Page 12 of Freed By Wrath

One night without rules.

The darkness devours the car as I disappear into it.

Behind me, tucked safely in the trunk, Valerie is still burning with wrath.

Good.

I like her even more like this.

3

Fabien

“Are you insane?”

Isaac’s voice echoes off the concrete walls of the parking garage before I’ve fully processed what I’m looking at.

Somewhere above ground, a string of orange lights blinks weakly over the garage entrance, the building super’s one concession to the holiday, while a fistful of candy corn lies scattered across the concrete near the elevator, abandoned by some kid who never came back for it.

My gaze lands on Slash’s Charger, matte black and built like a bad decision. It’s parked across two spaces with the casual disregard of someone who’d stopped in a hurry and hadn’t cared where it ended up.

Against it, is Slash himself, leaning against the hood with his arms crossed and the mask still on his face, not bothered with the muffled but continuous sounds of someone in the trunk who is absolutely not okay with being in the trunk.

Right.

There’s a woman in there.

I don’t know why Isaac sounds surprised. I really don’t. Slash has been like this since we were nineteen. The badge helped. The training helped. Several thousand hours of learning to de-escalate situations that had no business escalating gave him somewhere to put it during working hours. But the core of him was never going to change. Heart first. Consequences later. Always.

“Would you rather I left her there?” Slash says. “She was about to put a wine bottle through her fiancé’s skull.”

“You didn’t have to kidnap her.”

“It was an emergency extraction.”

“Slash.”

“She’s fine.”

From the trunk, muffled through the panels, but entirely audible in the empty garage, comes a stream of profanity creative enough that I file two of the combinations away for future reference.

She’s not fine. She’s pissed.

I let them keep arguing.

God knows I’m too old for their antics. Twenty-eight shouldn’t feel old but somehow sharing an apartment with these two for the better part of a decade has aged me in ways the job never managed.

Tonight was supposed to be different. First Halloween off in three years—three years of pulling double shifts while the rest of Greenbrook carved pumpkins, handed out candy, and did whatever normal people do when October decides to go feral. Halloween is a mess when you’re a cop. Every year without fail: noise complaints, drunk people in costumes, someone who thought it would be funny to brandish a prop weapon in a convenience store, at least one domestic abuse situation that nobody saw coming.

It’s hell on earth.

The station gets loud.

The calls get strange.

The night never ends when it’s supposed to. Yet, I usually don’t mind.

None of us do. But this year, by some miracle of scheduling, all three of us had the night off.