Say It Ain't So (SWAT Generation 2.0 Book 9) Read online

  Text copyright ©2020 Lani Lynn Vale

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  These are always really hard for me to write. Who do I thank for giving me my dream job? My husband and mom for urging me to do this? My readers for taking a chance on me? My editors for making sure these babies shine? I literally sit here every single day and do the job I love. Not many people can say that.

  Acknowledgments

  Golden Czermak - Photographer

  My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing- My editors

  Cover Me Darling - Cover Artist

  My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred and one times.

  Kendra, Laura, Lisa, Kathy, Mindy, Penney, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  What’s Next?

  Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:

  The Freebirds

  Boomtown

  Highway Don’t Care

  Another One Bites the Dust

  Last Day of My Life

  Texas Tornado

  I Don’t Dance

  The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC

  Lights To My Siren

  Halligan To My Axe

  Kevlar To My Vest

  Keys To My Cuffs

  Life To My Flight

  Charge To My Line

  Counter To My Intelligence

  Right To My Wrong

  Code 11- KPD SWAT

  Center Mass

  Double Tap

  Bang Switch

  Execution Style

  Charlie Foxtrot

  Kill Shot

  Coup De Grace

  The Uncertain Saints

  Whiskey Neat

  Jack & Coke

  Vodka On The Rocks

  Bad Apple

  Dirty Mother

  Rusty Nail

  The Kilgore Fire Series

  Shock Advised

  Flash Point

  Oxygen Deprived

  Controlled Burn

  Put Out

  I Like Big Dragons Series

  I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie

  Dragons Need Love, Too

  Oh, My Dragon

  The Dixie Warden Rejects

  Beard Mode

  Fear the Beard

  Son of a Beard

  I’m Only Here for the Beard

  The Beard Made Me Do It

  Beard Up

  For the Love of Beard

  Law & Beard

  There’s No Crying in Baseball

  Pitch Please

  Quit Your Pitchin’

  Listen, Pitch

  The Hail Raisers

  Hail No

  Go to Hail

  Burn in Hail

  What the Hail

  The Hail You Say

  Hail Mary

  The Simple Man Series

  Kinda Don’t Care

  Maybe Don’t Wanna

  Get You Some

  Ain’t Doin’ It

  Too Bad So Sad

  Bear Bottom Guardians MC

  Mess Me Up

  Talkin’ Trash

  How About No

  My Bad

  One Chance, Fancy

  It Happens

  Keep It Classy

  Snitches Get Stitches

  F-Bomb

  The Southern Gentleman Series

  Hissy Fit

  Lord Have Mercy

  KPD Motorcycle Patrol

  Hide Your Crazy

  It Wasn’t Me

  I’d Rather Not

  Make Me

  Sinners are Winners

  If You Say So

  SWAT 2.0

  Just Kidding

  Fries Before Guys

  Maybe Swearing Will Help

  Ask Me If I Care

  May Contain Wine

  Joke’s on You

  Join the Club

  Any Day Now

  Say it Ain’t So

  Officially Over It (10-13-20)

  Nobody Knows (11-3-20)

  Depends Who’s Asking (12-8-20)

  Valentine Boys

  Herd That

  Crazy Heifer

  Chute Yeah

  Get Bucked

  Souls Chapel Revenants MC

  Repeat Offender (1-12-21)

  Conjugal Visits (2-23-21)

  Jailbait (4-6-21)

  Doin’ A Dime (5-4-21)

  Inmate of the Month (6-29-21)

  Kitty Kitty (8-10-21)

  Gen Pop (9-21-21)

  Shakedown (11-2-21)

  Standalones:

  Somethin’ About That Boy

  Blurb

  He should’ve never left his house. He should’ve stayed at home. He had a legitimate excuse—he was running a fever and was fairly sure he was developing pneumonia. He should have called in sick… but he didn’t.

  He goes to work, because his team is relying on him.

  First, he has to sign about eight thousand calendars—all from women who purchased said calendars to benefit the Fallen Officer fundraiser. And when he’s done with that, he has to endure a television interview along with the rest of the SWAT team seeing as they made national news with their ‘Hot SWAT’ calendar that’s sold a million copies to women all over the world.

  Needless to say, when Samuel Adams walks into the pharmacy hours later, he only has one thing on his mind. Ibuprofen.

  Sadly, he never gets to the ibuprofen. Mostly because before he gets there, he finds a junkie waving a gun around, threatening to kill anybody that moves.

  He’s running a fever. That has to be the reason that the girl in the corner begins cursing up a storm and drawing the junkie’s attention. Has to be.

  ***

  Stop it, stop it, stop it!

  She tells herself to take a deep breath. Tells herself that she needs to calm down. Tells herself that if she doesn’t get her act under control, things are going to get ugly.

  And, of course, that’s when the curse words start flying.

  The more nervous she gets, the worse her Tourette’s becomes. Which is, of course, why she stands up and gives the man a perfect target.

  Thank God the coughing giant in the cor
ner makes the same move and saves her life.

  And how does she repay him? By calling him every awful word in the dictionary.

  Thank you, Tourette’s.

  Chapter 1

  I was normal two arrests ago.

  -Sammy’s secret thoughts

  Sammy

  “Hey there, Sammy Boy.”

  I looked up at our team leader, Bennett.

  Bennett was like a second father to me. He had been there when I lost my first tooth. Wrecked my first car. Fucked my first…

  “Hey,” I said, viciously cutting off that original thought. “What’s up?”

  He looked at me sharply. “You feeling okay?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been better.”

  In fact, I had been better.

  My throat was on fire, my eyes felt like they were about to pop out of my sockets thanks to the pressure headache behind them, and to top it all off, I was running a low-grade fever.

  “You look like a pile of dog shit,” Bennett offered. “Where’s your uncle?”

  My uncle Foster also was one of the team leaders.

  “He’s not coming today,” I murmured, closing my eyes as the headache pounded harder. “He said he told you that.”

  “I was hoping that he wasn’t serious,” Bennett admitted, sounding annoyed and amused all at once.

  I snorted. “Apparently he doesn’t want to be on national television,” I said.

  “He thinks that I do?” he asked, sounding miffed.

  Neither did I. But I hadn’t gotten the choice.

  Honestly, I thought both of those assholes should be here. I mean, we weren’t the ones that had asked to be on fucking calendars. They were the ones to tell us we were doing it. We hadn’t even gotten the choice to say yes or no.

  “He also said that y’all played rock, paper, scissors,” I commented.

  Bennett sighed. “Fuck.”

  I would’ve rolled my eyes, but I knew if I did, that would make my headache worse.

  So instead, I just made a pitiful sound of ‘meh’ before walking away in search of my locker.

  There I knew I had ibuprofen. I also had Tylenol.

  Sadly, that’s where everyone else knew I had the shit, too.

  Getting to my locker finally, I opened it to find both damn bottles empty.

  “Son of a bitch!” I growled, tossing the bottles to the trash can that was across the room.

  I missed both, causing the men in the room to look at me with a frown.

  Normally I made it.

  I played basketball in high school and in college.

  I wasn’t good enough to go pro or anything, but I should’ve made a bottle into a trash can from five feet away.

  “You okay, man?” Saint, one of my fellow members of the SWAT team, looked at me with worry in his eyes.

  I looked over at Saint then back at my drug-free locker.

  “Someone used the last of my meds and I need some,” I grumbled.

  “Yeah, that was me,” Louis said as he came up with a beer in his hand. “I apologize.”

  I sighed and looked at Louis, my cousin and also fellow SWAT team member.

  “Next time you empty it, just tell me. Then I wouldn’t be standing here, thinking I had meds in my locker to take for this fuckin’ headache, when I don’t,” I grumbled.

  “I just took them like twenty minutes ago. I was waiting for you to get here to tell you. But I actually ran to the liquor store next door to see if they had any, because I honestly feel like that would be great to have there. I mean, buy the beer and vodka that you’re gonna drink, then grab the ibuprofen that you’re going to need to take the next morning for your hangover. One stop shop, you know?” He paused for a breath. “Long story short, they didn’t have any. But they did have beer.”

  He handed me a beer, and the sad thing was, for once I was too fuckin’ sick to drink the beer. Hell, at this point I didn’t even think I could get the top off.

  “My dad probably has some in his office,” Derek suggested.

  Derek was the chief of police’s son and one of my really good friends from childhood.

  When the second-generation SWAT team first formed, a lot of ‘SWAT kids,’ as we liked to call ourselves, had gotten home from the military at or around the same time. Derek, Louis, Booth, Bourne, and I had decided to join up. Though Booth had come a little later to the party than the rest of us.

  The others that joined—Dax, Hayes, Adam, Nathan, Ford, and Saint—had quickly fallen right into our circle.

  The last one to join, Malachi, slid right into place to solidify the SWAT team’s final piece.

  They were like my brothers now. Annoying, asshole brothers that took my shit and didn’t replace it.

  But I wouldn’t trust another fuckin’ person with my back like I did them.

  “They’re ready for us,” Hayes grumbled as he walked through the door.

  Hayes and Malachi were likely the least excited about this endeavor.

  Neither one of them liked the media attention, and even worse, both of the men were scarred and had PTSD, which they fuckin’ hated talking about. Which was inevitable that someone would bring it up just to ask about it.

  And today’s interview being with a major news morning show? Yeah, let’s just say that it was going to be really fuckin’ fun.

  “I’m sitting in the back,” I declared. “And if anybody has a problem with that, I’ll give you a hug and share whatever the fuck I have with you.”

  Saint slid over a bit. “I don’t want the flu.”

  “I don’t have the flu,” I said, but I didn’t sound as convincing as I probably should have.

  “Nobody gets the flu this early in the year,” Dax grumbled as he walked in. “But just in case you do, stay the fuck away from me. Rowen would kill me if I gave the baby the flu.”

  Dax was married to another of the ‘SWAT kids,’ Rowen used to be a Roberts and they’d just had their first baby together.

  “A-fucking-men,” Ford said. “With Ashe being nineteen months pregnant, emotional as hell, and pissy to boot, she would seriously hate me for life if I gave that to her.”

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t given the choice to stay home.”

  “No, the fuck you weren’t,” Bennett said as he came into the room. “They’re ready for us. Grab your shit and let’s go.”

  ‘Our shit’ meant dress like we would for work, apparently.

  After slinging on my gun belt and trying not to make any sudden movements, I followed the rest of them into the training gym where we could get a bit of training done when needed or we had spare time.

  I immediately winced at all the harsh lights that were pointed at thirteen chairs in the middle of the room.

  “Fuck,” I grumbled.

  And, to top it all off, it was hotter than fuck inside the room.

  “Fuck,” I heard Saint say beside me.

  I shot him an amused look, then walked to the chairs and took the seat all the way to the left and in the back.

  The others filed in around me, and soon every seat was filled.

  The ones around me were the last, and the one directly next to me was Bennett.

  And even then, he made sure to pull his seat as far over as he could.

  I grunted out a laugh, which sounded incredibly pitiful, and took pity on Bennett by scooting my chair over about half a foot. Which put me out of sync with the other chairs and luckily hid me quite well behind Bourne’s head.

  I slumped down even farther in my seat and closed my eyes.

  I had no clue how far into the interview we were when Bennett kicked me.

  I looked over at him with a glare.

  “They’re talking to you,” he murmured.

  My eyes went to the front where a woman was smiling serenely at me.

  “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” I asked.

  My voice sounded awful.

  “I
said, what is it like working with your cousins on the SWAT team?” the lady asked.

  Was her name Meredith?

  “It’s like working with your cousins.” I shrugged.

  What more was there to say?

  I mean, they were my cousins. And I worked with them.

  Bennett snorted beside me, covering his mouth with his hand to hide his smile.

  I wasn’t sure what the funny shit of my statement was, but apparently it caused all the guys to be amused.

  “Is that so?” Meredith asked. “It’s not different? You don’t worry about either of them at all?”

  I looked over at Louis to see him batting his eyes at me.

  “Louis is one of the snipers. I don’t necessarily see him get into many close contact situations to be all that worried about him,” I admitted.

  I might feel differently if he were beside me, but I doubted it.

  I felt the same way about Ford, my other cousin.

  I didn’t worry about any of the SWAT team members any more or less because they were related to me.

  “So, Louis got married to your daughter?” the reporter asked.

  Since I was assuming she was no longer speaking to me, I chose to close my eyes again.

  My head really wasn’t any better, and I knew that I was seriously running a fever now. I could feel my fuckin’ cheeks heating the longer I sat in the most uncomfortable chair in the world. What the hell did they do? Go shop at a fuckin’ bar to find these chairs? Didn’t they know that the tall chairs had to have some sort of footrest or the circulation was cut off to your goddamn legs?

  “He did,” Bennett said from my side.

  I leaned my head back on my shoulders and rolled out my neck, causing an audible crack to sound as I pivoted it this way and that.

  When I straightened my head moments later, it was to find the reporter once again staring at me.

  “I have the flu,” I said. “And these chairs are extremely uncomfortable.”

  Her lips twitched.

  “I asked if you felt like you had some big shoes to fill when it came to your father,” she said, this time much more sweetly.

  I thought about that.

  “My father is out of this world,” I said. “I’m not sure that I’ll ever get close to filling his shoes. In fact, he wears size fourteen, and I’m a size thirteen.” Appropriate laughter filled the air, but I shook my head. “I’ve had a really good life. My father has made damn good sure of that. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fill his shoes, so to speak, but I’m going to give it my best shot.”