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    Accidental Hero
    Accidental Hero
    Accidental Hero
    Ebook213 pages2 hours

    Accidental Hero

    By RJ Scott

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    About this ebook

    Chicago Cop Simon Grant and Sanctuary operative Cain Brodie, have to be the heroes of their own stories, just to stay alive.

    Everyone wants Chicago cop, Simon Grant, dead. Armed with an address, he is on the run and heading for Sanctuary, only to end up at the wrong end of a gun. Is it possible the tall amber-eyed man holding the gun is going to be able to help him?

    Cain Brodie is in charge of Sanctuary’s new Chicago office, C-Tower. His well-organized administration day takes an unexpected turn when he has a man wanted for murder right in his gun sights. Thrust into a situation he has no control over suddenly he needs to be the one in control.

    Accidental or not, Simon and Cain have to be the heroes of their own stories, just to stay alive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRJ Scott
    Release dateNov 20, 2015
    ISBN9781785640292
    Accidental Hero
    Author

    RJ Scott

    RJ Scott is the author of the best selling Male/Male romances The Christmas Throwaway, The Heart Of Texas and the Sanctuary Series of books.She writes romances between two strong men and always gives them the happy ever after they deserve.

    Read more from Rj Scott

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      Book preview

      Accidental Hero - RJ Scott

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      Chapter One

      Everyone wants us dead.

      Cops. The entire Drugs & Gangs team. Varga. Any of them, all of them, they all want us gone.

      Simon Grant crab-walked backward, reaching the wall and curling his knees up so that he was as far away from the body as possible. Blood pooled in a macabre circle of scarlet, spreading almost to his feet. What was left of Jamie Harrington’s face was toward him, and Simon couldn’t look. He closed his eyes tight, aware the sight of broken skin and shattered bone would never leave his memory.

      I’m telling you, we should talk to someone outside the precinct.

      The last words Jamie had said just a day before. Mere hours before Simon had found this tableau of blood and gore, laid out before him.

      A noise had him plastering himself against the wall, belatedly realizing it was he himself who had made the sound, halfway between a groan and a keen of denial. Horror had nausea rising and he tried to breathe to calm his gorge, but all he could smell was cordite and blood.

      I should have— not said a fucking thing to anyone. Simon finished the harsh words that had begun out loud and ended inside, where he knew he would keep them forever.

      He pushed his hand through his hair, anchoring his fingers in the length of it, blood smearing his skin. Then he crawled over, the wetness of blood soaking his pants, and felt for a pulse.

      Jamie had half his face missing, his dark hair and skull matted, and one of his eyes blasted away… no face.

      He’s gone, and I checked for a fucking pulse.

      Simon froze in place. A gun lay in the blood, obscenely black against the red, just inches from Jamie’s outstretched hand as if he’d been reaching for it, looking up at his attacker and hoping to hell he reached the police-issue gun before he was killed. Why had it been left?

      For fuck’s sake, think. Analyze the situation.

      Was Simon supposed to pick it up, put his prints all over it? Was the killer watching, waiting for him to fuck up, waiting for him to be blamed for the death of his partner?

      He had to box away the horror, push aside the shock and grief, and think.

      He counted down from five and considered what next. The apartment was on the second floor. Whoever did this could be waiting or coming for him next; there was a gun in the blood, and Jamie was dead. What if it wasn’t Jamie’s gun? Simon looked around the otherwise spotless room, grabbed the nearest bag he could see—a brown grocery bag—upending it. The apples and cans inside spilled into the scarlet on the wooden floor. Had Jamie been out shopping? Did his murderer follow him home?

      Just to one side, a bouquet of red roses lay half in and half out of the pool of blood. The white paper they were wrapped in had darkened in places; petals lay on the ground, weighed down by blood.

      Simon used the grocery bag to pick up the gun. Long strings of sticky scarlet linked the gun to the floor for a moment and Simon pushed back sickness again. He’d seen death before, but never one that hit so close to home.

      He turned his head to get some fresh air from the open window.

      The sound of sirens closing in was enough to have him leaving the apartment, turning left instead of right, moving to the back of the building and the way he knew he would be able to get out. Going up instead of down, he made it to the roof in record time, only a little winded. The gun was in the bag, pushed firmly into a pocket of his jacket.

      He stepped back right near the edge and centered himself. Counting in his head again, he sprinted toward the next building and jumped the six-foot gap, landing and rolling onto solid roofing on the other side. He fell heavily on the gun, shoving it into his ribs, but he’d made it across and that was no mean feat.

      The exit plan had been formed amid teasing and laughter over beers at Jamie’s last get-together for colleagues, on that clear Chicago night.

      You’ll never make it across, Jamie had said on a belch. Your short ass and stubby legs will have you tumbling into the alley. You’ll end up in a dumpster, and don’t think anyone’ll come get your stinking body.

      Simon had shoved him. Five ten is not short, asshole.

      I can’t think of Jamie now. I made it over.

      He looked around for somewhere to hide the gun. No way was he getting caught with it. He shoved it into the air intake, pushed it a long way back to a small shelf area. Done.

      Why am I even keeping it?

      Because there may be other prints, or a trace, or something, he answered his own question. If it isn’t Jamie’s gun, we might be able to….

      To what? Why did you take it? Are you stupid? You took evidence?

      With stealth he made his way across the roof and to the stairs, taking them three at a time and landing lightly on the first floor. From there he took a joining walkway to yet another apartment block and finally left that by using the fire escape, stopping only to scrub his face to clear away any blood. Finally he joined the crowds walking the sidewalk with purpose. They parted before him, some acknowledging him with nods, others bypassing him, and some shooting him guilty looks. A couple cursed him as he walked against the flow, but no one stopped him. No one shot at him, no one shouted. There was no recognition of who he was inside the uniform.

      He was just another Chicago cop on the beat. Nothing to stand out. As long as he walked steadily and with resolution and didn’t break out into a panicked run, no one would look twice past the badge.

      At soon as he could, he stepped into business premises—a coffee shop. He went straight to the bathroom, washed his face and his hands properly, then looked critically at his uniform. There was blood there—Jamie’s blood—but the dark blue of the uniform was enough to cover it. He pulled out his cell and stared at it for the longest time. It was nothing special, but it had all his numbers in there. Including Elliot’s. It also had a GPS chip that could be traced. No way was he calling anyone or reaching out.

      He fingered the card in his pocket.

      Here, if you need anything…

      Elliot had told both him and Jamie. Promised them a place where they could get help. Even at that moment Simon had placed his faith squarely in the cops he served with, Jamie as well.

      This is bigger than just you two, Elliot told them.

      Deliberately, Simon placed his phone behind the tank of the first toilet stall. If this were bigger, if he and Jamie had landed in shit so deep he wouldn’t be able to dig himself out, then he wasn’t going to be found because of his cell.

      He left the café, turned right, and walked. He kept off the main thoroughfares, his focus entirely on one address—the place where people would help him.

      No one will help you if there’s a Be on the lookout for you like a fucking murder suspect.

      He had to expect the worst: that this was some kind of setup.

      Calm. Just be calm. This can’t get any worse.

      A cop car sped past the end of the next road. Simon didn’t react by running or stopping, but neither did he hesitate. He stayed close to shop fronts and even exchanged pleasantries about the lack of snow on this Chicago November day with a couple of shop owners. He didn’t stop to talk for long; he kept his cap tilted over his face and walked. Ten blocks, fifteen… by now someone could have found Jamie, and was he next?

      Simon glanced behind himself as he approached a crossing, his senses prickling with the idea he was being followed. Scanning the people around him, there was nothing. Just a few curious glances. One tourist even snapped a photo of him on her cell phone, shouting to her husband that she’d got one of a Chicago cop. He had ducked his head and turned sharply when he saw this, then crossed as soon as the lights changed.

      When he passed through an alley between two old-style buildings, he relaxed a little. Only so he could refocus on where he was heading, but it was enough to have him thinking the bad thoughts that spun inside him.

      Who killed Jamie? The cops? Or Varga? Who the fuck knows what’s going on?

      He stumbled to a stop at the end of the alley as it opened to the plaza in front of a tower. He didn’t need the card to know the address. And this was it. Fifty or so floors with a glass frontage and in there, somewhere, was a place that could help him. He waited for the longest time, wondering how the hell he was going to get inside and make it look like he was meant to be there.

      He didn’t want to be the cop that everyone remembered because Jamie’s death was pinned on him.

      Only one of you has to die to keep the other quiet.

      Simon bent at the waist, hands on his knees as the remembered words hit him hard. When Lewis Varga said that, he had been behind glass, posturing, threatening all kinds of shit, Simon had laughed it off as the bad guy exposition. So, Jamie wasn’t that impressed with it and Varga scared him, but what damage could Varga do in three days, locked away and waiting for trial?

      A flash of light on glass caught Simon’s eye and the sleek form of a blood-red Ferrari stopped at the security barriers. An arm appeared out of the window and pressed buttons. The car was no more than fifty feet from Simon.

      With sudden inspiration, he walked briskly across the last bit of the plaza, past the small hot dog stand, and ended up sauntering down the secure entry to the car park as if that was his only purpose in life and he was meant to be there. He slipped in through the closing gates and checked the location of the security camera—an old model that pointed past the gates and to the road outside. The Ferrari circled the first floor, then slipped into a reserved space. Whoever drove that beauty must have been rich enough to own a Ferrari in the first place and to have a reserved spot right near the entrance of the parking garage.

      Simon stayed behind the pillar. There was a short walk between him and the elevators, which had a keypad on one side.

      There has to be a better way. Just go to reception and ask, for fuck’s sake. Turn yourself into someone you can trust at the station. There has to be someone who can tell us how to get to these Sanctuary people. He could almost hear Jamie’s voice word for word.

      If only Simon trusted any cops at all. With the whispers and the messages and the colleagues turning away, how could he put his trust in that institution now? The same people he’d have given his life for before this.

      How could he trust that was supposed to be separate from the law? The one company that could somehow be the magic answer to the fear Jamie showed in his eyes.

      I’m telling you, they tried to run me off the road, Jamie had said.

      Simon hadn’t believed his friend, or at least he’d consigned it to paranoia. Yes, there was harassment for what they’d done, but nothing they couldn’t just ignore until it died a death.

      The slam of a door and footsteps had the driver of the car walking his way.

      Nik said he’d cover seven, but he’s in Chicago today. … Just today. … Kayden is backing him up. … It’s a medical issue. … I’ll check in with Manny. The footsteps grew nearer. Okay, we’ll open up S19. I got that. … Yeah. … Bye.

      Just before the guy reached the pillar, Simon sauntered out as if his being there was normal, an occurrence that had purpose. He exchanged polite nods with the driver and followed him to the elevator.

      Officer, the driver said with an incline of his head.

      He was tall and slim, blond hair in perfect loose waves, and his eyes, a curious shade of amber, held a focus that zeroed in on Simon with keen attention. His suit was dark gray and probably cost more than Simon made in a year; the collar loose on his white shirt, with no tie. He was cute and preppy, and from the way his eyes lit at Simon’s minute observation, he was checking Simon out.

      Awkward.

      Awkward that he did that, and awkward that I know exactly what he was doing.

      And wrong. Because Jamie is dead, and this

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