Depends on Who's Asking - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,1

and shit wherever I wanted, and my parents couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Though, that was probably a lie I told myself, too.

They could likely stop me from doing everything.

If they knew what I was doing, that was.

I had a plan, though. Come December twenty-sixth, I had a meeting. One that I would be making. Alone.

For now, I would bide my time until everything was in place.

PROLOGUE II

I’m not Rapunzel, but you can still pull my hair.

-T-shirt

SAINT

One year ago

The op we were working at that particular moment in time was a fucking joke.

The old SWAT team knew it. The new SWAT team that I was a part of knew it. Yet, we were doing it anyway.

Honestly, I knew this was a test, that I should be taking this seriously, but I wasn’t.

We were at a repeat offender’s house.

A man that, according to the old SWAT team, got the cops called on him often. And when the SWAT team came, he nearly always went into defense mode and did spectacular things that really should get him shot. Yet, the guy always managed to live to do his bullshit another day.

Just as I was thinking this, the guy we’d entered the house to apprehend, did a spectacular swan dive into the frozen pool below.

According to everyone that I’d asked, he was a crazy motherfucker that did stupid things.

Like dive into a pool that was sheeted over with ice.

It was cold for Texas—something that I’d been told, anyway. I wasn’t originally from here. I had been born in Arkansas, moved to California, then back to Arkansas where my dad became the governor. Then we moved to Washington, DC when my dad was campaigning and then became the president. It was, indeed, cold during winter. Winter in Texas was Washington, DC’s spring.

Today, though, there was a bit of a chill in the air.

Fast forward five minutes and we were getting the dumbass out of the pool.

My eyes were on the guy’s dick that was swinging in my direction, as well as Booth’s body that was blocking most of the guy’s upper torso from my view, which had to be why I’d allowed the asshole to get the drop on me.

“Saint!” The growled words from Michael weren’t fast enough.

The guy sliced me open with a knife and I hissed at the pain that quickly burned through my arm at the move.

Just as quickly, though, I deposited a kick straight to his chest.

The knife went flying one way, and the guy the other.

Seconds later, I had him on the ground, my knee in his back, and was putting handcuffs on him. Then he was being led away with his arms behind his back.

Michael gestured me over frantically.

Thinking I was about to get reprimanded for my dumbass mistake, I was surprised to find him looking more freaked out than a slash to the arm warranted.

“Let’s go. You can drop me off with my girl before you go to the hospital to have that arm stitched up.” Michael turned to Luke. “I’m leaving.”

Just a minute after that, I was walking out of the yard with Michael hot on my heels.

Luke didn’t bother to argue.

“Baby, head to the hospital,” I heard Michael order. “I’ll be there in five minutes. You’ll be there in three if you don’t stop. Not even for another cop, do you hear me? They’re going to be on the lookout for your car, but they know to leave you alone. I have other officers heading toward where you got pulled over, okay?” After he said that to whoever he had on the phone, he looked over at Luke who’d followed us out. “You might want to give me an update on whoever the fuck just did that,” he said. “I’ll be meeting with them after I make sure that Caro and Saint are okay.”

Luke nodded his head. “We’ll finish up here and meet you at the hospital.”

The ride to the hospital took four minutes.

During those minutes, Michael explained that someone had tried to pull his daughter over. Someone that wasn’t a cop. And when she didn’t stay or hang around, they started to shoot at her car.

We arrived at the hospital in record time, and I was pulling into a police-designated parking spot much faster than I’d ever gotten here before. But that wasn’t due to Michael’s insistence that I drive faster, but the lack of people on the road to congest our commute.

“Where are you?” Michael asked tensely the moment he got out