by L A Witt
Protective Behavior
Bad Behavior, #5
Cari Z
L.A. Witt
Contents
About Protective Behavior
1. Mark
2. Ryan
3. Mark
4. Ryan
5. Mark
6. Ryan
7. Mark
8. Ryan
9. Mark
10. Ryan
11. Mark
12. Ryan
13. Mark
14. Ryan
15. Mark
16. Ryan
17. Mark
18. Ryan
19. Mark
20. Ryan
21. Mark
22. Ryan
23. Mark
24. Ryan
About the Authors
Copyright Information
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Protective Behavior
First edition
Copyright © 2020 Cari Z & L.A. Witt
Edited by Leta Blake
Cover Art by Garrett Leigh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact L.A. Witt at [email protected]
ISBN: 978-1-64230-085-7
Created with Vellum
To Michael Ferraiuolo,
Whose audiobook narration of books 1-4 brought Mark to life so much that we were left with no choice but to write his story.
This book is all your fault. (Thank you!)
Also thank you to our sensitivity reader,
Brien Michaels,
and as always, our editor,
Leta Blake.
About Protective Behavior
Detective Mark Thibedeau is perfectly happy doing his job in Internal Affairs and going home to his cat. Still, when his assistant wants to set him up on a blind date, he can’t help but be intrigued.
Dr. Ryan Campbell loves the frenetic pace of working in an emergency department. He likes his life and doesn’t need anyone. But that guy his colleague wants him to meet does sound pretty interesting.
It’s instant chemistry when they meet—and instant chaos.
That chaos isn’t just phone calls interrupting dates. When a patient comes into the ED rapidly bleeding out from a gunshot wound, Ryan suddenly finds himself in possession of evidence that could very well put two white cops in jail for killing an innocent black man in cold blood.
Not sure what else to do, Ryan takes the evidence to the only cop he can trust—Mark.
Now Mark is investigating a delicate case, and Ryan is a material witness, and putting their fledgling relationship on hold is the least of their problems. Dirty cops stalk Ryan and his colleagues. Higher-ups question Mark’s investigative integrity at every turn. Worse, he’s tugging at threads of a citywide systemic problem of cops getting away with racially motivated murder.
And there are cops with blood on their hands who will gladly kill to keep that system running.
CW: Racially motivated violence, white cop-on-black civilian violence
Chapter 1
Mark
I was usually too preoccupied with work to pay attention to how the world was changing, but I was pretty sure blind dates had stopped being a thing during one of the Bush administrations. People didn’t even meet in bars anymore, did they? It was all apps and websites. Blind dates had been replaced with Tinder hookups that sometimes turned into relationships.
And yet, here I was—sitting alone at a table for two, watching the restaurant’s door and wondering how the hell I’d let Erin talk me into this.
Erin Ruffner worked with me in the city’s Internal Affairs Bureau on the fourth floor of the Twenty-first Precinct. A couple of weeks ago, she’d started dropping hints about introducing me to one of her single friends. After all, we’d just come out of two intense investigations, and we were in a lull that rarely lasted long in our department.
“You should take the opportunity while you have it,” she’d said over lunch. “Maybe go… meet someone?”
Turned out she’d had a friend in mind—Lila, I thought her name was—and she’d cautiously danced around the idea of fixing the two of us up. In her mind, since I’d been working so much, I’d barely been living my life at all. She had a point. I didn’t deny that. But I had shocked the hell out of her when I’d said that Lila probably wasn’t my type, seeing as I had “a thing or two in common” with Erin’s father and his husband.
I’d expected that to be the end of it, but no, two days later, she’d happily—and discreetly—announced that her fiancé worked with, quote, “this super awesome ED doctor who’s smart, single, and doesn’t even annoy my dad.” That last part said a lot—Detective Andreas Ruffner was probably the only cop in the city whose tolerance for people was lower than mine. If he could put up with this guy, well, maybe it was worth a shot.
So I’d agreed to it, which had prompted an excited squeal from Erin that had likely terrified half the IAB staff, since no one was particularly accustomed to happy sounds in our department. Kind of came with the territory.
That was a week ago. Now here I was.
Ryan—the doctor who allegedly didn’t even annoy Detective Ruffner—had texted to let me know he was on his way. He’d be here in another ten or fifteen minutes, depending on traffic.
I picked up my water glass, but it was down to ice, same as it had been the last time I’d checked. Which must not have been all that long ago, since it hadn’t melted enough to pool in the bottom. Of course, the last time the waiter had come by, I’d said without thinking, “I’m fine, thanks,” and hadn’t had him top it off. I’d have to remember to tell him I could use some more water next time he came by, which would probably be after Ryan arrived.
I checked my phone again. No new texts, but if ten or fifteen minutes had been accurate, he’d be here shortly.
He wasn’t late. In fact, he’d be right on time when he got here. I was the one who’d been half an hour early. From Ryan’s apologetic texts, I guessed he was like me—chronically early and mortified at the idea of being even a minute late. That was a point in his favor. As Erin had helpfully pointed out in her “your life is going on without you” speech, I didn’t spend a lot of time off the clock. Someone wasting that precious time by not bothering to show up when they said they would got a one-way ticket off my Christmas card list.
It was entirely possible he was chronically late, but wanted to make a good impression on a first date. A first blind date. Holy shit—were we really doing this? Honestly, I was kind of surprised someone as young as Erin thought a blind date was the way to go. Then again, she hadn’t met her fiancé on an app like everyone else seemed to. Instead of avatars and algorithms, they’d been brought together by sheer chance after Zach had operated on Erin’s father following an on-the-job injury. The guy hadn’t even been scared off by Ruffner, and Ruffner had clocked him in the face and given him a hell of a black eye. Okay, to be fair, Ruffner had been coming out from anesthesia and hadn’t been aware of anything, but still—I couldn’t imagine taking a punch from a doped-up cop, then realizing he was kind of an asshole even when he wasn’t sedated, and still dating his daughter. Not without sleeping with one eye open, anyway. Though according to Erin, Za
ch had somehow charmed his way onto the very short list of people Ruffner liked.
As had the man I was meeting tonight. Hopefully that was a good sign.
My phone vibrated and lit up. One look at Ryan’s name on the text made my mouth go dry, and I really needed that waiter to come by and top me off, but first I wanted to see what Ryan had sent.
Here. Are you seated or waiting?
My heart did things I hadn’t felt it do in a long time. I glanced toward the waiting area, but only saw some older couples and a family with kids. No one matching his description, so he must’ve been walking in from the parking garage.
Seated, I wrote back. Give them your name. They know you’re meeting me.
No answer. He was probably walking or in the elevator.
And yes, we’d been texting a bit. Mostly logistics and some small talk. I guessed that meant this wasn’t a blind date in the strictest sense, but it sure felt like one. I knew very little about him except that he was a doctor, that he was deathly allergic to shellfish, that Detective Ruffner could put up with him, and that he apparently valued being punctual.
I’d also seen a photo, and I was dubious of how good he looked in that photo. I’d been a cop for too long to be unaware of how easily an image could be manipulated, and I’d used hookup apps too many times to be ignorant of how much a well-angled, well-lit portrait could hide.
Movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I turned my head.
Okay, so, that waiter could come by with some more cold water any time now.
Ryan shrugged off a rain-sprinkled black overcoat, and when he handed it to the hostess, I decided that old cliché about someone’s smile lighting up a room wasn’t such a cliché after all. The whole place had been dim with the ambiance of a restaurant with overpriced wine, and now it… wasn’t. He said something to the hostess, and while she hung up his coat, he scanned the tables.
I felt it the second his gaze landed on me. The smile—and with it, the room—brightened even more. He made another comment to the hostess and gestured at me, probably letting her know he’d found his party, and then he was on his way across the restaurant. On his way toward me.
Uh, about this empty water glass?
I grabbed it and hoped some of the ice had melted. It had, and a few cold drops landed on my tongue. Real helpful.
As I set the glass back down, I faced Ryan again. He was closer now, features coming into focus beneath the warm lights. I was right that his photo had hidden a few things, but the high-definition version of him made me lose my breath.
Like me, Ryan was white. He was forty-two, three years younger than me, and like mine, his job had aged him a few years ahead of his time. He had lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and the overhead lights picked out flecks of silver in his unshaven jaw and his wind-tousled dark brown hair. He couldn’t hide the faint circles under his eyes—probably par for the course for someone working in an emergency room—but I barely noticed them because he had these gorgeous hazel eyes that could probably make even a straight man lose his train of thought. A gay man who maybe had a snowball’s chance in hell with him?
Waiter? Water? Now? Seriously?
When he was close enough he didn’t have to shout across the restaurant, Ryan said, “Mark?”
“Yeah.” I stood, extending my hand. “You must be Ryan.”
That smile. Fuuuck.
“I am.” He held my gaze as he shook my hand. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long.”
“Waiting? You’re right on time.”
“I know, but…” He nodded toward the table. “Looks like you’ve been here for a while.”
I glanced at the table and my conspicuously empty water glass. “Oh. I. Well, you know how traffic can be. I didn’t want to be late.”
“I feel you, don’t worry.”
We took our seats, and thank God, our waiter materialized almost instantly, a sweaty pitcher of water in his hands. “Can I start either of you with some water?”
“Yes, please.” Ryan put his glass closer to the edge of the table. “Thanks.”
I moved my glass in next to his. “You can leave the pitcher if you want. I don’t want to make you run laps to keep mine full.”
“Sure.” The waiter filled both our glasses, then put the pitcher down in the middle of the table. “Can I get either of you anything else to drink?”
“Water’s fine for me,” Ryan said.
“Same.”
“All right, well, I’ll give you a chance to look over the menus.” With that, the kid bowed out, and suddenly I was alone with Ryan and, thank God, plenty of ice water.
Cradling his glass between his fingers, Ryan said, “So you work with Erin, is that right?”
I nodded. “She works for me, actually.”
“Oh really?” There was a playful sparkle in his eyes as he brought the drink to his lips. “I’ll make sure to censor my stories since I’m hanging out with her boss.” He winked.
I chuckled. “She can’t be any worse than her father.”
That got a laugh out of Ryan that made my pulse race. What the hell? He was definitely attractive, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t had sex recently. Okay, so maybe not recently, but the condoms in my bedroom were far from expired, let’s put it that way. Yeah, I’d checked. So I shouldn’t have been drooling like this five seconds after meeting the guy.
“I assume you know Andreas, then?” Ryan shook his head. “I told Zach he was insane for proposing to Erin. I mean, she’s an amazing girl, but he’s signing up for the most intimidating father-in-law who ever existed.”
I laughed. “Eh, he’s not so bad. His husband has mellowed him out.”
“That’s what I keep hearing.” Ryan grimaced. “Somehow I’m glad I never met the guy until after Darren worked his magic.”
“You’re not wrong.” I swirled my water like wine. “How do you know Andreas, anyway?”
“I met him at Erin and Zach’s engagement party a couple of months ago.”
“Ah, right. I meant to go to that, but I was swamped with a couple of investigations, and couldn’t get away.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard everything in your department is intense.” He furrowed his brow and tilted his head. “You two work in… it’s Internal Affairs, right?”
I nodded. “If you’ve ever wondered why I’ve never dated another cop, there’s your answer.”
“Oh, so it’s true what they say—cops hate anyone who works in IA?”
“Oh, yeah. And we busted some—in fact, Andreas and Darren busted a number of dirty cops within the precinct where my office is located.” I picked up my own water again. “You want to talk about being the least popular man in the building?” I mock toasted with the glass.
“Shit. I would’ve thought Andreas and Darren would’ve had that honor.”
“I’d say it was a shared title.”
Ryan made another face. “I can’t even imagine. I don’t dare get on the bad side of the nurses I work with—can’t imagine getting on a cop’s bad side. Especially not all of their bad sides.”
I shrugged. “Every job has its downsides. I’m sure yours has a few?”
He blew out a breath and nodded. “I love what I do, don’t get me wrong. But it definitely has its moments.”
“I believe it. What made you choose it, anyway? Working in an emergency room?”
Ryan rested his elbow on top of the menu he hadn’t opened, and absently ran his knuckles along his scruffy jaw. “I don’t like things that…” He quirked his lips like he was trying to find the right word. Then his eyes met mine, and he said, “Things that linger. Give me something I can fix, not something that’s going to drag on and deteriorate for months. Buddy of mine is an oncologist, and I have no idea how he does it. I mean, he says the same about me, and both jobs need someone who’s wired for it, but it’s just hard to imagine, you know? He likes the long game. I’d lose my mind.”
I nodded as he spoke. “So you’d be
the cop who likes kicking in doors, not the one who does investigations that last months or years.”
“Yes!” He gestured at me. “Yes! Exactly. Good God, you’d be amazed how many people don’t get that.”
I chuckled quietly. “Oh, I get it. Especially since I’m the opposite—couldn’t wait to finish doing my time as a beat cop so I could start the more involved investigations.”
“Huh. That’s almost exactly how Andreas described himself too.” He gave a lopsided grin. “Though I suppose I’m playing with fire if I suggest you two are anything alike.”
Anyone else would have been playing with fire if they’d made that particular suggestion. Andreas and I had an understanding these days, and we’d buried several hatchets, but my affection toward him had its limits. Someone who knew both of us suggesting we were anything alike was asking for, as Erin had dubbed it, my death glare.
And yet somehow Ryan could make that joke less than five minutes after I’d met him, and it didn’t bother me. It was actually funny.
Maybe it was because of those eyes. Those eyes that were still fixed on me across a table that seemed a lot smaller than it had when I’d arrived.
“I don’t know,” I said with a quiet—and kind of breathless—laugh. “Erin points it out all the time and she still has a job.”
Ryan’s chuckle took on a mischievous, borderline evil quality, and he watched me over the rim of his water glass. “Guess I’m still safe, then.”
Oh, I don’t know if safe is the word I’d use.
