got one alive.”
She weaved on her feet as the EMTs disappeared into the building. Vinny wrapped his arm around her for support.
The rain subsided into a drizzle. Water mixed with tears that ran down her face.
When the EMTs rushed out with the gurney, her knees almost buckled at the site of an oxygen mask over Jeremy’s face. Blood spread across his chest from where he’d been shot in the shoulder.
She broke free of Vinny and ran to catch up with the gurney. Jeremy’s eyes were shut, his skin a blanched gray, but he was alive.
“I want to go with him,” she told the EMTs when they started to load him.
“You can’t, ma’am.”
“Why not?” She’d take on the whole lot of them, including the FBI and her brother, if she had to so she could stay with Jeremy.
Vinny was pulling her back again. “You can’t, sis.” He gave up when she wouldn’t move and said, “He’s under arrest.”
That’s when CeCe saw Jeremy’s wrist handcuffed to the rail on the gurney.
Vinny added, “But you’re free to go. I made a deal with the FBI.”
The EMTs loaded the gurney and closed the doors.
CeCe turned on Vinny, all the misery and hurt she’d kept bottled up today gushing out. She yelled, “He risked his life to save me. How could you throw him to them?”
Vinny sighed and leaned close to her, whispering, “It was Jeremy’s idea. He gave me the real photo card to trade for your freedom.”
Oh, dear God. Her brothers didn’t think any man was good enough for her, but she’d finally found a man she loved… and didn’t deserve.
And now she’d never see him again.
Eight
Jeremy pressed the button on his Bluetooth to engage the cell call while he drove along Dallas Highway, headed to his gym in Marietta. “What?”
“You’re a surly bastard this time in the morning,” Retter replied. “Get up on the wrong side of the bed?”
If he’d been in bed at all last night, Jeremy might have gotten up on the wrong side. But after being gone for over two weeks, he’d spent the first night at home rambling around like an abandoned dog dumped on the highway.
“I’ll be ready to work by the end of the week,” Jeremy told him rather than address Retter’s question.
“Joe wants you to put in some time in your gym for a couple weeks before you come back to active duty. Get that shoulder in shape. Besides, we’re not sure what we’re going to do with you now that the president personally cleared you from any trouble with the FBI. Not sure you’re of much value undercover in a prison. Too big a risk that someone inside a federal agency might slip and blow your cover.”
“I still have the best rap sheet on the team,” Jeremy argued, though his heart wasn’t in it. He’d done such an outstanding job for BAD he was their number one ex-con.
“Not any more.”
“What do you mean?”
“Joe got your entire rap sheet expunged in exchange for heading off an apocalypse in North America. We’re looking at moving you into coordinating short-term missions. Tee was actually the one who said you had enough holes in your body. She figured your warranty would run out with one more.”
“Tee?” Jeremy said, incredulous. Hard to imagine any sympathy from Joe’s codirector, who had ice in her veins and loved only her furry little mutt, Petey.
“Don’t take that to heart,” Retter cautioned. “She said at the cost of training new recruits she was just thinking of saving money.”
“That sounds more like her.” Jeremy couldn’t believe the irony in all this. Now he had no criminal record. Too bad it had come two weeks late.
As if CeCe hearing him admit that he knew Starface and had cut a deal with Sam the Man hadn’t been damning enough. From what Jeremy had been told later, CeCe had watched in horror as EMTs carried him off in handcuffs.
BAD had taken him to one of the agency’s safe houses in northern Georgia to heal once Jeremy was stable enough to be moved from Piedmont Hospital. He’d assumed Joe and Retter had worked some magic to free him but never expected to have a clean record. They’d sent a medical team to oversee his recuperation from then until he’d been released to come home yesterday.
Clean bill of health. No criminal record. Just an average guy for once and unable to have the only woman he wanted. Vinny had made it clear that his family would protect CeCe from danger, even her own bad decisions.