Saving Moxie

Saving Moxie

Jamie’s POV

The call came late in the evening. Moxie had turned on the phone and gave us exact coordinates to the warehouse. Of course, Damian already knew that information. He had a man working on the inside for Dax's operation for weeks now and Damian had disclosed to me that some weird things were going on. He confirmed Moxie was there, but was only able to confirm that was was still alive. While he had told us that she was there against her will, she also wasn't fighting to leave either. We had plenty of evidence collected to get an arrest warrant for Dax and his men, but it could take weeks to have a judge sign off on the operation. By the time Damian and his team were ready to go in heavy, Dax may already be packed up and moved to a new home base. The way our justice system worked for police continued to irritate me more every day.

"You're too close to this, Roe. We have to do this without you." Damian had said, shutting me down when I asked him to ride along. "The phone turning on doesn't mean she isn't working with him."

"You and I both know that this is a signal for help."

He had sighed heavily over the phone, unable to deny the possibility. "Fine. But you're only there to get Moxie out safely if she isn't working with them."

It was enough.

"We were approved to go in and get her and bring in anyone who is there. Max said they would be moving tomorrow morning to a new location to start grooming Moxie for Dax. If we're going to do this, it has to be tonight."

About ten black SUVs surged in, including Damian's canine unit, and about 30 cops in full raid gear charged at the old stone building. They even used one of those battering rams to bust in the side door. I had never seen a busy to this extend and while Damian had warned me that it may be a little overwhelming, seeing an operation go down like this was almost awesome, like an action movie. I feared that Moxie was inside. Would they know that she was here against her will? Damian had said that this would be considered a kidnapping case, but we both knew that she had left willingly. Was she now willingly working for Dax? What would we find when we busted in to the warehouse and into the gunfire?

"Surrender immediately! Come out slowly, in single file, with your hands behind your heads!"

Even though I was only able to come along on an unofficial capacity because of my own case against Jack's involvement, I was tasked to personally get Moxie to safety if I believed she would be a credible witness. Could I prove that she wasn't working with Dax and her father if she was in the middle of it all?

When Damian finally gave me the signal to go inside, my heart was in my throat. The walls in the tight hallway everyone was filing down were crumbling. If I didn't know about the operation inside, I would have assumed that the place was abandoned. I followed the gunfire until I heard our under cover partner's voice ringing through the main room. Max had a guy slammed up against the wall, cuffing him aggressively.

"You're under arrest for multiple counts of drug possession and intent to sell, kidnapping, domestic assault, and murder. You have the right to not much at all, really, since there is no explaining your way out of this. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

Multiple voices yelled in unison that we needed to watch for flying bullets and secure as many of the suspects as possible. I didn't recognize many of the faces of the men who were being cuffed as I raced after Damian down a hallway further into the building, but there were a few guys who had already been tackled that I had been surveilling for months.

Gotcha.

"Roe! Get your ass in here! We got him!" Damian's voice ricocheted off the walls from a room further down. There were closed doors that I had thrown open in passing down this new hallway with what looked like sound equipment in some, measuring devices and boxes in others, but no Moxie. I assumed most of these rooms would be used as evidence.

"She's in here! She's been hit!" Max's voice rang from the room I assumed Damian was in. How did he get past me to get to her first? He knew the inner workings of this building, since he had been working under cover for weeks. My heart felt like it stopped as I ran, praying to a God I didn't believe in that Moxie was okay.

The room was nearly empty, save for a cot that had been thrown over on it's side and a table where Damian was struggling to cuff Dax. Jack was sprawled out in a pool of blood on the floor a few feet away from Moxie, his face vacant and his eyes glossy. I'd had plenty of experience with death in the past and while I wanted to strangle Jack with my own two hands more than once in the past few years, it still felt wrong in some way to know that this is how he died.

"What are you doing to me?!" I heard Moxie yell, her arms flying wildly and beating Max with loose fists. He seemed to be avoiding her blows pretty effectively while still putting pressure on her blood stained abdomen. "Are you a cop too? You couldn't tell a b***h?"

I ran to her, wanting to hold her again. Her eyes looked sunken in as if she hadn't been eating enough and her hair was greasy and dirty.

Oh, my love.

"Welcome back, Moxie. You need to go to the hospital." Max told her, shooting me a look of true worry.

"No hospital. Please." She begged me, a look of panic crossing her features. She was clearly in pain and probably in shock.

"You're shot, Moxie. You need-" I started, kneeling to assess the damages in her frail body. She looked like we could probably move her without doing too much damage. She had bruises covering her arms and face, but aside from the gunshot wound, no bones looked broken. I heard Damian calling for paramedics in the background and sighed a breath of relief.

"That's what is wrong with me? Huh. I thought I broke a rib." She coughed and moaned. Before slurring our what I only could assume was something she thought was witty.

"Over here!" I shouted to the group of paramedics as they rushed into the room, setting her up on the gurney and taking over for Max with pressure to her wound. "Damian!"

"Go with her! We got him, Jamie! Keep our witness alive!"

"Jamie, don't leave me." Moxie begged before coughing and sputtering. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and for the second time that day, my face turned a sheet of white.

"I'll never leave you."

MOXIES POV

Consciousness slowly came back to me, my eyes fluttering as I heard deep voices around me. I could pick out Jamie's voice, but the others didn't sound familiar to me.

I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision as the white walls overwhelmed my senses. I also noticed pain. My brain felt foggy and a dull pain radiated through my side and skull.

"Hey, baby." Jamie's sweet voice washed over me, cocooning me with warmth and safety. "You're awake. You're safe."

"Am I in jail?" I asked softly, not recognizing my own raspy voice. Machines beeped beside my head, causing it to throb, and two cops stood at the end of my bed in uniform. Those must have been the voices I had heard a few moments ago.

"You're in the hospital. Under security. You're safe."

Jamie was sitting in a comfy looking chair by my bed, his hand threaded through mine and a stack of papers were scattered across the table next to him. I assumed he was probably flooded with paperwork after what we went through. The memory of everything that happened came back to me in flashes and my heart pounded harder.

I made a sound similar to a wheeze as I remembered seeing Jack laying lifeless near me.

"What's wrong? Are you in pain?" Jamie asked urgently, looking up at one of the cops as if to silently ask for him to get a nurse. I was in pain, but the emotional wounds hurt more than my bandaged side. "I'll get a nurse."

"No, please, don't go." I begged, trying to take a full breath before coughing as my chest tightened.

"You were right, you know. You do have a busted rib." He tipped his head. "And a gunshot wound. You'll have a really wicked looking scar."

"How long was I out?" I asked, looking toward the doorway where one of the cops was standing.

"About two days."

The nurse showed up with the first cop at her side and put something in my IV that made me feel a little sleepy, but the pain slowly subsided. We sat in silence for a long time after she left, Jamie's fingers ran over the top of my hand in lazy circles.

I couldn't get the vision out of my head of the way Jack looked, sprawled on ground beside me, his eyes glassy and vacant. He was not a good man and the whole thing was ultimately his fault. I wanted to hate him, to say I was happy for his death, but in the end, he saved me. I had seen a new side of Jack that made me wonder if he was just as messed up in all this as I was.

I was crying then, my tears stinging the cuts on my face. Jamie looked alarm at my sudden tears, his face contorting into a mask of concern.

"Should I get the nurse again?"

"No, Jamie.. just... Jack."

"Oh." He sounded conflicted.

"He didn't make it out, did he?"

"No, baby, he didn't." He kissed my cheeks then, brushing away the tears with his kisses.

He deserves better than me. I always bring a cloud negativity wherever I go.

"Roxie is here to handle the funeral. She flew out as soon as she heard." My tears came harder at knowing that my sister had come all the way home to plan another funeral. "She just left to get coffee. She wanted to be here when you woke up."

"Oh."

"Why did you leave? Why didn't you call me?" Jamie's face whitened when I didn't answer right away. It was as if he had put all the pieces together on his own. "You did it for me. You didn't fight back. Because you thought you were keeping me safe."

I forced my gaze to meet his. "Yeah."

A strangled, high-pitched sound, laced with shock and anger left his mouth, but no real words were added to the sound. Suddenly, his lips brushed over mine. For the first time in weeks, I let out a sigh of relief and joy and pleasure. He pulled me tighter against him as if he would never let me go again. I melted into him and the kiss, heart pounding and desire sparking along my nerve endings like a string of lit dynamite. Even through the pain and the haze of the painkillers, I felt drawn to his cloud of safety. I never thought I would kiss Jamie again but I never wanted to stop now that I knew it was safe.

I could smell the faint scent of Jamie's cologne and smiled as I inhaled further. I could bask in this scent for the rest of my life.

"I love you." The words surprised me. I had never said the words out loud to anyone. "But I don't know if I can be with you." The emotions whirling through my head and heart made me feel sick.

"I love you more than anything in this world, Mox. I always have." He sighed, raking his hands through his hair. "But I respect whatever decision you have to make right now. I just hope eventually, you'll choose to be with me." The words hit me like a ton of bricks as he gently placed his hand behind my head and kissed my forehead. My eyes began to burn again in a foreign way and my chest felt heavy.

If there was one thing I knew from my past, it was that the ones you care for the most will always burn you eventually.

Before Dax, it felt like I was living in two worlds with Jamie. Being on the run, fearing for his safety, trying to lie to myself and him about who I was and what I had been through. And all the while, being suffocated by my past. There was one part of my life which was light and safe, while the other was dark and scary - a world behind closed curtains. I wish I could say everything bad in my childhood happened in dark, but it didn't. My mom was violent and hated me, my dad was abusive in a way all his own, my sister was in hospital somewhere for the majority of my childhood. Only Jamie was there to love me and understand me.

"I can't. I can't do this." My voice cracked, but I shook my head. "I can't have a serious life with you. I don't know how. All we would do is fight." Like my mom and Jack. My entire childhood, all they did was fight: about money, about my sister and I, about not spending enough time together. I never wanted to fight with Jamie the way my parents did.

"I would rather fight with you than not have you at all! That's what people who love each other do!" He sighed, raking his hands through his hair.

"I can't... I'm sorry.."