LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Go, go, go!” Grant Larkin yelled in that deep voice that always sent goose bumps running up her arms, as he used a ram and his massive upper-body strength to break down the door.

      Maggie raced around the corner to follow, just as the door flew open into the one-story hideout. Grant went in first, moving right as planned, then the two teammates behind him dodged the splintered door and went left.

      Her MP-5 raised and ready, Maggie barely felt the weight of the extra fifty pounds of gear she carried as she darted through the door, clearing it fast the way she’d been trained.

      A bullet whizzed by her ear, coming from her left, but she didn’t turn her head. That was in a teammate’s sector. He’d handle the threat. Maggie’s sector was straight ahead, and she stayed focused as she forged through the swirling gray smoke.

      Reports came in over her radio as she entered the hallway to the bedrooms. The fugitive’s allies were dwindling fast, either from bullets, or because they threw their hands up and their weapons down at the sight of the six FBI SWAT agents converging on them. But there were at least two left, including the fugitive himself, a three-time offender, who was surely looking at a life sentence this time around.

      A gangbanger popped out of a doorway ahead of her, his modified AK-47 coming up fast, and Maggie moved her weapon right, firing at center mass.

      The threat down, she kept going until she was beside Grant. He outweighed her by a solid eighty pounds and in the narrow hallway, with all their gear, they barely fit side by side.

      He nodded his head to acknowledge her presence, glancing briefly her way. She registered it through her peripheral vision, but kept her focus where it needed to be: on the rooms to the right side. One more for her to clear, one for Grant.

      Grant went through the doorway to the left and Maggie through the one on the right, her weapon instantly sighting on the threat in the corner. The fugitive himself, all three hundred pounds of him.

      His finger quivered on the trigger, and Maggie barked, “Drop it! FBI!”

      She’d been on the Washington Field Office’s SWAT team for the past four years, but perps sometimes made the mistake of thinking she wouldn’t fire just because she was a woman. So Maggie leveled her meanest stare at him, hoping he could see it through her goggles. She wanted this guy alive, wanted him to rot in a cell and help them bring down the rest of his crew.

      He scowled back at her with a nasty grimace even as his eyes watered from the smoke. But the modified AK-47 he’d been clutching fell to the floor beside him.

      From the room across the hall, she could hear Grant yelling at another suspect to get down on the ground, and Maggie demanded the same of the fugitive.

      She didn’t get close until he’d followed her order to lie flat on his stomach on the filthy carpet, his hands clasped behind his head. Then she switched her MP-5 to safe mode, slung it over her back and unhooked the handcuffs from her belt. She approached him and planted a heavy knee in the center of his huge back. Yanking his left hand down fast, she slapped on the cuff then grabbed his right hand.

      As she shifted her balance right, he ripped his cuffed hand away, using his bulk to toss her sideways.

      She landed hard on her MP-5, and pain tore through her back. That was going to bruise. Cursing loud and creatively, she was up before he could get to his feet. Wrenching his cuffed arm backward, she rammed a foot in his armpit.

      He squealed as she muttered under her breath about men who thought bigger meant they had the upper hand. A decade ago, she might have agreed with that assessment. But six years in the FBI, four of them on the super-competitive SWAT team, had taught her it just wasn’t true.

      She didn’t have to be bigger. She just had to know how to leverage her strength, and her skill set.

      The fugitive was still screeching as she slapped the cuff on his other wrist and then Grant was in the room, dragging a gangbanger behind him as if the guy weighed nothing. He took a handful of the fugitive’s shirt, and the two of them pulled him to his feet.

      “Nice job, Delacorte,” Grant said.

      Her heart rate—which had stayed relatively even during the entire arrest—picked up at the sound of his voice.

      Grant Larkin had moved from the New York Field Office to the Washington Field Office, WFO, and her SWAT team, nine months ago. He was just shy of six feet, but even on a team filled with muscle-bound men, he stood out. The guy was built, which was why he was usually the door-kicker.

      He also had deep brown eyes, light brown skin and an infectious grin, even in the middle of a grueling SWAT workout. In short, exactly her type. If only he wasn’t a teammate, making him off-limits. And if only she didn’t have baggage from her past that weighed more than he did.

      Maggie nodded at him and called in their status over her radio. She got the “all clear” from all sectors and told Grant, “We’re set. Let’s get out of here.”

      “Sounds like a plan to me,” he replied, letting her go ahead of him with the fugitive as he brought up the rear with the cuffed gangbanger.

      The rest of the team was waiting outside the dilapidated one-story, loading a few other prisoners into their vehicle for transport. A couple of her teammates hooted when they saw her pushing the enormous, scowling fugitive in front of her.

      She grinned back, because she knew they were laughing at the furious threats the fugitive was making, and not at the fact that she, at five foot eight and a hundred and forty pounds, was bringing him out. She’d worked with most of them for four years, and they’d learned fast not to coddle or underestimate her because she was a woman.

      That was why being on SWAT had been good for her. It had shown her exactly how much she was capable of, and she wouldn’t trade it for anything.

      After they’d loaded the last two prisoners, Grant came over to her, yanking his goggles up over his helmet, and leaving behind indents around his eyes that didn’t diminish his attractiveness at all. “I think this calls for celebration.”

      “O’Reilley’s?” Clive Dekker, the team leader, asked. It was the pub the team usually hit after a particularly good or bad day.

      It didn’t matter that it was almost three in the morning. O’Reilley’s catered to cops. They stopped serving liquor at two, but they were open twenty-four hours. And after the adrenaline rush of a high-risk arrest, most of the team couldn’t just go home and go to sleep.

      “Let’s do it,” Grant agreed. He turned to her, looking hopeful. “Delacorte?”

      She hadn’t gone with them in six months. Not since she’d started getting the letters, because the stress of it made it impossible to go out and joke around, to pretend everything was okay.

      A lump filled her throat, and she tried to push back the memory that always surged forward when September 1 came around. In exactly thirty days, it would be ten years since the day that had changed her life. The day that had led her to the FBI. To SWAT.

      And whatever happened on that tenth anniversary, would she regret not having spent as much time with Grant Larkin as she could?

      She nodded at him. “Sure. I’m going to run home first. I’ll meet you all there.”

      He looked surprised, but then grinned in a way that made her positive she’d made the right choice.

      She stared back at him, momentarily rooted in place. Maybe it was time to forget her past. Maybe it was time to forget the rules.

      Maybe it was time to see what could happen between her and Grant Larkin.

      * * *

      MAGGIE FELT HERSELF smiling with anticipation as she unlocked the bolts on her DC row house and entered, flipping on the lights. She stepped over the mail scattered in the entryway, realizing she hadn’t been home in close to twenty-four hours.

      As she locked the door behind

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