BROGAN
Brogan parked in front of the apartment building where the witness lived. Owen called him fifteen minutes ago, waking him up from his evening nap, and asked him to retrieve some woman that the Italians had abducted this morning.
At least, that was her story.
Brogan wasn’t a trusting man, and the timing was a little too convenient for him, considering that the two factions were now at war.
But Owen seemed to think she was a potential source of information. Brogan was to bring her in safely, which could be a bit of a problem since she went to the police station. The Italians had men on the force as well, and they’d know that she went to the cops. That meant that there was a target on her head, especially if she might know something.
Hell, she was lucky that Klonsky was the one that interviewed her since he was on Owen’s payroll. If she’d been in that interview room with one the Mancini’s cops, she never would have made it out alive.
Still, it was a pain in the ass that Klonsky let her get away from him. The guy was barely more than useless, and now Brogan had to deal with it.
Before getting out of his car, Brogan pulled up the information Klonsky had sent him. It was everything he could find on the witness quickly.
Amy Jacobs, twenty-five years old. She was a med student with no living family. Part time barista.
It wasn’t much to go off of, but her driver’s license picture was included, and Brogan studied it for a moment. She had wavy brown hair and a smile that reached her eyes. Her face was thin, and the picture was slightly too grainy to make out her eyes, but they were listed as green.
Having a good idea of who he was looking for, Brogan tucked the phone away and stepped out of the car. He was walking around the back when movement from the parking lot drew his attention. There weren’t many people around, probably due to the lateness of the hour, but there was a woman heading toward the building he was parked in front of. Her brown hair was pulled back in the ponytail and she was wearing glasses, but it was unmistakably the same woman he’d just been staring at on his phone.
She was short; hardly more than five feet, he’d guess. Her body was thin, with a slight flair at her hips and small, but firm breasts that pressed against the thin fabric of her romper. The way she walked, one foot in front of the other, made her hips swing a little with each step, and he let eyes linger for a moment more than necessary.
Amy’s eyes were darting around at the few people out walking and the cars passing by, and she was biting her lower lips, her shoulder bunched up with tension. He’d seen this before.
She was scared. Fucking terrified, probably.
If her story was true, she had a right to be. Paranoia wasn’t a thing when people were actually out to get you.
Brogan stepped onto the sidewalk in front of her before she got to the entrance of her building. Amy came to a stop, her pale green eyes going wide with alarm. Coming to a stop, she clenched her jaw and shifted her feet in a way that told him she was preparing to flee.
“Don’t run,” he said, the words coming out as more of a command than he meant for them to. He knew he should try to be nice. If she ran, he’d have to chase her, and he really didn’t want to do that. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She scoffed, and it made him want to grin. She wasn’t naive.
“Bullshit,” she said. “I fixed up your guy, now just leave me alone.”
“I’m not with the Italians.”
She wasn’t buying it. Brogan took a step toward her, and she countered it with a clumsy shuffle backward. Brogan hated the fear in her eyes. He knew he was a big guy, six feet tall with broad shoulders and a muscular physique, but he’d never hurt a woman. He’s not his father, who was an abusive son of a bitch.
He was trying to think of a way to talk her into coming with him when a man turned the corner at the other end of the block. He looked up as the man pulled a gun out of his jacket, his gaze moving from Brogan to Amy.
Fuck.
He reacted without thinking, diving toward her and grabbing her arm. Amy let out a frightened shriek as he pulled her to the side, down between two cars parked at the curb. They barely got to cover before the bullets started flying.
“What the hell is going on?” Amy shouted as he pulled a Glock out and started firing back.
There were screams and the few people that were out on the streets disappeared. The man that had come for Amy ducked into a doorway to avoid Brogan’s gunfire, but another man rounded the corner with a gun already in his hand. Brogan recognized this one. It was a street level thug that worked for the Italians.
Brogan put a bullet in his kneecap.
As the man went down, the first shooter peeked out and fired at Brogan. He ducked down and turned to Amy, who was on the ground in the fetal position with her hands over her ears and her eyes closed. That wasn’t going to do her any good.
They needed to move, so he took a hold of her wrist and pulled her hand away from her ear. Her eyes popped open, and the fear he’d seen before was now gut-wrenching terror, but there was no time to coddle her.
“It’s the Italians. They’re going to kill you.” She flinched at the bluntness of his words. “But I’m here to help you.”
