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The first bullet missed Caitlyn’s ear by less than an inch.
It smacked into the brick behind her with a vicious zing, spraying dust over her shoulder and showering the alley in broken mortar. She didn’t flinch. There was no way she was giving her that satisfaction.
“Snipers, third floor, left window!” Caitlyn barked into her radio, slipping behind a cracked concrete pillar. “I want suppressing fire in the next five seconds or I’m rewriting the firearms manual personally.”
“Yes, Chief!”
Gunfire erupted across the street, echoing down the block, turning the quiet evening stakeout into a full-blown firefight. Sirens wailed somewhere distant; car alarms joined in. Caitlyn knelt, checked her pistol, and risked another glance.
There she was.
Vi leaned halfway out of a warehouse window, bracing a rifle on the sill like it weighed nothing. Neon lights from the club across the street painted her hair in electric pinks. She wore a smirk that Caitlyn wanted to kiss off her face and also possibly strangle her for.
Caitlyn’s earpiece crackled. “Chief, do we have eyes on the package?”
She could see the duffel bags behind Vi. Cash. Guns. Evidence. Fifteen months of investigation, wiretaps, informants. All packaged into one perfect, career-making seizure… currently being overseen by her outlaw wife.
She exhaled slowly. “Affirmative. Visual confirmation on the package. Visual confirmation on… primary suspect.”
“Copy. Orders?”
Caitlyn raised her pistol, sighting down the barrel, dead center on Vi’s chest. From across the street, Vi did the same. For one absurd heartbeat, they were just two idiots aiming guns at each other like this was couples therapy.
Caitlyn’s radio hissed. “Chief? Orders?”
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
“Take them alive if possible,” Caitlyn said calmly. “And try not to shoot the primary suspect in the face. I have to fill out the paperwork.”
She squeezed the trigger. At the same time, Vi did too.
The bullet grazed Vi’s shoulder, spinning her half-backward. Vi’s shot went low, slamming into the bumper of a police cruiser and showering sparks.
Vi’s expression flashed surprise, then indignation, then… was that anger?
“Oh, I’m never going to hear the end of this,” Caitlyn muttered.
Her officers surged forward, using the line of parked cars as cover. Caitlyn moved with them, a controlled run, weapon drawn. Her heart hammered in double-time—not from the danger, but from the very specific knowledge that she’d just shot her wife.
Because there were rules. Unspoken ones.
Rule #1: Don’t get caught.
Rule #2: Don’t make the other one actually look incompetent.
Rule #3: Absolutely do not shoot each other.
The front doors of the warehouse blew open in a rush of smoke and bodies. Vi’s crew poured out, guns blazing. The street became chaos: shouts, cursing, flashes of muzzle fire. Caitlyn ducked behind a squad car as bullets chewed the asphalt around them.
“Chief!” Officer Steb yelled. “They’re making a push for the alley!”
Of course they were.
“Hold that alley!” Caitlyn snapped into her radio. “Riot shields up, tight formation. I don’t want anyone getting around our flanks. SWAT, you’re with me—we’re breaching the main floor.”
She broke cover and sprinted low along the row of patrol cars, bullets sparking off metal around her. Somewhere above, she caught the briefest glimpse of pink hair disappearing from the warehouse window.
Caitlyn reached the loading bay doors just as SWAT finished stacking up. “On my mark,” she ordered, voice calm even as her pulse pounded.
“Breach! Breach! Breach!”
The door exploded inward under the ram, a flashbang following a half second later. White light flared; shouts erupted from inside.
They surged in.
***
Vi was already moving fast.
The flashbang went off near the front, throwing her men into chaos. She’d seen the telltale clink of it rolling across the floor and had turned away just in time, squeezing her eyes shut, one hand thrown up out of habit more than fear.
“Down! Down, down, down!” she barked, voice cutting across the ringing in her ears.
Her crew scattered into cover behind crates and forklifts, firing blindly toward the entry. Thick dust and smoke turned the air into a dirty haze.
“You three, hold the line!” she shouted, pointing toward the breach. “Short, controlled bursts—buy me sixty seconds.”
“Leave, boss!” one of them yelled, panicked.
Gunfire rattled through the cavernous space as her guys laid down fire on the advancing police. Vi ducked behind a stack of pallets and made for the back wall, boots kicking spent shells out of her way.
A familiar, precise crack split the messier barrage of automatic shots.
The world lurched sideways.
Heat seared through Vi’s upper arm and shoulder, spinning her halfway around. She slammed into a crate hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. For a second, all she could hear was her own heartbeat and the faraway echo of her wife’s voice barking orders.
She glanced down.
Blood was already soaking through her sleeve where the bullet had carved a groove across her shoulder and exited. Not a clean through-and-through into muscle, but deep enough to make her fingers tingle.
“Fuck,” she hissed, clamping a hand over the wound.
She leaned her head back against the crate and laughed once, breathless.
Nice shot, Cupcake.
The shooting intensified near the front. Police were pushing in hard—shouts of “Hands where I can see them!” and “Suspect down!” bounced off steel beams and concrete.
Vi pushed herself upright. No room for pride. No time.
She lurched toward the far corner of the warehouse, weaving between forklifts and towering racks of inventory. There, half-hidden behind a stack of dusty boxes marked as refrigeration units, was an old metal maintenance door, paint peeling around the hinges.
Most people never noticed it.
She shouldered it open with a grunt, teeth clenched against another stab of pain. The door shrieked on hinges that hadn’t been oiled since the last century. Behind it, a narrow service corridor ran along the length of the building, lit by anemic buzz-strips of fluorescent light.
Vi slammed the door behind her and twisted the old bolt into place, shutting out the worst of the noise. The relative quiet of the corridor rang in her ears.
She pressed her shoulder against the cold concrete and exhaled shakily.
It hurt to move, but she did it anyway, one hand braced on the wall as she followed the corridor toward the rear of the warehouse. At the end of the corridor was a ladder.
Vi looked up the rungs with deep personal offense. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Her shoulder throbbed in answer.
“Fine.” She set her jaw. “We climb.”
She shoved her gun into the back of her waistband and started up one-handed, using her injured arm only when she had to. Each pull sent spikes of pain through her chest; twice she had to stop, forehead pressed to her arm, breathing hard.
“Should’ve picked a nice girl,” she grunted. “An accountant. Maybe a yoga instructor. Someone who doesn’t—”
A shout echoed faintly below—doors slamming, officers calling to each other.
She climbed faster.
At the top, a hatch.
Vi shoved it up with her good shoulder, squinting as cool night air rushed in, carrying the smell of rain on asphalt and distant street food.
She hauled herself onto the gravel-strewn rooftop and lay there for a beat, chest heaving, the city skyline a jagged halo around her. The wound burned, sticky under her shirt.
Sirens and shouting rose from the street level. Police cars blocked off the front and side approaches; alleyways crawled with uniforms. But the building right next door was lower, only a short gap away.
Vi staggered to her feet and ran.
“Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall,” she chanted under her breath. Her boots skidded on loose gravel as she hit the edge and launched herself across the gap. For one breathless moment, there was nothing under her but air and the thin line between “escaped” and “oh, that’s how she died.”
She hit the other rooftop hard, rolled, and bit back a scream as her shoulder flared white-hot. She lay there, panting, then pushed herself up with a muttered curse.
She staggered along the rooftop, slipped through the access door, and made her way down a different building’s interior stairwell, emerging half a block away in the shadow of a closed-down laundromat.
Only then did she let herself sag against the wall for a moment.
Caitlyn would find the duffels. She’d find the guns, the cash. She’d arrest half the room. She’d get her big seizure, her headlines.
She just wouldn’t get Vi.
Not tonight.
Vi pulled her phone from her pocket—her “clean” burner, the one she only powered on to send one very particular kind of message. Fingers sticky with her own blood, she typed out three words and hit send.
Still breathing. –V
Then she tossed the phone into a trash can, pulled up her hood, and disappeared into the night.
***
The gunfire finally died down.
“Clear!” someone shouted. “Suspect down!”
“Get EMS in here!”
Caitlyn stepped over a dropped rifle and skirted a widening pool of blood as paramedics rushed past her toward a groaning man on the floor. Smoke hung in the air, burned cordite and dust coating her tongue.
“Chief!” Steb jogged over, helmet pushed back, face flushed. “We’ve got seven in custody. The rest surrendered or are down.”
“And the primary?” Caitlyn asked, scanning the chaos.
Steb grimaced. “No sign of her. We think she slipped out during the breach. Nobody saw her leave.”
Of course they didn’t.
Caitlyn’s jaw flexed, but her voice stayed even. “Lock down all exits. Canvass nearby rooftops. I want surveillance footage pulled from every traffic cam within three blocks.”
Steb blinked. “What about the evidence?”
Caitlyn didn’t answer. Her gaze had locked onto the center of the warehouse floor.
There, under the harsh industrial lights, laid the duffel bags. Five of them, heavy and ugly and very intentionally visible. A crate beside them had been dragged aside; the angles were too clean, too deliberate.
“Bag and tag everything,” Caitlyn said, forcing her attention back to the job. “I want full inventories of contents within the hour. Firearms, serials, cash, ledgers—anything that even smells like evidence gets logged.”
“Yes, Chief.”
While the crime scene techs descended on the pile, Caitlyn walked a slow circle around the open space. Her heels crunched over broken glass.
No body.
No pink hair.
Just a smear of blood on the edge of a metal pillar at about shoulder height. Dark, fresh, unmistakable.
Caitlyn’s chest tightened.
She reached out and touched the stain with a gloved fingertip, more gesture than investigation. The latex came away red.
Rationally, she should be pleased. This was the biggest haul they’d pulled off Vi’s syndicate in months. Enough to shut down their hub and put away four of Vi’s lieutenants for a long time. Rationally, this was a win.
Emotionally, all she could hear was that single, distant rifle shot and the half-second where Vi jerked out of view.
If I keep missing, someone’s going to notice.
She wiped the stain with a handkerchief and hid it in her pocket.
***
Vi shut the gate with a soft click and leaned against it, breathing hard. The pain had settled into something heavy and insistent, dragging her down. Each step up the back stairs felt like climbing a mountain.
Her key slipped twice before she managed to turn it in the lock.
The kitchen was dark, lit only by the under-cabinet glow Caitlyn insisted was “practical mood lighting.” The smell of fresh coffee lingered; Caitlyn’s mug sat in the sink, a neat ring of dark at the bottom.
Vi toed off her boots and left them half-tucked near the mat. Her jacket fell over a chair. She tried to be quiet, she really did. But quiet wasn’t exactly her specialty, and the low, involuntary groan that escaped when she bumped her shoulder against the doorframe of the hallway was definitely not stealthy.
The bedroom light snapped on.
Caitlyn stood in the doorway, still in her dress shirt and slacks, sleeves rolled up. Her hair was out of its professional twist, falling dark and loose over her shoulders. The only outward sign of the chaos she’d just come from was a faint dusting of soot on her cheek.
Her eyes went wide.
“Vi.”
Vi mustered a grin. “Honey, I’m home.”
It lasted about half a second before Caitlyn’s calm, professional, utterly furious expression dropped over her features like a shutter.
“So,” Caitlyn said, voice tight, “how was your day at work?”
Vi stared at her.
“YOU FUCKING SHOT ME! THAT WAS MY DAY AT WORK!”
Caitlyn’s nostrils flared. “You opened fire on my officers.”
“I was aiming around your officers!”
“That’s not a thing, Vi.”
“Tell that to my shoulder!”
Caitlyn’s jaw clenched. “You could have killed someone.”
“You did kill someone,” Vi shot back, pointing at her own chest. Immediately regretted it. “Okay, ‘kill’ is maybe dramatic, but it really, really fucking hurts.”
For a heartbeat they just glared at each other across the narrow hallway—cop and criminal, chief and kingpin, both still thrumming with the leftover adrenaline of opposite sides. Then Caitlyn’s gaze dropped, past the attitude, past the cocky tilt of Vi’s mouth, to the spreading dark patch on her shoulder.
Her breath left her in a small, sharp sound.
“Let me see,” she said.
Vi’s chin came up. “No, I’m fine, I just need to—”
“Vi.” Just her name, but laced with that low warning tone that came out in briefings and, apparently, when she walked into their townhouse and found a blood trail on the floor. “Let me see.”
The fight drained out of Vi almost embarrassingly fast. She’d taken beatings from people who scared whole districts. This look, on this woman, did more damage than any of them.
With a muttered curse, she shuffled forward and let Caitlyn take her wrist, let herself be turned so they were face-to-face in the soft hall light.
Caitlyn’s fingers were cool and sure as they peeled Vi’s hand away from the wound and eased the ruined shirt collar aside. The dried blood pulled at her skin; Vi hissed.
“Sorry,” Caitlyn murmured automatically, already angling her head to get a better look.
Vi blinked at her. That tone didn’t belong in interrogation rooms. That tone belonged here, where Caitlyn corrected her coffee habits and reminded Vi not to leave dirty plates in the sink.
“Through and through,” she said under her breath, more to herself than to Vi. “Entry and exit. No obvious deformity. You’re lucky.”
“Is that the official report?” Vi tried for lightness. “Suspect is extremely lucky and weirdly hot?”
Caitlyn finally flicked her eyes up, and there it was: the crack in the professional mask, the heat and worry and something fragile under it all.
“Living room,” she said, voice low.
“I can walk.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.” Caitlyn slid an arm very gently around her waist. “I said: living room.”
It wasn’t quite a cuddle and wasn’t quite a police escort, but Vi leaned into it anyway, letting Cait take some of her weight as they made the short walk. Every step made her shoulder throb, but the press of Caitlyn’s body against her side—solid, warm, familiar—took the edge off.
“Couch,” Caitlyn ordered softly. “Sit.”
“Yes, Chief,” Vi muttered, but she obeyed, sinking into the cushions with a muffled groan. The room spun for a second, then steadied.
By the time she blinked back into focus, Caitlyn was already moving. Kitchen light. Cupboard door. The soft thunk of the first-aid kit dropping onto the coffee table. A clean towel. A glass of water. The kettle clicked on again without her even looking at it.
She’d done this before. Too many times, with too many people.
“Shirt off,” Caitlyn said, snapping on a pair of gloves.
Vi’s eyebrows climbed. “Buy me a drink first?”
Caitlyn just leveled her with a look that said not tonight and reached for the hem herself when Vi was too slow. Carefully, she worked the fabric over Vi’s head, guiding her bad arm through the sleeve with the kind of focus she used when defusing bureaucratic landmines. Every time Vi winced, Caitlyn paused, adjusted, tried again. By the time the shirt was gone, cut in one place where the dried blood had glued it to skin, Caitlyn’s mouth was pressed into a thin line.
“You’re shaking,” Vi said quietly.
“I am not shaking,” Caitlyn lied.
Vi watched the small tremor in her gloved fingers as she cleaned around the wound, the way her breath caught when fresh blood welled.
“Hey.” Vi used her good hand to nudge Cait’s wrist, gentle. “I’ve had worse.”
“I am aware,” Caitlyn said tightly. “I was there, remember?”
“Exactly,” Vi said. “You were there. I survived. Kind of a pattern at this point.”
“That pattern relies on me not shooting you.”
Vi exhaled slowly. “You did what you had to,” she said. “You had a whole line of rookies watching. If you’d missed by, like, a mile, someone would’ve noticed.”
Caitlyn’s eyes flicked up, searching her face. “You’re defending me now?”
“Well, one of us has to,” Vi said, shrugging her good shoulder. “Otherwise you’ll spiral and I’ll bleed all over the nice couch.”
Caitlyn stared at her for another second, then huffed out a breath that was almost, almost a laugh. “You are infuriating.”
“Still married me, though.”
“That’s one of many decisions I am reassessing tonight.”
She didn’t move away though.
If anything, she leaned in closer as she worked, face inches from Vi’s skin, breath warm where it ghosted over her collarbone. The antiseptic stung like hell; Vi’s fingers curled in the couch cushion. Without thinking, Caitlyn’s free hand closed over Vi’s knee, grounding, steady.
“Sorry,” she said again.
“You keep saying that like I didn’t fire first,” Vi muttered. “If anything, we’re even now.”
“We are not even,” Caitlyn said firmly. “You don’t have to write a report about shooting your spouse.”
“That’s true,” Vi admitted. “My paperwork is more… ‘misplaced crate of unregistered weaponry.’”
Caitlyn secured the bandage with neat, efficient movements. Her brows drew together, lips pursed in concentration. Vi watched her profile, the little crease by her eye she only got when she was worried.
“You looked for me,” Vi said softly.
Caitlyn’s hands stilled. “During the raid?”
“Mhm.” Vi studied her, voice gentler. “You had that ‘my idiot is missing’ face.”
A beat.
Caitlyn smoothed the last strip of tape down with surprising tenderness. “I didn’t… know if you’d made it out,” she admitted, very quietly. “There was blood on the pillar. No body. No sign. I had to order the search like I would for anyone else, but I—I kept hearing that shot and thinking…”
Her voice frayed at the edges. She stopped, jaw working.
Vi didn’t joke this time. She reached up, slow and careful, and cupped Caitlyn’s cheek with her good hand, thumb brushing a streak of soot she hadn’t noticed before.
“Hey,” she said, voice low. “I’m here.”
Caitlyn closed her eyes for a second, just leaning into the touch.
“Still breathing,” Vi added, echoing the text she’d sent earlier. “Still annoying. Promise.”
Caitlyn opened her eyes again, and the fury from the doorway had softened into something heavier and more fragile.
“Good,” she said, like it was a prayer.
She stripped off the gloves and tossed them into the small trash bag she’d brought, then snagged the blanket from the back of the couch and shook it out over Vi’s bare shoulders without asking.
“You’re pale,” she murmured. “And you’re going to crash when the adrenaline wears off. Drink.”
She pressed the glass of water into Vi’s hand. When Vi’s fingers trembled, Caitlyn steadied the glass from underneath, tipping it so she didn’t have to lift her arm quite so high.
“You know,” Vi said after a few sips, “this is not how I pictured the first time you shot me going.”
Caitlyn pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please tell me you did not have a fantasy scenario prepared.”
“Not, like, detailed,” Vi hedged. “Mostly you storming in all badass, pinning me to a wall, maybe a warning shot—”
“Vi.”
“—and then we make out in an evidence locker—”
“Vi.”
Caitlyn stared at her for a long, incredulous beat.
“You are bleeding on my couch,” she said finally. “You do not get to have a locker-room porn script on top of that.”
Vi’s grin went crooked. “Just saying, you’d look incredible under fluorescent lighting—”
“That is not the compliment you think it is.”
“It’s absolutely the compliment I think it is,” Vi murmured, eyes dropping briefly to Caitlyn’s mouth before drifting back up. “You should see yourself when you’re in full righteous fury. It’s kind of—”
She didn’t finish the sentence, because Caitlyn leaned in.
It wasn’t a dramatic passionate lunge. No crashing into furniture, no breathless spin. Just a smooth, decisive shift forward, one hand braced carefully on the back of the couch so she didn’t jostle Vi’s shoulder, the other curling around the edge of the blanket near Vi’s hip.
“Shut up,” she muttered, and kissed her.
Heat rolled through Vi like the shockwave from a blast—nothing subtle about it. Caitlyn’s mouth was warm and insistent, the kind of I could have lost you and I am so, so mad about it kiss.
Vi made a small, startled sound and leaned into it instinctively, her good hand catching at Caitlyn’s waist, thumb brushing the thin line where shirt met skin. She’d forgotten, for just a second, about the pain.
Her body reminded her. White-hot fire lanced through her shoulder when she shifted. She broke the kiss with a sharp inhale that came out as a hiss.
“Shit—”
Caitlyn jerked back instantly, eyes wide. “Did I hurt you?”
Vi swallowed, trying to blink her vision back into focus. “In a good way,” she tried, because reflex was reflex.
Caitlyn did not look amused. “There is no ‘good way’ that involves ripping open your stitches,” she said, voice low. Her hand had moved from the back of the couch to hover near Vi’s bandage, not quite touching, like she could shield it with willpower alone.
“No stitches,” Vi managed, breathless. “Just tape.”
“Do you want stitches?”
“Kinda want another kiss, actually.”
Caitlyn’s expression flickered—annoyance, fondness, something warmer and more vulnerable than either. She exhaled slowly, the tension bleeding out of her shoulders.
“You’re impossible,” she murmured.
“Still your problem,” Vi countered, smiling faintly.
Caitlyn hesitated only a heartbeat before closing the distance again, slower this time. She cupped Vi’s jaw with careful fingers, thumb tracing the bruise already forming along her cheekbone from some earlier scuffle.
“Stay still,” she instructed softly. “Let me do the work for once.”
Vi didn’t argue.
This kiss was gentler this time, but no less intense for it. Less crash, more slow burn. Caitlyn’s lips moved over hers with deliberate care, cataloguing every inch, relearning what it felt like with the taste of cordite and adrenaline still fading from both their mouths.
Vi’s hand slid up Caitlyn’s side, fingers curling into the fabric at her hip instead of pulling her closer. She could feel the tremor there—the leftover adrenaline, the exhausted crash, the raw edges of fear Caitlyn would never admit out loud.
“Hey,” Vi murmured against her mouth. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” Caitlyn whispered back. “Because if you try to run, I will arrest you.”
“Hot,” Vi breathed.
“That was not intended as—” Caitlyn broke off with a tiny, unwilling smile. “Of course it was.”
Their foreheads rested together for a moment, breaths mingling. The TV droned on in the background, forgotten. Somewhere in the kitchen, the cooling kettle clicked softly.
Caitlyn drew back just enough to look at her properly. Up close like this, Vi could see the tiny smudge of mascara at the corner of her eye, the faint bruise where her vest had dug into her collarbone. They were both wrecked in different ways.
“Lie down,” Caitlyn said.
“If I lie down, I might not get back up again.”
“That is the point,” Caitlyn replied. “You are off duty. I am declaring it.”
“Pretty sure you don’t have jurisdiction over—”
Caitlyn shifted, nudging Vi’s legs with her knee until she got the hint and stretched them out along the couch. Then Caitlyn slid in beside her, curling up along her good side, one arm draped lightly across Vi’s stomach, her head on Vi’s uninjured shoulder.
“You were saying?” Caitlyn asked, smug.
Vi stared at the ceiling for a second, then huffed a quiet laugh. “Yeah, all right. This is good jurisdiction.”
Her arm found its way around Caitlyn’s back, fingers splaying between her shoulder blades. She could feel each slow breath, the rise and fall pressing them together, the warmth of her skin.
For a moment, the sirens in Vi’s head went quiet.
“Just so we’re clear,” Caitlyn said, voice muffled against her collarbone, “there is absolutely no sex until I’m sure you’re not going to pass out on me.”
“Aww, you were considering it,” Vi teased, turning her head to press a soft kiss into Caitlyn’s hair. “That’s sweet.”
Caitlyn’s fingers tightened briefly on her shirt. “I am not a monster,” she muttered. “You almost died.”
“‘Almost died’ is a strong phrase for ‘your wife is too good a shot,’” Vi said. “And for the record: that’s admiration.”
“Vi.”
“Yes, love?”
“Shut up and let me worry about you,” Caitlyn said quietly.
Something in Vi’s chest went warm and heavy at the same time.
“Yes, Chief,” she murmured, and meant it.
They laid there like that, Caitlyn’s fingers tracing the line of an old scar on Vi’s ribs. Every so often, Caitlyn would tilt her head and steal another kiss—soft, tender. A reminder.
You are alright.
You came home.
You are mine.
Eventually, Vi’s eyes started to droop, the painkillers and exhaustion catching up with her. She felt Caitlyn shift, pressing one last kiss to the corner of her mouth, careful of the angle.
“Sleep,” Caitlyn whispered. “I’ll wake you in a few hours to check the bandage.”
“You’re gonna baby me all night, aren’t you,” Vi mumbled, half-asleep already.
“Absolutely,” Caitlyn said. “Consider it punishment.”
“Best punishment ever,” Vi slurred, and let herself sink.
Caitlyn held her a little tighter as she drifted off, lips brushing the pulse at Vi’s throat in a brief, reverent touch.
“Never scare me like that again,” she murmured into the quiet.
Vi, already mostly gone, made a vague, agreeable noise and tightened her arm around Caitlyn’s waist in reflex.