Chapter One: Forgotten Procedures and Cracked Ribs

Tig squeezed the bridge of his nose and groaned at the sharp pain radiating from the cracked cartilage.

He forced himself to make a fist, his fingers swollen around his heavy rings.

He struggled to his feet, cursing incoherently as he settled in the last upright dining room table chair.

Tig sniffed hard and coughed, spitting out a glob of bloody phlegm before fishing a half-empty pack of cigarettes free.

He held the acrid smoke trapped in his lungs before he leaned around and retrieved his fallen phone and dialed Clay who picked up before the second ring started.

"Tig?"

Tig remained silent as Clay repeated himself. "Tig are you there?"

"Yeah, yeah," Tig finally said and gave a sharp cough, certain he had a cracked rib or three when pain wracked his midsection.

"Clay I gotta get the fuck out of here for a while, clear my head."

"This is always your home brother," Clay finally murmured.

After the line clicked dead, Tig stared down at the phone.

As Tig spit another mouthful of blood on the shitty carpet, in the adjoining hallway, rookie ATF agent Kari Stillwater began to stir awake from the unconscious state Tig's chokehold had forced her into before stripping her of her regulation matte black .40 caliber handgun.

Kari's first sense was the scratchy threadbare carpet under her cheek. Her stomach began to cramp as she replayed the moments before waking up on the floor. She strained her ears and couldn't keep a groan from slipping past her lips as a stab of nausea twisted angrily in her gut.

In the other room, Tig's hand snapped up and he had a gun in hand moving towards the soft sounds.

From the floor, Kari's vision was blurry as she rolled her eyes up to see Tig's face appear around the corner and the capacity of violence in his vivid blue eyes made her feel like she could piss herself on the spot.

She fought a flinch as he stomped towards her, feeling an extra layer of fear at seeing the dangerous man pointing her own gun at the center of her face.

Kari struggled to slowly sit up, she was careful to keep her hands in front of her and took a deep breath as the room began to tilt. She kept her hands extended as she sagged heavily against the wall while the armed man stared down at her, almost studying her.

She coughed and found her mouth bone dry, accompanied by a scratchy throat as he observed her silently.

"Where's your wallet?" the blue-eyed madman finally asked, his tone empty and unreadable.

"It's in my inner jacket pocket," Kari said with a dry cough, her neck aching.

Tig nodded and closed the distance between them, his gun hand never wavering. "Don't move," he growled as he reached inside her silk-lined jacket, his fingertips brushing the bullet-proof vest hugging her body with the tightness of a lover.

Kari grew as rigid as a majestic redwood tree as he stepped back from her and thumbed through her wallet, pulling her ID free of its plastic sleeve.

"Kari Diana Stillwater," Tig read from her glossy license and skimmed the details before looking up and capturing her eyes.

He wordlessly held her gaze before flicking his eyes back to her DMV photo that had caught her frowning. He tossed the license to the floor before he shuffled through the rest of her wallet and added more cards to the floor after reading each of the raised plastic letters.

"What are you looking for?" Kari finally asked.

Tig ignored her as he examined her credit cards, grocery store reward cards and coffee punch cards. He pulled a faded picture of twin boys in blue baseball caps from the last plastic sleeve and held it out towards her.

"Who are they?"

Before Kari could answer, her phone chimed from her slack's pocket, deafening in tone even from the confines of her tailored pants.

Kari froze as she met the blue-eyed psycho's gaze as she felt the phone vibrate in addition to ring.

Despite the post-fighting body aches, Tig's pituitary gland ejaculated a glut of adrenaline and he moved with inhuman ferocity and before she could begin to process, his hands were groping her midsection with the goal of taking her phone.

The photo of the twin children fell to the floor as one of her hands shot out, curled into a tight fist, aimed squarely in the direction of his already damaged nose.

Tig easily blocked her fist and brushed her arm to the side while letting his blocking hand slide down her forearm and capture her slim wrist.

Kari tried to strike him with her other fist and he effortlessly grasped it, pinning them both above her head.

As soon as she felt the scratchy carpet fibers under the back of her jacket, she began to kick her legs in an erratic rhythm. The movement freed her pointy-toed flats from her nyloned feet as he tightened his grip on her wrists.

"Stop," he demanded and roughly slammed her wrists to the floor.

Kari's breathing came harder and she could feel her pulse pounding in her temples.

"No," she managed between gasps as he lowered his face so close that their noses nearly touched. Kari could feel her eyes fill with tears as she continued to say no in a disjointed rhythm, each syllable spit between gasps.

"No…no….no….no…no…" she continued to chant. Tig saw angry, frustrated tears pooling in eyes that were as diametrically opposite in their darkness as his were in vivid brightness.

He transferred his grip on her wrists to one of his strong hands as he pawed at her slacks for her phone as it finished its second ring.

Kari spit up at him when he held her ringing phone in front of her face, too close that her eyes nearly crossed as she tried to read the caller ID.

"Who is it?" Tig asked shaking the phone in her phone.

"Fuck you," she screeched as she recognized a scheduled check-in.

"Answer the phone and state everyone is okay, or I will drive to the address on your license and find and kill everyone you know."

Kari stared up at him unblinking throughout the third shrill ring, she tried to remember her training manual, but her roommate and three-month old infant were at home with the newest episode of A Dancing Human in a Glittery Costume.

"Okay," Kari finally hissed and Tig held the phone up to her ear.

"Sir, twenty-one hundred hours, clear agent 7155," Kari said to the operator on the other line.

She lost her battle with keeping her tears contained as they rolled down her flushed cheeks in wet pathways as she signed her own death certificate. The next check-in wasn't due until the following two hours and she didn't know how far post-mortem she would be by that point.

Tig's lips pulled into a satisfied smile after he tossed her phone to the side. "That's a good agent," he growled as he pushed her sweaty hair off her flushed forehead.

Kari tried to kick her legs out from under his weight and didn't have the chance to offer a protest before he roughly flipped her over. Her disheveled clothing rode up and she could hear the grimy carpet fibers scratch at her Kevlar vest.

Tig calmly wiped his face of her spit which had landed on his chin, the saliva clung to the dark shadow of hair on his angular jaw.

"What are you driving?" Tig hissed as he flattened her to the floor with the bulk of his weight, forcing her air from her lungs.

"What?" Kari managed as she renewed her struggling.

"What kind of car is the ATF providing these days?" he groaned as he dug his hand into her low braid and slid his palm to cradle the back of her skull, tightening his hand into a fist in the silken strands.

Kari cried out as he applied further pressure to her hair and yanked her head back until her neck was a taut line. Tig's eyes found the pounding pulse of her carotid artery in the smooth skin of her throat.

"A Yukon," she shouted and nearly moaned in relief when he lessened his hold on her hair.

"Where are the keys?"

"In my left pants pocket," she whispered and grew still as Tig slid his hand around the front of her hip to dip into her pocket.

Tig shifted his weight to reach the bottom of her pocket and plucked the keys free. He let his palm stay on her hip and move in small circles as he adjusted his weight until he could mold himself closer to the curve of her bottom.

"Where is it parked?" he growled as he slid his hands to the button closure of her designer slacks and fumbled at the navy-blue plastic disc.

"Stop, it's in front of the mailbox, just take it and go," she said, hating the begging presence in her tone.

"Get off me," Kari shouted as Tig felt a dull ache fill his groin as he groaned against the back of her neck and tried to not lose himself in the feel of her body in his arms. He had to force himself to ignore the delicious feeling of pressing against her firm curves.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," he thought as he wrapped his forearm around her neck and squeezed until he could drag her back into an unyielding state and sagged underneath him.

Tig took a few minutes to catch his breath before he moved off of her slack body. He rolled her over and lifted her unconscious form into his arms and took a quick look around before he left the safe house through the broken screen door and arranged her as carefully as he could into the rear of the bulky, black SUV.

He muttered to himself as he slid an arm around her shoulders and adjusted her upright on the leather of the bench seat. His senses were overloaded from the warm scent of the skin he could see and smell as he fastened the seatbelt around her.

He risked further exposure as he raced back to the safe house and shoved any visible guns, extra ammo and raided the cupboards before tossing the supplies on the floorboards next to her sheer stocking encased feet.

Tig allowed himself to sweep a couple escaped strands from her low braid behind her ear before he traced the dark fringe of her eyelashes.

"I didn't plan for this," Tig grumbled aloud to her beautifully unconscious face before he climbed behind the wheel of the sturdy vehicle and navigated the backroads, taking them both further from the known hub and recognizable intersections of their lives.