by Mary Calmes
My mind had been drifting, so I was lucky the glut of information was not directed at me.
“But SOG was called to an emergency in Hyde Park, so they’re gone.”
“We need to run warrants on all these men,” Kage began, indicating the people lying on the ground, facedown with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. “Run everyone through NCIC and then—”
“Is that really necessary?” asked Darren Mills, the new supervisory deputy who took over Kage’s spot after he was promoted.
First, holy God, he interrupted Kage.
Second, not only did he question our boss, his boss, but what he asked was stupid.
I glanced at Ching, who shot a look over to Becker, who winced. It was not the first time Mills, who had been chosen by a committee without the benefit of endorsement from Kage or Kage’s boss, Tom Kenwood, had opened his mouth and inserted his foot. He had also missed a filing for Asset Forfeiture, so we missed the monthly auction where we got the cars we drove, or sometimes didn’t want to drive but got stuck with anyway—a horrific carnation-pink Cabriolet came instantly to mind—and he still didn’t know who did what in our building.
Over the years, I’d come to realize there were two kinds of transfers, which was probably true of all workplace environments. There were people who came in quietly, got the lay of the land, and worked really hard to make sure everyone saw they could be counted on to do the job. Then there were others like Mills, who swaggered in, put on airs, and pretended to run the place and direct the team. In his defense, the investigator team normally did report to the supervisory deputy, as we all did to Kage when he was in that position, but when he moved up, Kage changed the reporting system so the lead investigator, currently Becker, remained in direct contact with him—basically circumventing Mills. In response Mills had spoken to Kenwood, US marshal in charge of the Northern District of Illinois, one of the ninety-four men appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, to complain that Kage hadn’t relinquished all his duties.
That was the gist of it, anyway, and I only knew that much because Dorsey and Ryan had been in the office processing a fugitive when Mills barged into Kage’s office without an invitation.
“Really?” I’d deadpanned over wings, eating one after another, licking my fingers and listening while we sat at Crisp on Broadway. Ian was shoved up beside me, laughing as he watched me but also listening. “Mills just rolled into his office without checking with Elyes?”
Kage had needed an assistant for as long as I’d known him, and he finally got one in the form of small, slender, hyperefficient Elyes Salerno, easily one of the most beautiful women I’d ever met in my life. She had a pixie cut, dark tan skin with bronze undertones, and huge chestnut-brown eyes with the thickest black lashes I’d ever seen. She had fantastic fashion sense, and as many compliments as I gave her, she gave me the same back, telling me often that if only her husband had my shoe collection, she’d have no complaints. The fact that she could be midsentence with me, check her email, and answer a question for Kage if he popped his head out of his office all at the same time told me she was absolutely on top of all facets of her boss’s life, from remembering when he was supposed to be somewhere to intuitively knowing what report he needed. Elyes only left the office when Kage did. So the fact that Mills disregarded her and walked past her into the office was, I was sure, his first mistake.
“Yep,” Dorsey reported, sighing when the server put the next basket of wings down on the table. It was always good to go to Crisp with Dorsey and Ryan because they ate the same wings as me and Ian: the Seoul Sassy and the Crisp BBQ. The others liked to mix it up, but I never saw the appeal of straying from the tried and true. “Mills yells at Kage and says he’s got Kenwood on the line, and he’s about to slam the door when Kage leans out, apologizes to Elyes, and then closes the door behind him.”
I couldn’t control my smile. “Ohmygod, I can’t believe Mills is still breathing!”
“Right?” Dorsey chuckled.
“So what happened?” Ian asked, smiling as he wiped the side of my mouth. “Jesus, I can’t take you anywhere.”
I waggled my eyebrows at him as Ryan snapped his fingers between us. “Listen, this is about to get good.”
“It is,” Dorsey promised, smiling evilly. “’Cause alluva sudden Mills straightens up like you see people do in the movies when they’re freezing or turning to stone or something.”
Kage’s office was a wall of windows, so the show had to have been a good one, from where Ryan and Dorsey sat in the bullpen.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed, grinning with his deep dimples and the glinting blue eyes that explained how he had so many women hanging off him when we went out. He was one of those guys you didn’t realize was handsome until he smiled. “Mills goes rigid, and his face turns this bright red, and then Kage does that thing where he turns and looks at you like you’re the stupidest fuckin’ thing on the planet.”
“I’ve seen that one,” Ian and I said in sync.
Dorsey scoffed. “We all have. It’s the one Phillip—”
“Call me Phil, there, buddy,” I chimed in, and Dorsey, Ryan, and I all made gun motions at each other instead of pointing.
“I think I missed something,” Ian commented, squinting.
Ryan gave a dismissive wave. “You missed nothing. Tull was the nozzle who sent us all over the fuckin’ place when you were deployed and Kage was on vacation.”
“Oh, when you were in San Francisco.” Ian made the connection, wiping my mouth again and running his thumb over my bottom lip in the process.
The heat in his eyes made me shift a bit in my seat, my chinos suddenly tighter. He had a very decadent effect on me. “Yeah,” I croaked.
“Tull was a fuckin’ douchebag,” Dorsey assured Ian, “and Kage made sure he understood that his time with the marshals service had come to an end, and when he was doing it in front of all of us, he gave him that same look, like, you are such a fuckin’ fucktard, how are you even in my goddamn office right now?”
Ryan was laughing and nodding because, just like the rest of us, he was familiar with the Kage glare of disapproval.
“He wanted to go back to JSD, but those guys work too hard to have to deal with assholes like him,” Dorsey went on, mustering up even more disdain for Tull.
“Agreed,” I said as Ian curled a piece of hair around my ear. I had been letting it grow out for a while and was still waiting for Kage to say something. “Judicial security doesn’t need a guy like Tull any more than we did.”
“So what happened with Mills?” Ian asked, wiping his hands before draping an arm around the back of my chair.
Dorsey chuckled. “He stands there for a second, looking back at Kage, and then he whips around and almost runs out of the office without closing the door.”
“Oh shit,” I breathed. “Then what?”
“Then Kage walks over to the door, gives me and Mike a head tip, and then slowly closes the door,” Dorsey wrapped up. “I mean, I don’t know what Kenwood said in there, but I’m betting things didn’t go down how Mills thought they would.”
Ryan cackled. “What a dick.”
So now even after that debacle—when Mills knew his decision to try to go over Kage’s head so epically failed—still he asked him, in front of all of us, if checking warrants was necessary when every marshal on the planet knew that was procedure. Kage said it because he was programmed to say it, not that he didn’t think it was our first step. He was like a parent reminding a child to put something away, habit and nothing more.
“Yes,” Kage said with a huff, the annoyance rolling off him. “We must.”
Mills coughed nervously.
“Where’s Doyle,” Kage snapped.
“Oh, uhm, he left with the SOG team,” Mills answered, clearly flustered, fidgeting, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.
“On whose authority?”
“Mine,” he said, darting his eyes to Kage’s face.
; “Do you have his earpiece?”
He cleared his throat. “I do.”
Kage tipped his head at me. “That’s his partner. Give it to him.”
“Oh, yes,” he acknowledged, passing me the earpiece Ian should have turned back in the second he finished the operation. “SOG lost a man on the breach. He’ll be okay but had to be taken to the hospital, so Lieutenant Saford asked for Doyle, and I gave the okay.”
I glanced at Kage, whose clenched jaw told me he was not happy with that.
“Between Doyle volunteering for their ops, Saford requesting him, and you approving it—I think maybe I should look into reassigning him.”
I realized, horrified, that he was looking at me. “Sir?”
Seriously, why the hell was I in trouble? Guilt by marriage?
“Jones?”
I had no idea what I was supposed to say.
“May I make an observation?” Mills asked.
Kage didn’t answer, but he gave him his attention.
“You know as well as I do the command of SOG here is vacant, and a former Green Beret, who’s also a marshal, would be a great fit for that office.”
Kage crossed his arms, giving Mills, who looked as though he was actually shrinking before my eyes, a look that would have peeled paint. “Really? He’d be a good fit, you think?”
I could tell when it hit Mills that maybe he’d overstepped. Like his boss hadn’t come to that same conclusion a long time ago, eons before.
“But of course you know that already, sir.”
Kage made a noise like an irritated grunt and then turned to me. “Run warrants and prints on everyone. You and the others are here until it’s done.”
Why he said it again, I had no clue, but I didn’t dare groan—he’d gut me—so instead I nodded and turned away, tugging my prisoner with me, walking with Becker and Ching.
“So Captain America bailed again, huh?” Ching taunted as soon as we were out of Kage’s earshot.
I flipped him off.
“So touchy.” Becker snickered before pointing at the end of the twenty-four-man line.
“Jesus,” I muttered, looking at all of them, wanting to find out where Ian was—and more importantly, how he was—but instead I was stuck running fingerprints and checking warrants for what looked like hours yet.
Earlier that morning before work, when I’d been making breakfast and he was reading his email, he’d suddenly asked me what “upcycled” meant.
“What?” I asked, turning away from the eggs in a basket.
“You don’t know what that is either?”
“I have a guess, but gimme some context.”
“Well, Josue says he’s getting an Etsy shop, and he’s going to upcycle vintage jewelry,” he answered, looking up at me, squinting. “The fuck does that mean?”
Josue Morant, who used to be Josue Hess, was a witness I had brought back from Las Vegas last November. He had become, like Cabot Kincaid and Drake Palmer before him, more than a witness. He was like a ward to Ian and me. The fact that he was emailing Ian meant he was trying to circumvent me for some reason, and I could hazard a guess as to why.
“Etsy is an online site where artists and folks like that sell stuff they make,” I explained.
“Okay,” he said as if I hadn’t helped in the least.
“And I’m guessing ‘upcycling’ means repurposing.”
“Whatever,” he said dismissively, done, I could tell, discussing things he didn’t give a crap about. “I just reminded him that he can’t use his real name, can’t use any name remotely attached to his former life, and can’t post a picture of himself, or one he created, so we’ll see what he does from here.”
“Poor kid. He was supposed to testify in February.”
“Yep.” Ian yawned and stretched. “That’s what happens when rich criminals get good lawyers. Trials get pushed back.”
“I think that—”
“Hungry,” he whined petulantly, “need food. How long does it take to drop eggs into a hole in a piece of bread and fry them? I would’ve had this done hours ago.”
I scoffed, turned back to the eggs looking good at the center of the sourdough bread, and put the red peppers I’d sautéed earlier on top.
“And not that I’m complaining, because you cooking for me is very domestic and all, but we usually just have coffee, so what gives?”
“I just—I’m worried that something will come up and you won’t get a chance to eat,” I answered, and a second later was surprised to find him there at my back, mouth on the side of my neck, biting gently. “Knock it off. You’re gonna turn me into a giant goose bump, and I’m trying to make the presentation on the eggs perfect, which is why it’s taking so long.”
He didn’t listen, instead nuzzling my hair and then kissing my ear, his warm breath making me shiver as he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me against his hard body, my ass pressed to his groin.
“Jesus, Ian,” I groaned, going boneless in his arms, my head back on his shoulder, as always loving the feel of him, his strength and heat, the power in a simple hold.
“Let’s move this off the burner so I can get what I really need,” he rumbled, one hand on my belt buckle, tugging my dress shirt out of my pants with the other.
“You need to eat,” I managed hoarsely, the way my voice cracked not hot in the least. It wasn’t my fault, though; Ian could make me forget my name with not much work on his part. He had a drugging effect on me that was utterly sinful. “I want to feed you.”
“Well, I wanna—”
“Eat,” I asserted, grinning.
“Eat something,” he assured me before he turned me around, moving the pan off the burner at the same time, then laid a kiss on me that left no doubt in my mind about what he wanted. If his stomach hadn’t picked that moment to growl so loud it startled us both, I knew we would have been late for work.
I chuckled as he stepped back.
“Shut up.”
“Maybe you should eat, huh, baby?”
He grunted.
“What do you think?”
“Maybe,” he allowed, coming clean. “And don’t smile at me.”
I couldn’t help it. Just looking at him made me stupidly happy.
Minutes later, as he was inhaling his food, I got a begrudging smile coupled with flashing eyes that made my knees wobble as I clutched at the counter. There was no doubt about it. Ian Doyle had me wrapped around his finger.
“Jones!”
Brought back sharply to the present from my wandering thoughts, I saw Kage gesturing to me, and I looked back at Becker.
“I got him,” he said, taking hold of my prisoner’s arm. “Go.”
I bolted over to Kage, and he put a hand on my bicep—which he never did, not a big touchy-feely guy, my boss—while still listening to others standing in a semicircle around him but clearly about to give me directions.
He turned his attention on me, and I saw the concern there in his eyes. “You remember the marshal from Alabama who came in last week, the one working out of the Middle District in Montgomery?”
“Yeah, uhm.” I had to think a second. “Juanita Hicks. She was looking to talk to the couple from Madison who were put into WITSEC here.”
He nodded. “Well, it turns out that wasn’t Hicks. She was killed two weeks ago, and that woman is Bellamy Pine, Dennis Pine’s wife.”
“Oh shit,” I sighed, suddenly glad I’d put her off because of protocol. It was simple dumb luck: because I had put the adorable young couple into witness protection in Chicago, I had to be the one to go with her to see them. Since I hadn’t had time until this week, she’d had to wait, much, I recalled now, to her annoyance.
They were a nice couple, a ballet teacher named Jolie Ballard and her website-designer husband, Brett, who did not deserve to have Dennis Pine in their home at three in the morning along with three other men toting two witnesses. How they managed to witness Pine killing three people—the two he planned, plus one of
his own who’d grown a conscience—and get out of the house with their two dogs was a miracle. They did it with misdirection and, apparently, as Jolie told me, a well-timed leap—or grand jeté, as she called it—over a smallish sinkhole in their backyard. Jolie could do it, years and years of intensive ballet training, even carrying her Pomeranian, but Pine went down, and that was that. Brett told me the county was supposed to fix the sinkhole, and he’d never been more thankful for red tape in his life.
As it turned out, Pine’s trial was in two weeks, and if Jolie and Brett took the stand, Pine would get the needle. His wife, Bellamy, was trying not to let that happen.
“Jones?”
“Yeah, I-I was supposed to call her today.”
He nodded. “Well, you need to keep that meeting. We’ll monitor you because Hicks had a partner, Christopher Warren, and he’s missing as well. They discovered Hicks’s body this morning behind an RV park in Mobile, but no sign of Warren.”
“So they want to take Bellamy alive.”
“That’s the plan, yes.”
“Okay.”
“Did Doyle go with you to meet Bellamy? Will she think it’s odd that you come alone?”
“No, sir, Ian went with Sharpe and White on the fugitive pickup out in Skokie last week, the guy who busted out of that prison in California—I forget which,” I told him honestly. “But that’s when I met with her, when most everyone else was out.”
“Okay, then,” he said, meeting the eyes of everyone else there, some in suits, some in tactical gear. “We need you to call her and meet her, and we’ll do the rest.”
“Yessir,” I replied, reaching for the phone in my back pocket.
He put a hand on my arm to stop me and then glanced around the circle, making sure everyone understood he was talking to them. “All eyes on my man, you understand?”
And everyone listened to him, like always.
I WAS at the food trucks a block away from the office because I’d called Bellamy, who was still posing as Hicks, and told her to meet me there so we could talk before I took her to see Jolie and Brett. She rolled up twenty minutes later and stopped the car beside the curb but didn’t park it or get out. I gave her a head tip so she’d know I’d seen her and continued to pretend to talk on the phone, when really I was just speaking out loud to my team, the earpiece picking up everything.
