An Offer You Can't Refuse by Sal Bianchi (best beach reads .txt) 📕

“Whatever happened with that girl from the bar?” I asked in an attempt to distract him from whatever he was fretting over.

“What?” he asked blankly. "Which one?"

“That one girl you went home with last week.” I clarified as I glanced up at the bar. “With the curly hair. You kept telling her you were Italian, remember?”

He actually might not, now that I thought about it. He was pretty wasted by then. Even in the darkness, though, I could see his ears turn red at my question.

“Did I really bring it up that much?” he sighed. “Anyway, yeah. Her name’s Roxanne. We went out again the other night.”

“Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. That was kind of unusual for Nick, who seemed like he had a different girl on his arm every night we hung out.

“Yeah, she’s pretty cool,” he replied. There was a faint smile on his lips as he spoke, and I wanted to tease him about it, but I was worried that would just send him back into his funk again.

“Oh yeah?” I grinned. “What did you guys do?”

Nick opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, his phone chimed to indicate he’d received a message. I watched as he picked his phone up out of the cup holder where it was sitting. He’d barely glanced at the message before his face went white.

“What is it?” I asked as I leaned over to look at his phone. He held it toward me so I could see it better.

Did u really think we wouldn't see u there?

I gasped as I read the message and looked frantically through all the windows of the car. We had parked pretty far away, in an unmarked car, and sandwiched between two other vehicles.

“Where is he?” I asked nervously as I continued to glance around. I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye and snapped my head around to see what it was. A painful ringing exploded in my ears as a hail of bullets began to tear through the back of the car.

Nick cried out in pain, and I shoved him into the footwell of the front seat for cover. I wrangled my gun out of its holster in the confined space and waited until there was a pause in the gunfire. The moment it was silent, I jumped back up and looked through the shattered rear windshield. I raised my gun at the man I saw standing there and fired without hesitation. The bullet hit him in the arm, and he let out a shout as his gun fell to the ground.

I threw open the door and sprinted around the side of the car toward the back. The man turned to look up at me as I approached and began to flail the gun around wildly with his uninjured hand, spraying bullets in every direction.

I threw myself back behind the side of the car for cover and waited. The shots sputtered to a stop, and I wanted for a few seconds to make sure he was actually out of ammo before I ducked out from behind the car.

I hurried back around to where he’d been lying. He was struggling to stand up, and I quickly kicked the automatic rifle away out of his hands before leaning down to restrain him. He struggled and threw punches and kicks at me haphazardly. Even with a bullet wound in his arm, the man was pretty strong, and I was having trouble turning him onto his back to get his hands cuffed.

“Stop it,” Nick growled as he suddenly appeared beside me. He punched the man in the face twice, hard enough that the back of his head struck the pavement beneath him.

I was a little stunned to see Nick standing beside me since he’d clearly been hit by a bullet just moments before.

“I’m fine,” he grunted, as though reading my mind. “Hurry up and cuff him before he gets back up.”

Despite his assurances that he was fine, I could tell that he was struggling. His left arm was hanging limply at his side, and he was clearly having trouble keeping his breathing steady. I had to focus on the suspect now, though. I crouched down and quickly turned the dazed man over to secure his hands behind his back. He groaned weakly as I did so but otherwise didn’t put up a fight. Nick must have hit him hard enough to knock him out.

Once the handcuffs were in place, I immediately pulled my phone out of my pocket to call an ambulance for Nick.

“Crap,” he muttered just as I finished dialing. I looked up to see what had caused him to say that and froze when I realized the bar doors were open. Several men had wandered out and were now curiously approaching the scene. I grimaced in frustration when I realized they must have heard the gunshots.

“Stop!” I yelled as authoritatively as I could.

The men halted their approach and turned to look at each other warily.

“This is an active crime scene.” I continued. “I’m on the phone with dispatch right now. Police are on their way. Go back inside.”

I held my phone up above me for emphasis. I hadn’t actually called for police backup yet, but they didn’t need to know that. In any case, there was no way the nine-one-one dispatcher wouldn’t alert the police after hearing me shout all that.

The men continued to talk among themselves quietly for a few more minutes before finally retreating back inside. I sighed in relief and nearly collapsed to my knees as I brought the phone back to my ear. That could have ended extremely badly if they’d decided to call my bluff.

“Hello, sir?” The dispatch operator called. “Can you hear me?”

“Hi, I can hear you,” I huffed in response as I struggled to catch my breath. I suddenly felt as though I’d been completely drained of energy. “I’m Agent Park with the SDCT. My partner’s been shot and