Target in Range (Ranger Ops Book 5) Read online

  He has a weapon.

  She pulled her own.

  His eyes were wild.

  He made a sharp move, and Avery took the shot.

  Without blinking. Without thinking.

  Inside the truck, the woman shrieked and then jumped out. “You shot him! You shot my boyfriend!”

  Avery reached for her cell to call for that backup—something she should have done before running to the scene.

  Adrenaline coursed through her, but she kept her tone calm as she placed the call for the police and medical rescue.

  The woman hovered over her man, crying through her eye that was swelling shut, screaming for him to get up and they could just go home and work things out.

  “Lady, let me see if I can help him.” Avery dropped to her knees, scanning the shadows for sight of the weapon he’d been about to pull on her.

  “You shot him! You can’t help him now!”

  Avery placed a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back so she could inspect the man.

  Her shot was true. She registered this in a detached way, her stomach stone cold as she saw the blood on the man had slowed to a trickle. He was still alive, but just barely clinging on.

  In the distance, the wail of sirens signaled a rapid approach. Avery reached for the man, and the woman threw her body across him. With a calm she mustered from a deep well, Avery touched the woman’s shoulder again gently. “Honey, let me see if I can help your boyfriend. The ambulance is on its way, and we’ll get you checked out too.”

  “I don’t need any help! Bobby! Bobby, are you okay? Get up and we’ll go home, baby.”

  The initial punch of adrenaline was fading, leaving behind the emotion Avery hated dealing with after an altercation.

  Right now, she needed to find that weapon and get it away from the man in case he roused enough energy to take a shot at her—or his girlfriend did.

  Pushing the woman back again, Avery felt the man’s sides. Nothing. Maybe the gun was underneath him. He’d fallen on it.

  Careful not to move him, she risked running her fingers under his sides.

  The sirens grew louder, and the flashing lights hit the asphalt. Avery reached for the man’s neck to feel for a pulse. It was there, though faint, just the slightest tremor beneath her fingertips.

  “My boyfriend! Help my boyfriend! She shot him!”

  Avery’s heart gave a hard lurch against her ribs, and a sickening dread spread through her. What if there wasn’t a gun under the assailant?

  But no—he’d made a move for it. She’d done what any officer would have done. Her training had kicked in, and she’d only protected herself and possibly the girlfriend.

  “Please move aside.” The medics were on the scene and in her face.

  One of the beat cops she knew pretty well was right behind. He took a good look at her face and said, “Jesus, Aarons. What happened?”

  Relief washed through her, and she found her brass balls once again. “There was a domestic. He was throwing her around and hit her.”

  “You’re off duty.”

  “Yes.”

  “Before you move that man, I need to take photos,” her fellow officer, Feeland, said to the medics.

  “You’re going to have to take them while we administer CPR.” They were already going at it, performing chest compressions and rescue breathing with the bag.

  Avery looked away, the bile rising to tickle the back of her throat.

  Someone had their arm around the girlfriend, leading her away from the scene, and she realized it was Feeland’s partner, Callahan.

  Everything around her seemed to be moving in slow motion, even the lights from the vehicles swirling across the parking lot.

  “What the hell were you doing here, Aarons?” Feeland barked out.

  “Getting groceries. My car’s parked over there.” She waved a hand, and he followed the path. “I heard them arguing and saw him shove her against the truck. Then he hit her, and I ran toward them to put a stop to it.”

  “And you shot an unarmed man.”

  She blinked. “I shot a man after he went for his weapon.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s unarmed.”

  Jesus Christ.

  It had finally happened.

  What she’d feared from the very start of her career in law enforcement. She had finally allowed her own personal experiences—the home robbery when she was a child and the campus attack that had left her bruised and bleeding, but not raped, thank God—to overwhelm her choices.

  No, that wasn’t true. She shoved back at the thoughts rushing her mind, piling up like an accident on the interstate. She had acted out of necessity.

  “He went for his weapon.”

  “He’s not armed,” Feeland told her again.

  “He reached for his waistband.”

  Feeland’s eyes took on an expression of understanding. “Yeah, I’ve seen that myself a time or two. Shit, Aarons. You couldn’t have been in a worse part of the parking lot. I’m not sure the cameras even reach this far. If there’s footage at all, it’s going to be crap. Come back to the station with me. We need to tell your side of the story.”

  A second and third cruiser arrived on the scene, and while they handled the details of the shooting as well as the girlfriend, Avery went with Feeland and Callahan. Sitting in the back of the cruiser was strange enough without knowing what was coming.

  She was an off-duty cop who’d just shot an unarmed man. The press would have a heyday with this, and she’d seen officers suspended for stupider things.

  A report came through the radio.

  “Fuck. The guy just coded on the way to the hospital,” Callahan said from the passenger’s seat. He threw her a look over his shoulder.

  She dropped her face into her hands and tried to keep breathing. Her world might be crashing down, but she had just cause, a reason to discharge her weapon. Any officer in the city would have done the same.

  Her mind rolled back the years to her childhood. That feeling of helplessness and terror when the robbers had entered her home had lived with her a long time. Even after a year of counseling, she’d still relived the event in dreams.

  Then in college, walking home after a late class, she’d been attacked. The guy was big, heavy, and stunk of pot and beer. As he’d pushed his way between her legs and tore her pants downward, she’d gotten a hand free from his grip long enough to stab him with her pen.

  She’d dragged herself off the ground and run for her life. They’d never found her attacker, but no big surprise there. Nobody showed up at the campus medical station for treatment of a stab wound administered by a pen.

  But from that day forward, Avery’s path in life had changed. She dumped her communications major and took up police science. She’d joined the ROTC and learned everything she could about self-protection and overpowering somebody larger than her.

  She would not be a victim again.

  Now, she’d dropped right back in that damn place… she was the girl with no hope. They’d strip her badge.

  No, she couldn’t believe that—wouldn’t. Her chief would stand up for her, and so would her partner Reggie. She had people on her side, and there would be camera footage from the grocery store. Even if it was dim, there were ways to improve the quality and make out things, such as a man going for his waistband.

  Dammit. She could have sworn he was reaching for a weapon. Anybody would, she told herself again.

  Two hours later, she was informed that the victim was stabilized and his girlfriend taken to a center for domestic abuse.

  Lines bracketed the chief’s mouth when he took Avery’s badge and suspended her for thirty days barring an internal review.

  Her perfect takedown record was lost, relinquished to an officer nobody seemed to like, not that it was a popularity contest. Still, it stung her even more to know one split second had dropped her several rungs in the ladder she’d fought so hard to climb.

  When she was driven back to her car at the groc
ery store, she found her frozen items had melted all over the seat. The perfect end to her day.

  Chapter Two

  Jess got out of his truck, rubbing at the stiff muscles in the back of his neck, trying to loosen them. Knotted from being hunched over in his desk chair, listening intently to hours of phone conversations between Moreno and half a dozen other men, his body wasn’t letting Jess forget the abuse it’d suffered. At least the ribs were healing.

  He was also dragging from little sleep—again. The story of his life these days. He couldn’t remember a time he woke feeling rested. His easy, breezy carefree days had vanished the minute he became a state trooper years ago. Then came the Texas Rangers, a short-lived stint he’d enjoyed very much. And finally, being recruited to the Ranger Ops team.

  With each position, his stress doubled at the very least. Some days it was a hell of a lot more than double. He was well aware he’d lost that ephemeral balance in his life with work owning him more and more. He just had no damn clue how to remedy it.

  Part of him said all he needed was a beautiful woman in his bed, but that would only end in more stress if he liked her, because it meant she’d break it off, and he’d be stuck feeling like an ass all over again.

  Pushing out a sigh, he entered the door of the fire station where the CPR course was taking place. He could think of at least five other things he should be doing right now. Hell, he’d prefer dealing with the heap of smelly laundry in the corner of his bedroom to being certified in CPR for what—the tenth time? If only these people knew he’d performed it just last week to save a shooting victim, they’d sign the certificate and let Jess walk out the door.

  He scanned the room and held back another sigh.

  Yeah, typical class, right down to the small table set up in the corner. Afterward, cups of semi-warm juice and a platter of cookies would appear there.

  He didn’t release the sigh lingering at the back of his throat, because at that moment, an old buddy of his walked up and held out a hand.

  “Missouri,” Jess said with real affection for the guy who’d been on more than one accident scene with him back in the day. He gripped his hand.

  “Jess, you son-of-a-bitch. Haven’t seen you for ages. Where ya been?” Missouri wasn’t his real name, but Jess’s brain was too foggy to recall his real one.

  “You know—just work and more work.”

  “Yeah, I do know. I was out till 4:00 a.m. on a three-alarm night before last. Still haven’t caught up on sleep.”

  “Know the feeling.”

  The woman leading the class spoke from the front of the room, gaining their attention. As people parted from their small conversation groups, Jess caught sight of a woman. Warm brown hair tied back at the nape, the ends curling between her shoulder blades.

  She was fit, with muscular thighs and an ass you could bounce the proverbial quarter off—though he could think of a few other things he’d prefer to bounce off it. And those black stretchy pants must have been made by a man, because only somebody who could appreciate how a woman looked in them could have designed such a thing.

  She turned her head a bit, giving him a hint of her cheekbone and jaw. Not enough to say her face was just as attractive as the rest of her body, but enough to gain Jess’s interest.

  With half an ear on the speaker, he continued to study her. She had a way of standing—legs braced apart—that placed her, in his mind, as a woman who was ready for action. He was betting on her being a warden at the women’s prison.

  As he looked on, she brushed a tendril of hair back to reveal the shell of her ear, sporting a tiny silver hoop.

  His stare latched onto it.

  Suddenly, everybody was splitting into groups, and Jess jolted. Missouri nudged him. “Zoned out a minute there, didn’t ya?”

  “Musta,” he answered.

  The rescue dummies were stacked in a corner, and everyone started pulling them down and laying them out on the floor. When the woman reached for one, Jess admired the way her thigh muscles tensed in those pants. Then she turned with the dummy in her arms, and he got a look at her face.

  Eyes on his, deep brown and almond-shaped, her nose a perfect upturned button and lips so full all he could think about was how she’d use them.

  She dropped her gaze and moved to lay out the dummy in a spot toward the back of the room.

  He followed her. “Mind if we partner up?” he asked.

  “Suit yourself.” She lifted a shoulder and let it fall in a nonchalant shrug that would have him backing off in a hurry any other time. But for whatever reason, he didn’t care if she tried to blow him off. He just wanted to spend an hour watching her.

  They knelt on the floor over their dummy, and the instructor droned on about what to do if they came across a person who was unconscious.

  “I’m Jess Monet,” he said, low.

  She gave him a look, one he’d be tempted to peg as disinterested, unfeeling even. But as he scanned her posture more closely, what he sensed was calm as she answered with, “Avery Aarons.”

  Oh shit. He knew that name. She’d been in the newspaper recently. She was the cop who’d been suspended pending internal review due to shooting a man who was beating up his girlfriend in a grocery store parking lot. Of course, the man’s family was pressing charges, because he was still in critical condition, days after the event.

  Her shot had been perfectly placed.

  All this ran through his mind in a blink, and he kept it off his face. “Nice to meet you.”

  She didn’t respond, just eyed him before turning her attention to the instructor.

  Jess hated to see her go down for doing her job, even if she had been off duty, but unfortunately it was a hazard of walking the beat. You got yourself into dirty shit, were in the wrong place at the wrong time, without backup and stuck making your own judgment call. Sometimes it backfired on you.

  “You check your victim to see if he’s choking,” the instructor said. They watched a quick video on it, and then they were told to check their own victim.

  Avery’s stare centered on Jess. “You want to check first?”

  “Sure.”

  He made an automatic sweep of the dummy, his awareness on Avery. She tucked a hair behind her ear again, and damn if he wasn’t thinking about batting that little silver hoop with his tongue.

  His jeans were becoming a bit tight in his kneeling position, and he shifted to ease himself.

  When he was finished checking the dummy, he sat back on his haunches. “Your turn.”

  Avery’s ponytail swung forward over her shoulder as she bent to listen for breaths and felt for a pulse.

  The class continued on, with them learning the basics for recertification. Jess was glad he could do this in his sleep, because it afforded him time to study Avery.

  “So you come here often?” he asked as an icebreaker joke.

  She looked up and gave him a ghost of a smile. “Every so often,” she responded.

  “Me too. What a coincidence.”

  Her smile stretched and then fell away as she did what the instructor asked of them. They were shown another video on the number of breaths to administer in ratio to chest compressions. When it was their turn to try the skill, he gave Avery a wave.

  “You go on.”

  She maneuvered into position, and the instructor appeared next to them. “Can you tell me the steps before you begin?” she asked Avery.

  She glanced up, her pretty face blank. Just as quickly as she seemed to forget, she remembered what to do.

  “First you recognize the emergency.” She tapped on the victim and shouted for him to respond.

  The instructor nodded.

  “Then you call EMS. After that, you…”

  A long second passed. She threw a look at Jess. The moment stretched on with Jess excruciatingly aware of Avery’s nerves hitting full force. Whether it was being put on the spot or the ordeal she was going through at work with the investigation, he didn’t know, but his inner
rescuer kicked in.

  He caught her eye and took an exaggerated breath, making sure his chest rose and fell for her to see.

  “You check for breathing,” she said, color flooding her cheeks.

  “Good, keep going with that.” The instructor moved away to the next party.

  “Oh God,” Avery said, face blanching white now. “Thank you for reminding me of the order. I completely blanked out there for a second.”

  “It happens. You all right? Want to grab a drink of water or something?”

  “Do they have water?”

  “It’s a fire station—they’ve gotta have some, right?”

  His flippant remark made her chuckle, and suddenly the color was normal in her face again. He smiled at her, and she continued the steps, executing them perfectly.

  When it came time for her to perform rescue breathing, his stare lingered agonizingly on her lips pressed over the dummy’s. Those two breaths she delivered had never looked so hot from any of his other partners.

  Damn. That’s one lucky dummy.

  * * * * *

  Avery’s brain had turned into a traffic jam. Packed with the language of the investigation and the questions she was still trying to find answers to. Remembering the steps of CPR was the furthest thing from her mind.

  Then add in a hot man sitting a foot away from her, watching her every move, and she could hardly think straight.

  Jess—even his name was hot. All lean muscle and bulky shoulders, he definitely fit the image of a firefighter or some similar profession. The black shirt he wore lent him a more dangerous look, as if the shadow darkening his chiseled jaw wasn’t enough. He wore a gold cross around his neck. And his jeans straining across carved thighs was… distracting to say the least.

  More thoughts piling up in her brain.

  Noticing guys wasn’t a thing for her, because in general, men were just buddies.

  Of course, she’d never run across a guy who looked like Jess.

  Clearly, her review needed to be resolved fast so she could return to work.

  She shot Jess a look. Damn, he really was good-looking and not in one of those muscle-bound jerk ways.