by R. J. Blain
“Anything else?”
“Nothing of use. Look on the bright side. We have a lot of paperwork to sift through while your leg heals again. I vote we make the most of them and heat up some of these cases we’ve gotten nowhere on until we’re back in the field.”
That caught my attention. The other times I’d been out of action, my partners had tried to get temporary assignments so they could work in the field without me. “You’re not going to ask for a reassignment?”
Jake chuckled, grabbed the clipboard out of my hands, and flipped through the sheets. He turned to the last page before offering it back. “Sign so we can get out of here. I’ll take you to the pharmacy before taking you home. Boss says she doesn’t want to see our ugly mugs in the office for a week unless something in one of our cases breaks, in which case we’re grudgingly allowed to come in.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Why would I ask for a reassignment? You’re my partner. We’re going to have to work on this.”
We were? That bothered me. Working with him meant he intended to stick around. Most men wanted to shunt me to safe office work rather than continue a partnership with someone holding a high record of injury during duty. “You realize if you stick around, I’m going to force you to go through PT with me.”
Maybe that would drive him away. It had everyone else.
“I will relentlessly mock you if you slack off during your physical therapy sessions. Consider yourself warned.”
I signed the paperwork, shot a glare at him, and set aside the clipboard so I could grab my crutches. With a smirk, Jake claimed my paperwork and headed for the door, turning it over to a nurse in the hallway.
“I could have done that myself, Thomas.”
“Can’t I get a Jake out of you?”
“I thought your name was Asshole.”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
I sighed and headed for the door in the futile hope of escaping without being forced into a wheelchair. “Only because you’re a self-proclaimed asshole.”
“Admit it, Karma. You like it.”
On my way through the door, I jabbed his foot with my crutch. “Keep telling yourself that, Agent Asshole.”
He laughed.
Seven
Jake: Six Feet Under
The next time my mother asked for a favor, I’d say no. Because of her, I ended up getting to work ten minutes late, something my partner would inevitably give me shit over. Blaming relatives would mostly get me off the hook; she understood family, although she still hadn’t warmed up enough to me to talk about her adoptive parents much.
We had a long way to go, but at least she trusted me enough in the field to know I’d watch her back. The memory of the red laser beading in her dark hair haunted me. I’d beaten the bullet, barely. The scent of her blood and fear kept me awake too many nights.
In the four weeks since she’d been shot, she had healed. Neither old nor new injury seemed to bother her, and she’d pushed through her final evaluation at physical therapy with admirable speed, grace, and strength. She wasn’t at her prime—at least, I didn’t think so—but she’d give most in the force a run for their money.
I had enjoyed watching her move, her muscles flexing beneath her spandex while her physical therapist ran her through her paces. My wolf had enjoyed watching her, too.
With her in our lives, he didn’t want anyone else, something that would cause me a substantial number of problems when the winter rut started next moonrise. He wanted her, and no one could know it. How was I supposed to reject the advances of Fenerec bitches without them knowing something was up? If my wolf had any expectations of Karma Johnson accepting either one of us anytime soon, he’d be frustrated and disappointed.
While he huffed in my head, I got the feeling my wolf was prepared to wait a long time for a chance with a woman who resembled a porcelain doll far more than a living and breathing human—one with the faint scent of damp soil clinging to her.
I sighed. The scent meant one thing; my partner had a hint of witch blood in her, enough to make me worry what would happen if I let her get too close to anything dangerous, including a puddle. No one else had seemed to notice she was an unidentified earth witch, and I had no intention of being the one to inform them of it. My list of priorities had changed so much over the past few weeks.
One, I needed to keep my partner from getting shot again.
Two, I needed to keep her away from water any deeper than an inch or two.
Three, I needed to figure out why she always left me with the crap jobs involving tight, cramped quarters.
I had about ten other items on my wish list, including convincing her she wanted to keep me around for a long, long time. The rest of our lives would be a good start, if my wolf was to be believed.
Her standoffish attitude hadn’t done anything to deter my wolf from his interest. Worse, every barb she lobbed my way made me want to see how else she’d try to keep me out of her territory and at arm’s length. I was a sucker for punishment.
Grimacing at the time, I poked the up button on the elevator, tapping my foot and juggling the cardboard tray laden with coffee. Would my offering buy me forgiveness? Probably not. The door pinged opened, and I headed to the fifth floor, bracing for the worst.
In Vegas, I had enjoyed having my own office. The skinflints in Baltimore had decided an open concept would work best, although they had at least adopted individual desks with a bit of space between them like was done in many police stations. While Karma had been in Baltimore long enough to warrant a private office, she had elected to stay out in the main area, claiming she couldn’t work efficiently if she had to cross half the building every time she wanted to talk to her partner.
My desk, tucked in the far corner of the massive space, was under siege by leaning stacks of papers, folders struggling to contain their contents, and my partner, who was on her knees on my chair, stretched over one of the piles to reach something near my monitor.
Stopping, I stared, my mouth dropping open. At least she wasn’t wearing a skirt. If she had been, she would have given every agent in the room a show they’d never forget. My wolf panted, far too interested in the way her black slacks clung to her legs for my good. To make things worse for me, instead of her hair being contained in its usual bun or ponytail, it fell down her back and over her shoulders, glossy in the overhead lighting.
If it was half as soft as it looked, I could spend an entire lifetime nuzzling her and her hair.
Not good. Not good at all. Taking several deep breaths to control my wolf’s primitive urges so my interest wouldn’t reflect in my scent, I headed for what had once been my desk. “Whatever I did to earn this, I’m very sorry.”
Karma shot a glare in my direction, snatched one of my pens from its cup, and eased away from the towering stacks. Grabbing the top file, she flipped it open and started scanning the page. When she found what she was looking for, she tore off a sticky note, slapped it onto the page, and relocated the folder to the floor. It hit the hardwood with a crack, startling the nearby agents.
“I’m sorry I’m late. I brought coffee.”
Instead of speaking to me, she shifted a stack of papers enough to fit one of the coffees. I set hers down and backed away from my desk, directing my attention to hers. If anything, hers was even worse, with the towers tall enough my partner would need to stand on her chair to be eye-level with them. Freeing my coffee from the tray, I took a sip, aimed the cardboard carrier in the direction of the garbage can, and tossed it in.
“The tree case and the Hamilton case are connected,” my partner announced, stretching over my desk for another file, which she slapped on the smallest stack in front of her.
“The tree case?” While I suspected she meant the horror show involving the American chestnut, I could think of a few other cases we’d had to get victims—or evidence—out of trees.
“The nightmare tree case,” she grumbled, flipping throug
h the file and repeating the process of slapping a sticky note onto a page along with a few scribbled words. “The paternity test results came back.”
I sipped my coffee and waited. When she was ready, she’d explain—or wouldn’t. She dug through several more stacks and retrieved a few sheets, which joined the folder on the floor.
Only then did she squirm on my seat to work her legs out from beneath her and sit properly on my chair. “Dulaney’s brother is the father of Hamilton’s sister’s baby. More importantly, the elder Dulaney, when questioned last night, mentioned his girlfriend had been seeing her brother every week at a little cafe at the same place and the same time. This had been going on for months. At first, he thought she was cheating on him, but then found out Hamilton was her brother, so he had no problems with their relationship.”
I arched my eyebrows. “Wasn’t she a prostitute?”
“A popular one, if our sources are to be believed.”
“Dulaney’s reaction to that?”
“He got really offended we would even suggest she wasn’t an upright, pristine Christian woman.”
I took another sip of my coffee so I wouldn’t laugh. “All right. What else do we have?”
“Pictures of Dulaney the younger, with Hamilton’s sister at one of her favorite pickup spots.”
“I’d say that definitely connects the two cases. Anything more than a coincidence of two dead people having been seen together?”
Karma pointed at her desk. “Tallest stack, top folder.”
My wolf enjoyed the idea of sitting on Karma’s chair, and I rolled over to her neighbor’s desk, one of the Fenerec from the smaller of Baltimore’s three packs. I flashed him a grin, set my coffee on an unoccupied corner, and scooted back to the mountains of paperwork my partner had somehow managed to gather since last night.
“Not cool, Thomas,” Roy complained.
“I would have gotten you one, too, West, but my partner gets jealous if I give anyone else good coffee.”
With a laugh, Roy shook his head and went back to work.
Hunting down the folder, I flipped it open to a collection of lewd photographs including four people: Hamilton, Hamilton’s sister, Dulaney, and a blond woman wearing a few strings mimicking clothes. Some things I didn’t need to see in my life, and a foursome including a politician numbered among them. I scratched my forehead. Since sharing was caring, I picked up the worst of the photos and showed it to Roy. “I feel like I was misled when I signed up to work with violent crimes, West. Why is it these types of photographs keep making their way onto my desk?”
“That’s my desk,” my partner pointed out.
“Are there even worse photographs on the desk you are currently occupying and have claimed as your workspace?” I countered.
“Maybe.”
“I rest my case.” I set the picture aside and started digging into the folder, which contained more evidence of the Hamilton siblings engaging in what had to be a porno of some sort. The images were far too clear for an amateur to have captured, and the whole thing seemed orchestrated to me. “So, we have evidence of three of our victims together. Does anything else link them together?”
“A set of payments sent to Dulaney’s older brother, that when added together, equal a hundred and fifty thou. It was enough to land us a search and arrest warrant to bring him in for questioning.”
I’d heard that number before; McDonald, one of the two men responsible for pulling the trigger, had been offered fifty thousand in advance for killing Mayor Hamilton, although the young man had claimed everyone else had been victims of circumstance rather than intentional targets. While McDonald likely believed he’d only been gunning for Mayor Hamilton, I was starting to believe the Hamilton siblings had both been the intended targets. “Where’d you find these photographs, and why weren’t they in the Hamilton file already?”
“They’re four years old. See the blond woman?”
How could I not see her? While tempted to glare at my partner, I settled with saying, “Yes, I do.”
“She was one of Hamilton’s secretaries, and she was found dead in her home last week. Initially, it was considered a suicide, but then the investigators found these pictures along with blackmail notices. The evidence led back to Hamilton, so the folder landed on my desk about two hours ago.”
“What were you doing in the office two hours ago?”
“I had to hit the range to prove I remembered how to use my gun, and some sadistic bastard made my appointment for six in the morning.”
“That sadistic bastard would be our boss.”
“As I said,” she grumbled. “It took less than twenty minutes to pass, and so instead of going home, I came into the office early. I wasn’t going to interrupt your beauty sleep when I could handle gathering the paperwork. I just didn’t think there’d be so much of it.”
“There does seem to be an extraordinary amount of paperwork here. So, Dulaney’s brother is now our prime suspect?”
“Possibly. He checked out on his brother’s murder; he was in another state at the time, the airport provided the footage of him boarding his flight on the other end of the country. But, he was paid a lot of money—the same amount the others in the Hamilton case were paid. That’s not a coincidence I want to ignore quite yet.”
“Does he check out on the Hamilton murders?”
“That’s what we don’t know. We have the go-ahead to bring him in for questioning.”
There was no mistaking the eagerness in my partner’s voice. Bringing in a probable subject for questioning came close enough to the type of intense field work that would whet her appetite, and I pitied anyone stupid enough to come between Karma and an escape from office work, no matter how brief. “Your car or mine?”
Karma zipped off my chair, snatched her jacket, and shoved me in the direction of Roy’s desk so she could get to her gun and badge. Twisting around, I bumped into my fellow Fenerec with a low chuckle, reaching out to reclaim my coffee. “Think she’s ready to get on the road, West?”
“Both of you please stay out of trouble. I don’t want to be the one to explain to our boss if something happens to you.” Roy sighed, waited for Karma to move, and rolled me back to my partner’s desk. “Karma, don’t let him talk you into poking your noses into interesting places he hasn’t been before. It gets him in trouble, which in turn gets you in trouble.”
“If he tries it, I’ll cuff him and leave him for you to find,” my partner promised.
Grinning, Roy waved a farewell. “Try not to get yourself killed, Jake. You’ve kinda grown on us the past few months.”
I waited until Karma was en route to the elevator to flip my middle finger at the other Fenerec.
Karma filled me in on Mike Dulaney while she drove us to his residence, which was located in one of the poorest parts of Baltimore. The instant we reached Cherry Hill, my wolf’s wariness melded with mine. It was the sort of place where bullet holes pocked the brick, silent testimony to the violence that came visiting almost every night.
Most of the crimes involved breaking and entering and general theft, but murders happened often enough that I planned on keeping my hand near my gun and my eye on Karma the entire time we were in the area. I healed from gunshot wounds far faster than she did, and my wolf never wanted to see her bleed ever again.
My wolf wanted my partner as our future mate, and was willing to wait until she had satisfied herself with her hunt to join CARD to have her. Once we were in different divisions, I’d be free to pursue her as more than work partners. Keeping him patient would test me unlike anything else.
To be eligible for CARD, she’d need three or four more years of experience handling violent crimes; years I fully intended to spend at her side. Maybe she viewed me as a stepping-stone, but I viewed her time with me as one, too.
“The payments he received could have easily allowed him to move out of here,” Karma grumbled, pulling her SUV into the man’s gravel driveway. Dulaney lived on an overgrown
street with white-washed homes in the process of falling down, which put it at the worst part of a bad neighborhood. “Why hasn’t he?”
“Very good question. Do you want to handle the talking?”
“Sure. Let’s give him a false sense of security. I’m just a little harmless woman, right?”
I huffed and shook my head. “I’m not dumb enough to answer that question, Johnson.”
“It’s like my boss decided to find me a partner who actually has basic learning capacity. It’s amazing.” She slid out of the SUV, the gravel crunching under her heels. With the wisdom I’d grown to love, she locked the vehicle once I closed my door. “It should be routine.”
Routine could mean one of two things. We could knock on the door, inform him we had questions for him, and invite him to the nearest police station. The cops would collaborate with us, and we’d be able to use one of their interrogation rooms. If he didn’t want to cooperate but was open to discussion, we’d end up questioning him in his home, recording him on multiple devices. If he didn’t cooperate, we’d arrest him and take him to the nearest police station for questioning.
Alternatively, he could either run or try to put an end to us for having gotten too close to figuring out the truth. Considering he lived in Cherry Hill, it could go either way.
“Your show.” I’d be happy enough playing the large bodyguard. Much to my parents’ dismay, I’d worked on building muscle without being obvious about it, forcing Dad to work out if he wanted to keep up. Fenerec or not, Mom couldn’t match our physical strength, especially when I planned on staying fit so I could keep up with my tiny partner.
She looked delicate, but her small package hid huge surprises, and I seriously enjoyed watching her cuff criminals.
I stalked after her to the house, my left hand in my pocket and my right hanging by my side so I could draw my gun if needed. Straightening her back, Karma rapped her knuckles against the storm door, ignoring the presence of the doorbell. I didn’t blame her. It probably didn’t work.
