“Ignore it,” I said.
“Can’t. It’s the club.” He reached into his discarded sweats and retrieved his phone, checking the display before he answered. “This better be good, Morse.”
As he listened, I could almost see the playful, fun Tap disappear, and the all-business intelligence officer surface.
“Fuck.” He tapped my shoulder to get me to move, and as much as I didn’t want to, I sat up. He joined me and started pulling on clothes, his demeanor growing more tense with each passing second.
Something was definitely wrong. Hoping nothing had happened to the girls while I’d been selfishly enjoying Tap’s body, I stood and dressed.
“Yeah, she’s right here.” Tap glanced at me before sliding his shirt over his head. “I’ll let her know.” He listened for a minute more, let out a breath, and stared up at the ceiling. “Shit. It just keeps getting better. Did they say when? Alright. Thanks for the heads up, brother. Let me know if you hear anything else.” Tap hung up and shoved his phone in his pocket.
“What?” I asked, sidling up to him. “What’s going on?”
He draped an arm over my shoulder. “We’re about to have company.”
I stilled, wondering how he could be so calm when the Serpents were on their way. “What? You said they wouldn’t find me here.” We needed to get Hailey and Doris out of there. We needed…
“Calm down, babe. Not the Serpents. The Dead Presidents. We can’t go to them, so the executive board is coming to us.”
“What? They’re coming here? Why?”
“The Serpents know who you are. They know you’re a cop.”
I’d always known it would happen eventually, but hearing Tap utter the words made my knees weak and my vision blurry. I let my knees dump me back onto the sofa. “How…?” My mind wouldn’t stop spinning. “Morse. You said he was monitoring the bugs. He heard something?”
Tap snorted. “You can say that again.”
There was more. I could tell by the way my gut kept twisting. “What else? I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Buzz made a call to someone named Romero.”
I froze. “Jose Romero? As in the Chief of Police?”
Tap nodded. “That’s who we believe he was speaking to.”
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Leaning forward, I put my head between my knees and sucked down deep breaths as I tried to make sense of it all. I’d suspected the hell out of Sergeant Wilkens, but I never would have guessed this went as high up as Romero. “That’s…” Devastating. Mortifying. Disastrous. “Unfortunate.”
“Very. Especially because now there’s a warrant out for your arrest.”
The blows kept coming. “For what?”
Tap walked over to his laptop and fired it up. Bringing it over to me, he opened a browser and hit keys until he found what he was looking for. Then, he turned the screen toward me.
My face, name, and stats were plastered under a “Wanted” header. They’d used the photo from my badge. In it, my hair was longer and medium brown, my eyes were full of hope, and my smile was genuine and proud. I was so naïve back then, thinking I was going to change the world, or at least the city. I kind of wanted to punch the stupid bitch in that picture.
The charge read: “The Seattle police have issued a warrant for Petrov’s arrest in connection to aggravated assault and armed robbery of a residence at 36th Ave SW and SW Warsaw St.”
“Buzz’s address,” I muttered. “They’re saying I robbed Buzz’s house. Wonder who the hell they’re claiming I assaulted.”
“It doesn’t matter, because we’re gonna fix this.”
I wasn’t nearly as optimistic, but I nodded anyway.
“I mean it, Sasha. Come on, let’s go prepare for the club’s invasion.” He held out his hand to me.
I’d been so focused on how this affected me that I’d missed the impact it would have on Tap. I put my hand in his and let him hoist me out of my seat. “You’re okay with them coming here?” I asked.
“Nope. But there’s no other choice. They’ve been working on a plan of attack, but they need intel from you. Since you’re now a wanted fugitive, we can’t risk taking you to them.”
