Above Protection (Imperfect Heroes Book 1)

By C.J. Pinard

Copyright 2016 C.J.
Pinard

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of
fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products
of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are
not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or
dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely
coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for
your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or
given away to other people. If you would like to share this book
with another person, please return to Smashwords and purchase an
additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the
hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements:

Cover by Kellie Dennis @ Book Cover by
Design

Photography by K Keeton Designs

Cover Models: Tessi Conquest and Dustin
Adams

Chapter 1

Duke

Three wrong turns aren’t going to get you
anywhere. They’re going to bring you right back to where you
started.

Int
ense, wise brown eyes narrowed at me through clear glasses
then back down to the report he was reading. His desk was littered
with papers, manila folders, a clunky government phone, and a
scuffed Blackberry that looked as if it had been dropped too many
times. His entire office was just as dull as he was.

I didn’t want to admit to being
nervous, so I discreetly wiped the palms of my hands on my slacks
and waited for my boss to say something – anything.

“This is the third one, Hawthorne,” he
finally said, yanking his reading glasses off and fixing me with
his beady stare. He pinched the bridge of his nose and continued,
“What am I supposed to do with you?”

I threw him a cocky smirk. “You could
let me off with a couple unpaid days of leave. I could use some
beach time.”

“Not funny,” he growled, letting out a
huff. He reached up and hooked a finger into his tie at his throat,
loosening it.

“A guy’s gotta try,” I replied, trying
to sound cooler than I felt.

He shook his head, closed my file, and
then folded his hands on top of it. “Three counts of excessive
force and you think Headquarters is gonna be satisfied with a few
days of unpaid leave? Yeah, nooo. Not gonna fly.”

“It wasn’t
that
excessive,” I
muttered, shaking my head.

“Three strikes, Duke. This is
serious.”

“Whatever,” I snarked, waving a
dismissive hand.

Lifting an eyebrow at me, my boss,
Jeffery Howard, turned toward his laptop, hit a few buttons, and
then turned it around to face me. On the screen was a cleverly
constructed montage of my not-so-excessive force infractions,
filmed by, of course, bystanders who would rather record cops doing
their jobs from their cell phones than actually help people, or,
God forbid, support law enforcement.

My jaw clenched hard. I tried to keep
my face impassive while he showed me the first clip of my knee
digging into the back of a suspect on the ground. The shitbag was
drunk and resisting arrest after rear-ending a school bus full of
kids on an Indian reservation. I was just a tad pissed off. So what
if I broke his wrist? He shouldn’t have been resisting – or
drinking and driving. Screamed like a little bitch, too, that one.
I bit back a grin at the memory.

The second clip was of a
guy convulsing from my Taser. I really didn’t understand the issue
with this one. We had a warrant to search his house, and the result
was about six kilos of cocaine, thirty grand in cash, and a bunch
of pipes and other drug paraphernalia. He didn’t want to go to
prison, I get it, but he took a swing at me. With a knife. I pulled
out the Taser and let him have it. So what if I didn’t exactly pull
the Taser prongs out in a timely fashion? The asshole had taken a
swing at me! With a
knife
! He had stopped convulsing
eventually. Did he die? No.

The last clip was the worst. We’d
responded to an armed robbery at a local bank. Banks were federally
insured, therefore, the cases always belonged to the FBI instead of
the local police, and honestly? I really hated those types of
calls. But my partner and I had been the first responders, and I
had seen the suspect speed away on a motorcycle. Hopping in my
government ride, I’d given chase. The dumbass crashed into a
guardrail on the freeway during rush hour, and when I stopped the
car and got out to arrest his ass, I jumped on him before he could
get up from his bike. Except he pulled a gun from the bag where the
stolen money was kept. He pointed it in my face, and seeing the
gun, I’d completely snapped. Snatching it out of his hand, I tossed
it to the ground and… I may or may not have smashed his face into
the pavement more times than maybe was necessary. He sort of needed
facial reconstruction on his cheekbones and nose after
that.

I snorted out loud, trying not to
smile. I didn’t mean to. Jeffery shot me a warning look. I
straightened up, putting my eyes back on the screen, my lips
pursed.

Some shithead had filmed that one from
their car while traffic had been stopped on the bridge due to our
scuffle. The greedy dick had even tried to sell it to the local
news before so kindly turning it in to the local P.D., who then
forwarded it to the FBI.

“That last one was the worst, Duke,”
my boss said.

I shook my head and stroked a hand
over my beard, replying, “I don’t care who you are, you pull a gun
on a cop, it’s gonna end badly for you.”

He nodded. “While I agree with that,
you and I both know that once you disarmed him, the threat was
gone. The face bashing was excessive…”

I cut him off. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.
Just dole out the punishment so I can get the hell out of
here.”

His face got red and he pounded a fist
on his desk. “First off, you aren’t running anything here, so just
shut up and let me speak!”

I gave him the briefest of nods while
I kept my narrowed eyes on him, my lips clamped in a firm line, my
jaw pulsing in annoyance.

“You’re a good agent, Hawthorne, but
you’re a loose fucking cannon. The government is cracking down on
excessive force, especially in light of the news lately of police
in the funny papers. Ferguson, Baltimore, you get the picture. The
FBI needs to maintain its squeaky clean reputation.”

I snorted at that. He glared at me,
but continued. “Because you’ve been a valuable asset to this
department for,” he paused, looking at my record, “three years, I
am gonna give you two choices. Either this goes to Internal Affairs
for a full investigation, which could take up to a year, or you go
on witness protection duty.”

My blue eyes bulged in their sockets
and I shot up out of my chair. “A year! How is that even a
choice?”

Fucking bastard! Nobody
wants to catch an I.A. case. Nobody. It’s a mixed bag of horrendous
questions and incessant visits to the government psych and, I
shudder, anger management classes, combined with motherfucking desk
duty the whole time.
No
thanks
. But Witness Protection Detail?
That’s a glorified babysitting position. You’re stuck watching over
people who have cooperated with the government and now have a very
hefty price tag on their heads for being a “snitch” and sending
people, like big-time drug lords, to prison for all sort of hideous
crimes ranging from massive drug deals to first-degree murder.
Nobody wanted to be stuck on that detail.

“You’re kidding me with these
choices,” I growled.

He looked at me, disbelief
dancing across his face. “Sit down. And you’ve got to be
shitting
me
with
that comment. You’re getting off easy. You don’t even want to know
what others in your position have been sanctioned with. Some have
been fired, Duke.”

“Others in my position?” I snapped. I
pointed at his laptop. “None of that was excessive force. Those
pieces of shit deserved every ounce of what they got, and you know
it, Jeff!”

He shook his head. “Calling them
‘pieces of shit’ is your first mistake. You can’t do that. You just
can’t, Hawthorne.” He sighed. “Look, when I started with the bureau
twenty years ago, this type of stuff happened all the time. But
thanks to technology, we’ve become the KGB… the ‘kindler, gentler
bureau’ – there’s no way of escaping your sins. They’re being
recorded by every cell phone and traffic camera. You’re gonna have
to decide which of these sanctions you want, or I’m going to decide
for you.”

I sat back down, huffing as I leaned
back in the squeaky chair. I raked a hand through my too-long hair.
“So one WPD assignment, and I’m done, is that right? No matter how
long – or short – the assignment lasts?”

He nodded.

“Then let’s just get on with it,” I
groaned.

He smiled, but there was no humor in
it. “Good choice.”

“Fuck me,” I murmured.

Chapter 2

Rayanne

If you run from danger,
you’ll just die tired. So what happens when you run toward
it?

I stared at the subpoena
in my hand and chewed on my thumbnail. I’d seen a million subpoenas
before, being in my line of work, but never had any of them
had
my
name on
them.