Bonaparte's Belle: A SEALs of Honor World Novel (Heroes for Hire Book 24), Dale Mayer [read an ebook week .TXT] 📗

“Do you think he’ll try the same thing?” Angela asked.

“He’s not fast enough,” Bonaparte said calmly. Sure enough, the Hummer tried to pull off to the side, and Bonaparte just pulled off at the same time. When the Hummer pulled back onto the road and tried to go to the opposite side, Bonaparte followed him. She wanted to laugh because it’s exactly what the Hummer was trying to do to them. But, in this case, the rattler got rattled. “He’s likely to just drive home to his house.”

“And that’s fine,” he said calmly. “We’ve got one weapon, and I’ve got a job to do at home to find those bullets. But, in the meantime, I’m not interested in being somebody’s prey.”

“We’ll just piss him off,” she said.

“If we piss him off, he’ll do something fast and stupid.”

“You mean, more stupid,” she said. “They’ve always been just at the edge of the law. Nobody ever really crosses the line, so I can’t do much.”

“Yeah, you get guys like that sometimes, who know exactly what they’re doing.”

“And it’s irritating,” she said, “because I know that the rest of the town is looking at me to do something, to stay out of it and leave them alone, or to throw in the towel and walk away.”

“Not your style,” he said calmly.

“No, it sure isn’t,” she said, loving that he actually got it.

“Besides,” he murmured, “I’m not into letting assholes take over a place like this and do stuff like that. It’s not cool.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s cool or not,” she said. “Money can buy quite a lot of leeway.”

“It does, and too often guys like this get away with that crap, but we won’t let them.”

Her emotions were bolstered immediately at his positive tone. “I wonder how long you’re planning on staying then?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.

He looked at her in surprise. “How long do you think this will take?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, studying him. “Depends what game plan you have.”

“You see? That’s the problem. We don’t have one yet,” he said. “We’re still getting our defenses going and figuring out just what we do have for a plan.”

“You mean, options,” she said, with a shrug.

“We need more history on these guys, so I’m waiting for Levi to get back to us on that.”

“I’ve asked him for a bunch of information too,” she said. “And I’ve talked to a couple of my bosses. Just to see what options I have.”

“Do you have bosses?”

She shrugged. “Really the people are my boss because I’m voted in, and I can get voted out, but it’s more than that. There are laws that these assholes aren’t allowed to cross.”

“But they’ve already crossed them, haven’t they?”

She nodded. “They have, yes, but I have nothing to pick them up for, as I have no proof.”

“And, if you did pick them up, you couldn’t keep them, and all it will do is cause trouble and make it look like you’re weak and inefficient.”

“Which is what they’re already doing,” she admitted.

“Right, because you don’t have a good legal leg to take a stand against them.”

“Well, I should be able to, but again I don’t have any real reason, outside of making it look like I’m hassling them.”

“Got it,” he said.

“Have you got a siren on this thing?”

“I sure do. Why?”

“Because he’s missing a taillight. That should be plenty of grounds for pulling him over.”

At that, he reached over, hit the siren, and sped up, putting pressure on the Hummer to either pull off to the side of the road or try to escape. And, sure enough, he stepped on the gas and took off.

“Wow,” she said, “I didn’t think he would run.”

“And the fact that he is makes me very curious as to why,” he said, stepping on the gas. “Well, this old girl’s still got some juice in her,” he remarked, as they were able to quickly catch up to the Hummer.

“That she does,” she said. He kept on driving behind the Hummer, staying up tight. They were almost up to the two properties recently bought by the asshole brothers, when she said, “I wonder if he’ll try to go on past, hoping that we’ll go home.”

“It doesn’t matter what he’s hoping for,” Bonaparte said, holding steady.

“Well,” she said, “we’ll find out soon enough.” And, just as she said that, the Hummer blew a tire, just ahead of them. It fishtailed several times, back and forth on the road, its brakes flashing off and on, off and on. Then finally it spun around out of control and came to a stop, half in and half out of the ditch on the side of the road. Bonaparte pulled up beside the wrecked Hummer, and Angela raced ahead, her handgun available and ready to pull, then popped open the driver’s side door.

“What the hell,” the driver said blearily, blood streaming off his forehead. “I’ll have your badge for that, Sheriff.”

“You blew a tire all on your own. Driver’s license and insurance,” she said in derision. “You were trying to elude the sheriff and her deputy.”

“You are just hassling me,” he said, “I didn’t do anything to you.”

“You’re driving without functional taillights,” she snapped.

“What?” He looked at her and over at Bonaparte, who shrugged.

“Your lights are out on the one side.”

The driver tried to exit the vehicle.

“Hand over your DL and proof of insurance. Then you can exit your vehicle.”

He grumbled, but he complied.

Angela wrote down the info on her ticket pad, showing Bonaparte the driver’s name.

He snorted. “John Smith, huh? You can bet we’ll dig deep to find out more about you.” And Bonaparte promptly sent a copy of his DL and insurance papers to Levi.

The guy continued to moan, got out of the vehicle slowly, and stood up precariously. She reached over to grab him and asked, “Do you need an ambulance?”

He shrugged her off and said, “If