Man with the Muscle

"You're the saddest bunch of heroes I've ever seen." The chiding female voice cut through the buzz of lively conversations, three different television broadcasts and the chattering clacks of pool balls breaking across a table behind Alex Taylor. "You got the guy. The D.A. will put him away."

"Let's hope." Alex slid onto the green vinyl seat in front of the Shamrock's polished walnut bar and pulled some cash from the front pocket of his jeans. Not even the bright blue eyes and sympathetic smile of Josie Nichols standing on the other side could shake him from the mood he was in. "I need to order some beers."

"Hello?" The bartender slapped her washrag on top of the bar with a purpose, demanding his full attention before glancing over at the flat-screen TV hanging in the corner behind her. "You hope? KCPD's standoff with that gangbanger Demetrius Smith is all over the news. Getting him and his lieutenants off the streets just made Kansas City a hell of a lot safer. If I can walk out to my car at night and not have to worry about getting mugged or raped or caught in the cross fire between his gang and someone else, then I'd say you got the job done. You should be celebrating. Not bringing down the mood of the bar."

"Smith's gotten out with nothing more than a slap on the wrist more than once. Evidence disappears. A witness decides not to testify." Alex closed his eyes and shook his head, seeing the gangly body of a ten-year-old boy cradled in Sergeant Delgado's arms as he crouched down behind an alley fence, waiting for their commanding officer's all-clear order. He'd have thought the kid was sleeping if it hadn't been for all the blood on Delgado's uniform. Two bullets in such a tiny body--and there'd been nothing they could do. Alex opened his eyes, sharing a bit of the grim truth that was forever etched in his memory. "Smith was laughing when we brought him out of that house. An innocent boy died today, and he was laughing. Like he wasn't even accountable for what happened. He's got connections we can only guess at. If the D.A. doesn't make the charges stick--"

"That won't happen this time," Josie insisted. "I can feel it in my bones. Smith's going to prison. That makes you heroes."

Try telling that to the mother of the boy they hadn't been able to save. If they'd cleared the house where Smith and his buddies had been holed up ten minutes sooner, Alex and his team of SWAT--Special Weapons and Tactics--officers might have been able to get him to a hospital before he bled out. Calvin Chambers didn't even have any gang tats on him. And he sure as hell hadn't fired any gun. He'd been an innocent kid cutting through the wrong backyard at the wrong time.

Alex knew more about gang life than young Calvin probably had. He'd had the remnants of the Westside Warrior tattoo he once thought meant he belonged to something important lasered off his back a decade ago, after he'd been adopted into a real family as a teen. Once he'd been Alexis Pitsaeli, street punk and foster home nightmare with no father to speak of and a mother who prized her drug addiction more than her child. Up until Gideon and Meghan Taylor had set him straight and loved him enough to make him a Taylor, too, Alex had been headed straight to prison or an untimely death.

If Alex hadn't been adopted into the Taylor clan, it wouldn't have surprised anyone to find him shot dead in a gangbanger's backyard. But Calvin Chambers?

He swallowed the bile of irony and rage and guilt, and laid a twenty on top of the bar. "First round's on the new...