“You’re both idiots,” she says. “For your information, I beat him with a pillow for a while and yelled at him. I can’t do that in the middle of the street, or so Peter tells me, so this will have to do.”
“I thought we’d all graduated high school,” Daniel mutters. “Did you come down here for something important?”
“I will punch you again if you keep playing dumb,” Tia says, now with her head inside the car. “He keeps saying that he screwed up, but literally everyone who has ever seen the two of you in the same room is probably still fanning themselves from the secondhand sexual tension.”
“Excuse me?” Squeak, yelp, whatever the sound—Daniel is denying everything.
“I spat in that coffee,” she says and turns on her heel, disappearing back into the building before Daniel can formulate a response.
Clint’s laughter comes over the radio this time. “You need backup, bro?”
Daniel breathes out, glancing down at the coffee, and then leans out of the window and flashes a middle finger toward Clint. The laughter over the radio gets louder and Daniel twists the dial a couple of notches down, deciding to hell with it and bringing the coffee up to his mouth. He’s pretty sure that she wouldn’t have actually told him if she had spat in the coffee. It’s black and strong, just how he likes it, and he can’t help but flash back to the warmth of Peter’s lips against his.
“Goddammit.”
A few hours later, the mug stashed back in the cup holder next to a can of energy drink, and a half-eaten packet of Doritos occupying the passenger seat, Daniel chances another look up at the now mostly dark building. The street is quiet, about as quiet as you’d expect a street to be late at night and with at least one marked police vehicle in the vicinity. He’s been through enough stakeouts to know that when you spend enough time in silence, waiting for a threat or danger that might not even be there, your brain can go to some strange places. It’s usually worse when you’re not exactly in a good place beforehand, and Daniel doesn’t think he’s been in a good place since last year. Since Coy Fairhall had come blowing into their lives, hell-bent on making Daniel second-guess every decision he’s made since the fateful one back in college. Believing Derek that there was nothing to worry about—what was he thinking?
Daniel weighs up the motivators driving Coy—obsession and revenge—and the suspiciously tame behavior since his breakout. The collateral of the guards had been unavoidable, but outside of that, the only thing they’d even managed to pin on Coy had been the car explosion. The dead gang member and the fires were still up in the air. Daniel doesn’t even know what was Coy and what was Jake Bartlett anymore. The two have merged somewhere behind his eyes into a blurry figure, some kind of bogeyman made up of the last half year of his life. The angry scars of Derek’s face before they healed, James’s dead-eyed stare, the shaking of Peter’s hands and the line of his back as he disappeared into the alley.
Obsession has to be the answer. Bartlett is a smokescreen, chaos for chaos’s sake, and Coy’s goal has always been Derek. Daniel’s hands spasm into fists, the ragged edge of a fingernail catching the soft mound below his thumb. “Not on my watch,” he says, eyes flicking up to the darkened window halfway up the side of the building.
Derek doesn’t mind the constant police escort, not when it’s James hovering somewhere behind him. It feels more like a promise than a threat. Rhys, on the other hand, makes Derek think of an armed giraffe. Sticks out like a sore thumb, packing heat that it doesn’t really have much of an idea what to do with, and occasionally causes a traffic jam just by existing. James had passed out, exhausted, with a hand curled around Derek’s hip. He’d barely grunted out a good night, breath tickling the side of Derek’s neck, before he’d been out for the count. Derek had curled around him, James’s back to the door and his own to the wall, and laid awake counting time by the soft, intermittent snoring beneath his jaw.
The dark circles under his eyes when he looks in the steamed-up mirror the next morning are as much a part of his face as any of his other features by this point. They belong in the face that stares back at him, along with the scars that catch the light at certain angles and make him look older. Closer to how he feels. He closes his eyes when James comes up behind him, arms landing warm around his bare waist and stubble prickling along the curve of his neck and shoulder. James’s lips trail up over the line of his throat, soft and scorching all at once, and Derek’s head tips back, baring more skin to his mouth.
“You look a million miles away,” James says, biting at the muscle joining shoulder and neck as his fingers slide between the towel around Derek’s hips and his stomach. Derek leans further back, settling his own hands on James’s forearms and feeling the flexing muscles under his fingers. “Better not stray too far, you’re coming to work with me.”
“M’here,” he murmurs, any further response lost to the lines of heat following James’s hands as they loosen the towel enough that it falls open, caught between their bodies.
James hums against his neck. “Might just have to make sure of that,” he says, pulling the towel free and crowding closer. His thigh slips into the space between Derek’s legs and he pulls Derek back until they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip. “I don’t think you’re close enough for me to believe you.”
Derek’s head falls back onto James’s shoulder with a groan as one hand comes up to splay possessively over his chest, urging him up until he’s on the balls of his feet. “Better,” James says, nipping at his earlobe and sliding his other hand over the straining muscle of Derek’s thigh until he’s a hairsbreadth from where Derek wants him. “Much better.”
Derek’s good mood survives Kay’s raised eyebrows and salacious smile and is still hanging on by a thread when he forces down a cup of the watery tar they call coffee and sets up in a vacant meeting room with his laptop and the never-ending stream of attachments on the newest email in his inbox. James comes in while he’s still opening the documents and tips Derek’s head up with a finger under his chin for a quick, sweet kiss. “I’ll be back in an hour, two tops,” he says, still hovering so close that Derek’s eyes cross trying to focus on his face. “Just hang tight here, then we can head out if you’ve got other stuff to do.”
Derek scoffs, and James barks out a laugh, brushing his lips against Derek’s temple as he backs away. “Fine, try not to break any of my officers beyond fixing. I’ll be back soon.”
The peace and quiet lasts maybe another half an hour after the door closes behind James. Kay presses her face against the window when she passes on her way to the bathroom, and again on the way back, tapping at the glass with her nails until he looks up and bares his teeth at her. He can hear her laugh through the closed door all the way back to her desk.
He’s on the verge of sinking back into the endless briefs that he’s got to read when the door creaks open. Derek snaps his head up, mouth already open to tell whoever it is where to go, when he sees Daniel. His jaw snaps shut with enough force to rattle his teeth.
“Hey,” Daniel says. “You got a few minutes?”
His eyes are on the bloodshot and bruised-looking side, but even Derek’s sympathy feels sour and out of place all of a sudden. The room is growing stifling and he nods, shutting his laptop with a sigh and pushing it further along the table.
“You look like you’ve been on guard duty too,” Derek says as Daniel settles into a seat on the opposite side of the table. “Anything to worry about?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Daniel says. He closes his eyes for a second and then opens them slowly as he breathes out a gusty sigh.
“What, no banter?” Derek snorts, rubbing a hand over his face with a sigh of his own. “What is it, Danny?”
“I think you need to get out of the city.” Daniel’s words come out of nowhere to hit Derek somewhere between his throat and his chest with all the force of a bullet. “Head toward home, maybe? We can’t take the offensive here, Derek, not with you in hi
s sights and these assholes running loose. It’s too hard to protect someone in this city.”
“You mean it’ll be easier to keep an eye on Saracen when you don’t have to worry about me,” he says after a second, his insides still roiling, and fully expecting the sudden hurt in Daniel’s eyes. He wants it to hurt just as much as the thought of running scared from his city hurts. “What makes you think the offensive is going to be any easier with me upstate than it is with me here? How are you going to draw him out if you don’t have what he wants?”
“We are not using you as bait.” Daniel’s mouth twists into a snarl, the hurt gone like it was never there. “Do you remember what happened last time, Derek? When you and James pulled your own shit and both almost got killed, along with a civilian, because no one listened to the people who are trained to do this and not emotionally compromised?”
The fury in his chest catches him by surprise. Derek laughs, bitter and mirthless, and he nods. He’s not weaponless in this firefight. “I remember better than anyone, Daniel. Acting like you would have done any different might work with someone who doesn’t know you, but I’ve seen all the stupid shit you’ve pulled over the last decade. Cleaned up the mess at least once too, wouldn’t you say?”
Daniel’s eyes darken noticeably, the lines around them deepening and his teeth clenching. “A decade’s been plenty long enough to learn how to tell when you’re lashing out because you’re scared someone’s going to figure out that you don’t have all the answers. That you’re just as lost and scared as the rest of us. This isn’t the courtroom, Derek, and you are not calling the shots here. If I say you’re safer upstate, then that’s where you’re going, because this is my job and I’m a damn good cop. I know when to listen to my gut, and right now it’s screaming that you’re not safe here.”
Derek opens his mouth, his lip curling back too, before the door slams open and ricochets off the wall. Rhys is braced in the doorway, face flushed.
“Callahan,” he says, gaze flicking from Derek to Daniel. “We’ve got a situation.”
Derek’s mouth closes, the clack of his teeth audible in the silence and rattling in his ears. “Detectives,” he says coolly, pushing up and to his feet. He turns to his side to slip past Rhys on his way out, not looking back.
The bullpen is a frenetic mass of uniforms surging around one another, and Derek veers toward the wall to skirt the edge and keep out of the way. Kay stands up at the front desk as he gets closer, and she reaches out like she wants to drag him into a hug. He ducks her hand, still vibrating with pent-up fury. Out of the corner of his eye he can see her face fall, somewhere between crumpled and hard. Like she knows and still thinks she’s right, and the fire inside his chest flares again.
He takes advantage of the chaos as a trio of officers come through the door, flustered and shouting something, and ducks behind them to make it out before the doors swing shut. They don’t open again, and Derek jogs out onto the street, eyes peeled for a cab. He jogs half a block down before he manages to flag one down, throwing himself into the back seat without even looking up at the driver. “Uptown,” he says, wrestling his way free of his blazer and fumbling for his cell phone. “Just head that way, I need to organize something.”
“Certainly, Mr. Moore,” the driver replies, pulling smoothly into the stream of traffic.
Derek’s head jerks up, halfway through pulling the seat belt across his body. “Excuse me?” His hands tighten around the belt.
“You heard the man, Derek.” That’s another voice, one that sends unease trickling like ice water down his spine. Derek lets go of the belt, hands trembling. “I’ve got to say, I did not think this would work.”
Derek darts a glance at the driver who is sitting rigidly in his seat. The half of his face that Derek can see is pale and there are beads of sweat streaking down from his temple. Not exactly the mark of a willing accomplice, he realizes, and quickly takes in the rest of the car.
“You were made for those suits,” Coy says over the loudspeaker. “You looked great in whatever you wore in college, of course, but those tailored suits fit you like a glove.”
Zeroing in on the dashcam turned to the inside of the cab, Derek can feel the blood drain from his face. He stares into the flashing light of the recorder without blinking.
“Coy,” he says. His heart starts to pound against his ribs. “How did you know I was going to be here? How did you know which cab I was going to get in?”
Coy laughs, the sound crackly and distorted and still familiar enough to make Derek flinch. He’d laughed last time too. “You put out enough lines and eventually you catch the fish you’re after, Derek.”
“And I’m the fish?” Derek reaches out with his hand to where his cell has fallen onto the other seat. He doesn’t take his eyes off the camera as he taps blindly, waiting for the vibration to confirm it’s unlocked.
“You know that you’ve always been my endgame, Derek.” The words are tender, and Coy’s voice drops, softer and gentler than before. Goose bumps rise on the back of Derek’s neck and he keeps tapping, swallowing to get rid of the dry, fuzzy feeling. “You just need to let me show you that they’re wrong, and then I can give you the world just like I promised.”
The driver makes a sound, somewhere between distress and warning, and Derek looks away from the camera just as the car pulling into the lane ahead of them fishtails.
It only takes a split second to decide, and Derek throws himself at the door on the sidewalk side. The driver slams on the brakes, and anything coming over the speaker gets lost in the squeal of rubber and the blood pounding in Derek’s ears as he tumbles out.
8
“Where is he? Where is—Daniel, Jesus, where is he?”
Daniel’s head jerks up from staring at his hands. James is halfway across the private waiting room and closing in, eyes blazing and wild.
“Still back there,” he grates out. His throat is tender and raw from shouting. “They said he’d be okay. Road rash and a bad concussion. Not sure if the ribs are cracked or just bruised but—”
“What the fuck happened?” James grabs at the shoulder of Daniel’s uniform, pulling him to his feet. “Who was with him?”
“No one.” Daniel closes his eyes against the accusation in James’s gaze, swaying when everything goes dark and quickly opening his eyes again. He focuses on James’s chin. “I told him that I thought we should get him away from here. Somewhere safe. He didn’t agree and slipped out when Rhys came to get me, didn’t take anyone with him. By the time Kay made it in and I was off the call, he was gone.”
James stops and drops his hold on Daniel’s shirt, one shaking hand coming up to cover his mouth as the fire drains out of his eyes. “What happened?” he repeats, the words muffled by his palm and fingers.
Daniel swallows around the lump in his throat that’s been there since he’d looked away from Rhys to see Derek’s back disappearing into the bullpen. “Best we can tell, Fairhall blackmailed a bunch of cab drivers. Had them around places he knew Derek would be, waiting for someone’s guard to go down. Drivers didn’t know where they’d have to take him ahead of time, so we don’t have anything to go off. The driver who picked him up said someone swerved out into their lane and Derek threw himself out of the car. Civilian witnesses saw him hit the ground and they blocked the cab in. Driver’s back there, under guard, being treated for shock.”
“Has anyone spoken to the driver?” James drags his hand away from his mouth, white crescent marks from his fingernails stark against his skin. “Did—do we know if Fairhall was nearby? Do we have any leads on him?”
“Not yet,” Daniel says. “Doctors said to give the driver half an hour to calm down, and I said we’d wait for you anyway. Knew you’d want to question him.”
“What I want is to know why Derek was getting into a cab on his own, Daniel.” James’s voice comes out rough. “Why was he on his own?”
“He just—he just stormed out,” Daniel says, eyes dropping to his own
hands again. “Rhys came in, they pulled another body from the river. Same spot. Same everything. I took my eyes off him, and by the time I looked back, he was gone. I went after him but couldn’t see him when I got out there.”
The scuffed toes of James’s boots are just visible past the edge of Daniel’s hands. They blur, James shifting his feet, and Daniel feels his next words like a ripple of ice down his spine. “Then what?”
Daniel swallows, closing his eyes. “I went back inside, sent a couple of the boys out to the street to do a loop. Told Rhys to get down there and talk to the scene techs at the river. I was about to call Lara, tell her to call Derek, when we got the call that there was an accident a few blocks up. She’s on her way here.”
“Jesus.” Daniel looks up as James drops into one of the chairs with a dull thud. “Jesus.”
“He’s okay,” Daniel says, even though the words taste sour. James doesn’t acknowledge them, and Daniel repeats them, mostly for himself. “He’s okay.”
It could have been minutes or hours later, but both Daniel and James’s heads snap up at the sound of heels on linoleum. Lara blows into the room, hair tangled and hanging in disarray. Her bright, frantic eyes lock onto them halfway across the room. Daniel pushes up to his feet at the same time James does, and takes a step forward, opening his mouth to start an explanation he doesn’t even have, when Lara barrels into James. James’s arms come up around her, the impact punching a breathless oof from him. Daniel blinks as Lara starts mumbling something into James’s shoulder and James rumbles out something that might not even be words but sounds soothing all the same.
He isn’t expecting it when Lara flings out a hand, snagging his shirt and reeling him close. He stumbles, his weight landing heavy against Lara’s side and sandwiching her between he and James.
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