Ridin' Solo (Sisters From Hell Book 1), Marika Ray [librera reader txt] 📗

to soak in as much time with him as I could before they separated us.

“You know your cheeks do the same thing when I’m inside you,” he said out of the blue.

“Wyatt!” I gasped.

“What?” He grinned impishly. “That’s the kind of detail a guy notices when he’s crazy for a girl.”

That had me smiling despite my self-imposed edict not to flirt while on the job. “Crazy about me, huh?”

Wyatt shifted in his seat. “Well, yeah. First day on the job and I got to see you getting off to a porno…”

There went my cheeks. Permanently red when I was around him and his big mouth. “Shut up!” I whacked his bicep with the back of my hand before gripping the steering wheel again properly. Safety, baby.

Wyatt looked out the windshield, his expression serious. “Honestly, Oakley, I’ve done some shitty things in my past. I’m worried you’ll hold that against me.”

“Hey,” I said softly. I raised my voice when he wouldn’t look over at me. “Hey. I don’t care about the past. If it’s truly in the past, then it doesn’t matter. Okay? Trust me.”

He nodded, though he still had that line between his eyebrows.

Dispatch squawked through the radio. “We’ve got a call about possible gunshots. North end of the county off Ocean Drive.”

Wyatt radioed back. “Waldo and Smith on our way.”

I hit the lights and siren, pulling a U-turn when there was no oncoming traffic. I made a left and then a right onto Ocean Drive, taking the winding road all the way to the north end of the county. I turned off the siren as we got closer. Neither of us was too worried about the call, but I’d follow protocol just the same. We answered calls about gunshots practically on the daily. This was the country. People were always target practicing in their backyard acreage, annoying the neighbors enough to call the nonemergency line.

“Up ahead on the right.” Wyatt pointed outside his window, where we could see a moving truck heading down a gravel path, tires dipping in and out of the potholed road, clearly not built for large trucks.

“That’s odd,” I muttered under my breath. I pulled off to the side of the road and watched the taillights disappear into the trees. Using the computer attached to my dash, I looked up the plot of land, seeing it was owned by an LLC. I tried to trace it but kept coming up with a shell company that told me nothing of use.

“Could be the drug front Sheriff warned us about,” Wyatt said before radioing dispatch for backup. He was thinking the same thing I was.

His personal phone dinged, and he dug it out. I kept going with the online search, seeing if I could trace when the land was purchased. We needed to wait for backup anyway before charging into the situation.

Wyatt tapped out a reply on his phone, putting it away only to dig it back out again when it dinged. He sighed, but had a patient smile on his face.

Dispatch broke the silence, saying backup would be another ten minutes or so as the other team was on the south side dealing with an animal situation, which didn’t surprise me in the least. Same animals, different day.

A gunshot broke the silence, startling us both. I looked over at Wyatt. “That didn’t sound like a shotgun.”

He shook his head. “Sounded like a smaller caliber. Not normal for around here, right?”

His phone dinged again, and I snapped at him. “For God’s sake, put the phone down and focus!”

He threw it on the floor, hands up. “I’m on it. We need to go in there.”

I agreed. I put the cruiser back in gear and floored it, the back end sliding when I took the turn onto the gravel road at high speed. Wyatt called it in and dispatch said they’d tell backup to re-prioritize. We bounced along the road and my heart rate climbed, senses tuning in to everything around us as they always did when on a call. Once I hit the line of tall trees, it got darker, but I could clearly see multiple cars, trucks, the moving truck we’d seen earlier, and a warehouse of some sort. From my online search, there hadn’t been a building on this land when it sold last year. A quick assessment said no one was outside, though if this was an illegal drug operation, we could bet there’d be some security guys outside we’d need to keep an eye out for. We’d gotten in way too easy for me to feel comfortable.

I hit the brakes, and we both climbed out, guns drawn and creeping closer to the warehouse. Wyatt motioned to the left and went in that direction, darting around cars for cover as I approached from the right, making sure no one was inside the cars.

Shouts came from inside the warehouse, sounding like at least three guys in an argument. Wyatt and I flanked the double doors, knowing there was nothing we could do about the roll-up door behind me or possible exits in the back.

I nodded at Wyatt, and he leaned over to bang on the door. “Police! Open up!”

Silence was our answer, followed by the sounds of boots running around inside. Wyatt shouted one last time, rearing back to kick the door open. “Police!”

Everything from that moment forward flew by in warp speed. They say you get in the zone in an emergency situation and I can attest that’s true. Wyatt’s boot hit the doors, and they flew open with a loud bang. Shots immediately rang out, and we both ducked back behind the wall. I leaned in first and shot back, immediately zeroing in on a guy with a gun by a large stack of something under a tarp. I clipped him in the shoulder and he went down while the rest of his friends ran for cover. Wyatt went through the doorway, crouched low and darting behind a tractor inside. I covered him, shooting