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CHAPTER FOUR

GAGE

“ N YPD! Open the door!” a voice yelled.

Gage bolted off the bed and started sprinting toward the front door of his apartment. The crack of the battering ram hitting the door greeted him as he reached the entry hall. The door flew open, and what seemed like a dozen cops burst in.

“Get on your knees! On your knees!” voices yelled simultaneously. Gage opened his mouth to ask what the hell was going on when someone kicked his legs out from under him and he face-planted on the floor. They had the cuffs on him before he could get the words out.

“What the hell?” he finally managed. “What’s going on?”

Two men in suits with badges suspended on chains around their necks stood among the men dressed in full tactical armor. “Gage Callahan, you’re wanted for questioning about a theft from the Met,” the taller man in a suit said.

Gage’s stomach knotted. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Gage?” Dani’s voice reached him. She was standing in the hallway wearing one of his big t-shirts and a pair of boxer shorts, her arms wrapped protectively around her belly. There were cops all around her, guns pointed.

“It’s okay, Dani. It’s okay.” Glaring at the cops, he said, “Stop pointing your weapons at my pregnant wife. No one is fighting you.”

One cop looked over toward Dani and gave a nod. In response, the cops aimed their weapons back toward Gage but kept their eyes on Dani. The message was clear. Make any sudden move and this would all go sideways.

“What the hell is going on?” Gage demanded again.

“Please go sit on the couch,” the tall detective said to Dani.

Dani glared at the cops and curled her lip, but Gage knew her well enough to know she was terrified. He needed to figure this situation out soon, or she would start being defensive, which would lead to her being smart-mouthed with the cops, which would be all bad.

“We’ve been warned about you. Armed and dangerous. Possible resisting. We’re not here to play games. Where is it?” the tall detective demanded.

The other cops had started searching the apartment.

“Where is what? Hey! Do you have a search warrant?” Gage demanded.

His shoulders pulled as one cop dragged his hands behind his back and closed the cold metal cuffs around his wrists with a sharp zipper sound.

Asshole made them tighter than was warranted since Gage wasn’t fighting back.

And what did they mean, they’d been warned about him?

He’d been in the park when Alex was inside the Met. Is that why they think he was the thief? Then it hit him. Alex had said the guy she saw in the storeroom looked like him. This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

“The statue.”

“What statue?” He needed to keep up the charade that he had no idea what the cops were talking about while he formulated a plan.

There was a crash from the back of the apartment, presumably from his office. He glanced at Dani who opened her mouth, but he shook his head, and she clamped it shut again. “I want to see the warrant,” Gage demanded.

The detective’s eyes narrowed, but he pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket. By rights, he should have shown that to Gage or Dani first thing. This guy was old enough to know better. Gage guessed his age in the early forties.

The detective held up the warrant for Gage to see since his hands had already been cuffed behind his back.

Gage scanned the items on the warrant. The only thing they could take was his laptop and phone unless they found any plans about the heist. Gage’s stomach unknotted slightly.

Dani had serious security on his laptop, and there was no way anyone at NYPD was going to break that without at least a week to work on it.

And he was smart enough to use his phone only for personal things.

He didn’t even have his work email on it.

He had a separate phone for that, and they were never going to find it.

“She needs to open the safe,” the other detective said as he entered the room again. “It’s in the office.”

Dani looked at Gage, who nodded slightly. She tried to get to her feet but was struggling. Her belly was so large and she was so short, it was hard for her to get up. Gage turned back to the cop. “I’ll do it.”

The cop shook his head. “You stay here.”

“Jesus, man, do you not see she’s struggling because she’s pregnant?

Don’t be an asshole. Leave her on the couch, and I’ll open the safe.

You have a dozen guns in this place. You can point them all at me if you want.

Are you saying your men can’t handle me even when I’m in handcuffs? What the hell?”

The two detectives shared a look. “Fine,” the taller one said. “Get up. But you try the slightest thing, you misstep or even look sideways, you’re going down hard.”

Gage struggled to his feet, corrected his balance, and then the cops hustled him back to his office. He started to go behind the desk to open his safe, but the cop stopped him. “Just tell us the combination.”

Gage gritted his teeth but recited the numbers. The shorter detective went over and opened the safe. “We got a couple of guns in here,” he said, “along with some papers. Looks like wills and deeds to some properties, but that’s it.” He turned back to face Gage and his partner.

The taller cop nudged Gage, “They were right. We were told you’d have weapons. You got a permit for those?”

Gage frowned. “I don’t know who ‘they’ are or what ‘they’ said, but it’s obvious you guys didn’t bother to read up on me?”

The detectives exchanged a look. “What are you talking about?” The tall one demanded, his eyes narrowing.

Gage chewed the inside of his cheek as he stared and pieced this whole shitshow together.

These guys were nothing more than soldiers…

told where to go and who to arrest. But they weren’t lead on the case.

If they were, they’d have done at least a cursory background check before they came.

Either they hadn’t had time to run any checks, or someone else was pulling strings. Not good.

“I have a license for the guns,” was all he said. No need to do any work for them. Better to keep his mouth shut.

“Detective Connors?” one of the cops in tactical gear said. The tall detective turned toward the door. The cop shook his head. Connors nodded.

A small flame of triumph leaped inside Gage. They hadn’t found what they were looking for. They wouldn’t because there was nothing here to find. He didn’t plan the heist and was only there as backup in case something went wrong.

“Time to go to the precinct.” Connors nodded at the cop at the door. “Take him to get dressed and then transport him downtown.

The officer nodded and then pointed at Gage to get moving. Gage went into the bedroom and stopped. The cop undid his cuffs.

“Thanks,” Gage said and then went over and pulled on a pair of jeans over his boxer briefs. He pulled on a t-shirt and socks. Turning to the cop, he asked, “Can I use the head?”

The cop nodded. “Just keep the door open. We will be watching.”

Gage went into the bathroom. He left the door open as directed.

The cop stood outside the door but didn’t watch.

Apparently, he didn’t get the memo to not take his eyes off Gage.

He bit back a sigh as he reached over and hit a tile behind the toilet.

It popped open. He quickly grabbed his work phone.

Always a master at multitasking, he texted his brothers an SOS as he peed.

He stowed the phone back in the same place and used the cover noise of the toilet flushing to obliterate the sound of the tile hatch closing.

After washing his hands, he stood outside the bathroom and waited for the cop to re-cuff him.

When Logan first said that it was a good idea to hide their work phones at night, Gage had thought he was crazy.

Dani had them using serious encryption, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to break into them unless they had a whole lot of time and skill.

He thought Logan was overreacting, and so had Mitch, but Mitch was all about giving Logan whatever Logan wanted whenever he could.

They’d been at odds for so many years, he was just so happy to be on good terms again.

Truth be told, Gage was thrilled about it, too.

He would have to give his brother a big thanks.

Logan had been right. The warrant had any cell phones present listed on it.

If they’d found his and Dani’s work phones, it could have gotten ugly.

Instead, the cops got their personal phones. No great loss.

They marched Gage to the front door, where he slid into his boots.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said to Dani.

She nodded but bit her lip. His gut churned.

She was seven months pregnant and didn’t need this stress.

He would find out what the hell was going on and make the appropriate people pay. It was a solemn promise to himself.

“I love you,” he said before the cop pushed him out the door.

Twenty minutes later, he’d been shown to an interrogation room and left on his own.

A tried and true cop technique to get a person to talk.

God, the smell alone would be enough to make a weaker man sing like a canary.

An overriding stench of urine and stale coffee hung in the air like a noxious cloud.

He’d been in here long enough to guess the cops were probably doing the research they should’ve done before they served him the warrant.