The Hard Way
Part I
Will
I Miss you, Please come home.
Emily
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Will
Come home? Please?
Em
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W.
Please?
E.
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Each was three weeks apart, each from a different
location. Will was worried, but he knew there was nothing he could do.
She had to find her own way, and he knew it.
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Detective Ramirez looked aside at the woman
rifling through the desk next to his. She was new to the department,
Emily Heart. She had taken over the “commandos” as they were known.
They were the unit called in to do busts, mainly on the drug rings Ramirez
himself investigated. He knew the department had a fancy name for them,
but they had been called the commandos for as long as he had been working
in the Miami police department.
She was a petite woman, almost delicate looking.
Short white blonde hair framed her face in a pixie style. Her skin was
a dark tan that indicated the blonde hair had help from a dye bottle.
Her short sleeves showed a network of scars on her arms. Rumor from
the ladies’ locker room had those scars continuing all over her body.
Many made the mistake of underestimating her, most only had the chance to
make that mistake once.
She caught his eye, and nodded. He nodded
in reply. He fully admitted that she made him uneasy, but she was good at
what she did. She had been here for only six months, but in that time
had shaped the commandos up to an effective unit, and had not lost a person
yet. That was unheard of.
She had found the forms she needed, and was
heading back to the office when a man walked in. He was tall, over six
feet, with shoulder length brown hair and a lean face to match the whipcord
body. He smiled lazily at Emily, and grinned. “You have been on
the move, cheri, it was not easy to find you.” She scowled, and
replied, “Feel free to lose me again.” She headed for her office.
He began to follow, and was stopped by Detective Ramirez. Emily waved
him down. “It’s okay, he doesn’t mean me any harm.” The man followed
Emily into her office as she closed the door, cutting off the rest of the
conversation to other’s ears.
She rounded on him angrily. “Why the
hell are you following me?”
“Would you believe it is because I love you?”
She snorted. “Of course not.”
“Then I have no answer for you.”
He dropped a box on her desk. Shaking
his head he took his jacket and slipped it on before heading out. He didn't
get more then a few steps before another one of Emily's 'Temper Tantrums'
hit him like a bolt out of the blue. He didn’t even hear what she was
saying; the shrill sound of her alone hurt his ears. It was the voice
of a child, lost and hurting.
“I would help you, if you would let me”; he
said softly, as he left her office.
She sat down abruptly, her head in her hands.
She spied the box on her desk, and grabbed it up, ready to fling it out the
door after him. Curiosity won out however, and she opened the box.
Inside lay a lovely blown glass rose, its petals resembling ice blue flames.
“For my fire rose.” Read the note inside. First she was shocked.
How did he know she collected blown glass? Then anger at his presumptive
note. She was not his ANYTHING! She filled out the necessary p[paperwork
for the last raid her team had done, and left for the day. As usual
no one spoke to her on her way out, but today they were all looking at her
from under their lashes. She gave a silent snarl as she left the office.
Emily dropped her gym bag on the floor of
her third story apartment. Her workout had been strenuous, but it served
the purpose of calming her nerves. Seeing Johnny again had rattled her,
as much as she hated to admit it. She went over to her refrigerator,
pulling out the leftovers from last night. Chicken and green beans again
sounded fine to her, she was not in the mood to cook. She sat down
on the room’s single chair to eat her dinner after nuking it, brooding.
How had Johnny found her? She mentally cataloged the cities she had
been through in the past several months. Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas,
New York, Atlanta, Memphis, Las Vegas, Topeka, Oklahoma City, Chicago, and
a few more that she didn’t even remember anymore. She was a nationally
licensed officer, and a damn good technician, it was easy for her to slip
in, help solve the problem they had, and breeze back out again before they
could ask anything more of her; all within a month. She had been her
for six months now, mainly because the department was so demoralized, and
the drug ring they were trying to break was well entrenched. She wouldn’t
leave until it was cracked.
She looked around her to the plain apartment.
It was painted in the neutral colors that all apartment were, the only decorations
being the glass ornaments she had collected over the years, and a large bottle
of rum someone had given her right after she moved here. Most of the
pieces were gifts from her parents or Will over the years, but a few had come
from others. There was the dolphin from Aurora; the leaping stag from
Jonathan right after the Hawk team had been formed. Then there was
the soaring eagle sent to her from Krys and Mike two years ago, she still
didn’t understand that one. She shook her head, and decided to call
it and early night, washing off her dishes, and leaving them to drain overnight.
The next few weeks were calm from her end,
she spent most of her time repairing and updating the unit’s equipment.
The weapons and equipment stores were in shockingly dilapidated condition,
no wonder so many officers had died before she got here! As usual, no
one tried to engage her in conversation. They did not bother trying
to hold up any illusions that they liked her, and that was just fine by Emily.
Johnny called on her frequently, which usually
ended in a shouting match. Well, her shouting anyway, he never seemed
to lose his calm, which only infuriated her more. There was also the
fact that he broke into her office at least twice, as evidenced by the blue
flame glass roses he left. But he never broke into her home, she always
wondered why, but would never admit that curiosity to him.
A shadow fell over her, breaking her musings.
Detective Ramirez stood over her, a tight grin on his face. She put
aside her work. “What is it?”
“A break, captain.” He replied, “We know where
Snake is hiding.”
“Snake?” she asked, “You’re sure it’s him.”
Snake was the kingpin of the Miami drug trade. Arresting him would effectively
break the ring.
“It’s him.” Ramirez replied. He seemed
to be tense, on edge, as it were.
In less than twenty minutes, she had her team
assembled. There were twenty of them total, plus Detective Ramirez,
and two other detectives she didn’t know. They were introduced as Jamil
Walker and Fred Barnes.
“Okay, you two,” she said as she handed them
Kevlar vests, “keep low. We don’t really know what kind of firepower
they have, but I’m willing to bet it’s as good as, if not better, than ours.”
All three nodded to her seriously.
The ride over to the industrial section of
town was silent. It was dusk, a chancy time to do a raid, but they were
fighting time. It would not take long for Snake informants to tell
him that this location had been found out. Normally Emily would have
delayed, but she knew they only had this one chance.
They reached the warehouse, and Emily deployed
her squad. She and the other two good lock pickers covered the entrances,
silently opening the locked doors. This normally would have been taboo,
but they all knew better. These people would come out dead or not at
all. It was Emily’s job to make sure they came out dead.
They silently deployed around the dark single
story warehouse. , There were no upper levels. Good, she thought, that
makes things easier for us. Then she heard a click, and the lights blazed
on. Damn, they were too late; the informants had made it here first.
There was no time to think. She stood up from the crouch
she was in, and swept the room with bullets. “Get out!” she shouted
at the top of her lungs as the gang members ducked her bullet spray.
She saw bodies scrambling as her team made for the exits, stopping only to
fire at the gang members to give themselves time.
Emily continued to provide covering fire,
pulling out a second gun when the first gave out. She saw her team
edge for the doors, and slowly backed up, trusting her team to cover her
back if any of the gang had maneuvered behind her. Just as she reached
the door, she saw one of her team fall. It was Diordes, the newest
member of her team, a kid, barely out of his teens. She didn’t think
twice, she ran out, grabbed him with one hand, continuing to fire with the
other. She made her way back to the door, bullets flying over her shoulders
telling her that her team was covering for her. She shoved Diordes
out the door into the team’s hands, and then turned for one last sweep of
the room to make sure the other shad made it out. That was when she
saw him. He was a massive man, all muscle, no fat, with gleaming gold
skin that framed the large snake tattoo that wound down his chest.
His bald head gleamed in the harsh light of the warehouse. Time slowed
to a crawl as she aimed and fired; saw him aim a rifle at her, and then she
felt a wrenching pain as her world went black.
Continued in part 2
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