IT WAS different in Phoenix. And while I was getting the hang of how they did things, Ian was not. Simple things, like other marshals stopping him from putting a guy down on the pavement or up against the side of a car, drove him nuts.
“What the fuck,” he growled at me.
I winced at the volume. “The ground is hot; so is the car.”
“I hate it here,” he lamented.
I had to nag him not to turn off the car and leave people inside, and he had to get used to carrying metal cuffs again—their budget was different in Phoenix, so he couldn’t stuff his TAC vest with plastic ones all the time.
“Why?” he asked irritably, holding the cuffs up as he held a guy over the open trunk of the white Mercury Marquis.
I made the snapping motion for him again because he’d locked them… again. “You gotta flip it open and then sort of flick it around their wrist.”
He didn’t have either the snap or the flick down. It got to the point, after the first week, that they were always my cuffs on the suspects. But I had years of practice on him because I’d been first a patrolman and then a police detective. Ian’s background was all military combat, never as an MP, so he didn’t have my cuff technique.
“And why are they suspects?” Ian fumed as we took a guy into the office for processing. “They’re fuckin’ fugitives, for crissakes. That’s what we do—we pick those fuckers up!”
Latham was all about being PC, and that included what his team called the people we brought in. He was very concerned about public perception and how his office was viewed. I had never seen so many outsiders allowed to ride along, shadow, and interview team members. I was glad that Ian and I were sort of wild cards, that he didn’t know us well and so kept us out of the limelight.
We were on a bust with another team and one of the reporters tried to film Ian and me capturing a suspect. After he put on a pair of latex gloves, Ian took the phone right out of the guy’s hand and dropped it down a storm drain. That time we didn’t get hauled into the office because it was his word against ours and the reporter was apparently kind of a douche. But it became a daily occurrence for us to be sitting in front of Lathan’s desk for something.
Excessive force. Inadequate force. Why did we grapple with suspects instead of simply pulling our firearms? Why did we run warrant checks on everyone at a particular location when we had the person we were there for in custody?
After the second week, Ian started stopping in the middle of putting his foot in some guy’s back and yelled over to me, “Can I do this?”
And I’d nod yes or shake my head no. One of the things frowned upon was taking a guy at the Scottsdale Fashion Square in front of the food court. Ian flew over a table and tackled the guy, picked him up, and flung him back down onto the tile. The “suspect” didn’t move after that. We both had on baseball hats and sunglasses, and when the mall cops showed up, I flashed my badge. As soon as we got back, we were in Latham’s office.
“You should have waited for the suspect to exit the mall,” he lectured us.
“Write that down,” Ian directed me right before he was suspended for a day.
“I’ll put it in a memo,” I advised him, and that did it, I was suspended too.
We spent the whole Thursday in bed ordering delivery and napping.
“Maybe we should have just taken vacation time,” I whispered as I lay on the floor in the living room—the coolest room in the apartment—with Ian draped over me in a sated, sticky sprawl.
He grunted his agreement before tipping his head back to lick up the length of my throat. That was all it took for me to roll him to his back and fuck him again.
Later, while we were lying poolside, a beautiful dark-tanned dark-haired woman who looked like she could model if she wanted walked over and asked Ian if he’d like to have a drink with her later.
“A drink?”
She chuckled. “If you’re not busy, uhm….”
“Ian,” he supplied.
Her smile was wicked, and the way she bit her bottom lip, alluring. “Ian,” she repeated, her voice as seductive as her body. “I’d love to show you the sights. You’re new in town, right?”
He nodded.
“Yeah, I figured. I haven’t seen you around, and I would have definitely noticed.”
It was a nice line.
“I can’t,” he replied, sitting up on the lounge chair, tipping his head back as he looked at her from behind his aviators. “But I’m very flattered and I appreciate the offer.”
“Why can’t you? I don’t see a ring.”
It took everything in me not to pounce on him and yell “Ah-ha!”
Ring. The magic word. She would have stopped and never walked over if she’d seen a ring on his finger.
Fucking Ian.
Getting up, letting him handle the situation he found himself in, I took off my White Sox cap and tossed it on the chair I’d just vacated. After walking to the edge of the pool, I jumped in and let myself sink to the bottom.
It was quiet and calm, and I sat there for as long as I could, eyes open, taking in all the blue before surfacing slowly.
“You’re such an asshole.”
Looking over my shoulder I found Ian, glaring down at me, arms crossed, sunglasses hanging on the collar of his T-shirt.
I swam backward, away from him.
“Really?”
“Aren’t you going for drinks?”
He shook his head. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Why not? You can go.”
“M.”
“You got no ring and all,” I couldn’t help adding.
“Just get outta the pool. I’m hungry.”
Instead I did a few laps, and when I finally got out, he was right there with a big fluffy towel to wrap around my hips.
“What’re you doing?”
“You can totally see the outline of your dick when your shorts are wet.”
I shrugged.
He growled. “Don’t be an ass. I told her I was with you, all right?”
I squinted at him.
Turning, he waved, and when I followed his gaze, I saw the woman and her group, all of whom were sitting in the shaded area beneath huge ceiling fans, return the gesture.
“See?”
I nodded and went to move past him, but he stepped into my path.
“Ian,” I said softly.
“Stop,” he ordered gently as he took my face in his hands and stepped closer, into me, into my space, leaving no room to guess what we were to each other. “I know what you need, M.”
“Yeah?”
“I do.”
I liked the way those two words sounded on his tongue.
“Gimme time.”
Whatever he wanted.
THE FOLLOWING day we were inside the AJ’s Fine Foods in Glendale because when we went to arrest a fugitive in a house off of 67th Avenue, I had run after him when he took off.
“Ya good yet?” Ian asked, putting the ice pack that the very nice woman in the deli had given us on the back of my neck.
“He needs to drink more water,” Courtney Quinn, another deputy, explained to Ian. “And next time you should fuckin’ listen to me, Smith.”
If I answered her I’d say something shitty, so instead I drank the Gatorade that Lucas Hoch, yet another deputy, gave me. He’d twisted the cap off, which was damn nice of him since I was still seeing spots.
“Nobody runs in the heat,” he reiterated to me, as he had for the past half an hour.
I’d done what I always did, bolted from the car, and this time, it was Ian following. But the chase took a good twenty minutes, up over walls, through backyards, around the sides of houses, across streets, and finally when I caught the guy in a flying tackle on the manicured front lawn in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood, I didn’t get back up. I couldn’t. I could barely breathe, I was so hot.
Ian managed to get cuffs on the guy—we’d been practicing at the apartment, in and out of bed—and told him to stay still before he checked on me.
“Jesus, M, you’re really red.”
There was only heat and my skin felt like it was burning.
The homeowner, a beautiful blonde housewife dressed immaculately and sporting a diamond ring as big as my thumb, came out immediately, her friends waiting in the doorway, to see if she could offer any assistance.
“No, ma’am,” Ian said quickly, clearly worried about me. “I just need to get him off your lawn and hydrated.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “You need to get him inside and push fluids. My kids get like that if I don’t watch them like a hawk.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said affably.
“Do you want to bring him in here?”
We were never, ever, supposed to involve civilians in anything if possible.
“No, ma’am, but thank you.”
When I looked up at her from my prone position, she smiled and nodded.
So Ian found the AJ’s and dragged me inside to sit in the a/c and drink water.
“We don’t run,” Quinn expounded. “Not until after Halloween, when it cools down.”
“It doesn’t cool down until Halloween?” Ian was flabbergasted.
“Yes, marshal,” she teased, and I saw her pupils dilate as she looked at him—easy to see she found him very appealing. “You have to wait a bit longer.”
Letting my head fall forward, I bumped his thigh with my shoulder.
“When we do AT like I was telling you about out there in Twentynine Palms, this shit happens all the time,” he said, trying to reassure me as he put his hand in my hair, scratching my scalp before gently moving the ice pack. “Big strong guys drop all over the place.”
He was trying to make me feel better about being a dumbass, but it wasn’t helping.
“You still feeling light-headed?”
“A little.”
“You’ll be okay.”
“This is lame.”
“It’s gonna happen in this kinda heat, M.”
“You wouldn’t have nearly passed out.”
“No, ’cause I’ve trained in this bullshit,” he insisted, squatting down in front of me, his hands on my knees to look at my face. “And I know you hafta hydrate and limit what you expend energy on.”
I couldn’t shake the embarrassment or the memory of the looks from Quinn and Hoch implying that I was a lightweight.
Of course, fifteen minutes later I had the sunstroke headache, and Ian and I had to pull into a Circle K on the way back downtown and get me Tylenol, more Gatorade, and a 64-ounce Thirst Buster cup full of Dr Pepper because I needed both the caffeine and the sugar, he said. As I held the gigantic plastic-handled cup in my hand, I asked him why.
“’Cause you’re gonna need it.”
“I have to hold it in my lap or between my feet. It’s too big for the cupholder.”
“Just drink it and shut up,” he grumbled. “And get in the car.”
After we ate again, between the food, drugs, caffeine, and staying cool, I was back to myself, feeling better, ready to chase down more bad guys.
When we reached a task force site out in Tempe, close to the university there, we saw all the usual suspects, plus DEA agents. Ian and I vested up, he strapped on his thigh holster—which held his spare SIG P228, because only having the Glock 20 we each carried wasn’t enough—and we headed toward the cluster of men.
“Where are you guys going?” Hoch asked before we got far.
Ian pointed toward the staging area.
“Not yet,” Quinn told us. “We wait until they tell us where they want us.”
I glowered at her. “I thought you said this was our grab. Is it a fugitive capture or not?”
“It is, but, you know, Latham always says we wait for direction.”
“Even on a warrant that we’re serving?”
They both nodded.
“Oh.” I shouldn’t have been surprised, the procedure in Phoenix a constant learning opportunity. “So even during those times when we’re supposed to take point, you guys run the support agenda?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh,” I said, turning to Ian.
He crossed his arms. “Are you fucking with me?”
I checked on Hoch and Quinn, and as they both appeared confused, I returned my focus to Ian. “No, I don’t think so.”
When I was hired, Kage had made clear that in his office, we went for the jugular each and every single time. He was always in charge; he expected his men to carry themselves that same way in the field. It was lucky that Ian had ended up working for Kage, as he was not the guy who waited and said please and may I. Ian kicked the door down and God help you if you were behind it when he did.
“We hang back and wait,” Hoch reiterated, in case Ian and I were slow.
“Okay,” I agreed, because it was not my call.
“Fuck no,” Ian growled, and when he stalked away, I was committed to following, as it was basically in my job description.
Two hours later, as we sat in Latham’s office listening to him yell again, for like the hundredth time in a three-week period, I realized Ian and I were on thin ice. We’d be lucky if we had jobs when we got home.
“We never lead!” he bellowed at us. “We take our cues from the other law enforcement on site so it can never come back on us!”
Latham’s team didn’t breach, they didn’t tell everyone else to fuck off; they took custody only when it was time or when they were asked to. It was a completely different dynamic than we’d been operating with since we became marshals but really, was probably the one with a lot fewer incident reports.
“And you went in without even pulling your guns. What the hell was that?”
I cleared my throat. “We were walking into an area with a high number of civilians, sir, and so until the threat presented itself, we didn’t want to draw our weapons.”
“There didn’t need to be an escalation of force,” Ian seconded. “We try not to draw our weapons unless we’re going to use them.”
“You were on a task force!”
“Close to a college campus,” I enlightened him. “It wasn’t necessary.”
“We were able to collect the fugitive without trading any gunfire,” Ian stated in case Latham hadn’t been informed.
“But it wasn’t your call to make!”
It had been, in the end. Ian had seen the guy and the two of us had walked over to his table and taken him, fast, easy, shoving his face down into his nachos. He was cuffed and ready for transport before the DEA douche bags were even ready to move.
“I hate those guys,” I muttered.
“You shouldn’t!” Latham shouted. “Because you work for them!”
Ian scoffed, which didn’t help Latham’s blood pressure even one bit.
“You two need to take the rest of the day and get yourselves right,” he snarled. “We’ll try this again tomorrow.”
We were halfway to the elevator when a guy yelled out our names. Turning, I found a tall, handsome man striding toward us. When he stepped in close, he offered me his hand first.
“I’m Javier Segundo,” he greeted me, smiling, squeezing tight, before facing Ian. “I didn’t get to meet you guys yet ’cause me and my partner Charlie Hewitt were assigned to SWAT all last month up until yesterday, heading up a Fugitive Task Force.”
“A whole month?” I was horrified. “Why?”
“How else do you pick up guys fortified in their homes?” he asked with a shrug.
“No, I get going in with SWAT for those, but how many can you have?”
“This is Arizona,” he said, chuckling. “We’ve got a ton of survivalists and doomsday preppers, and everybody’s got an arsenal on their land.”
I myself had noticed quite a few firearms in plain sight.
“Just so you know, we get loaned out to SWAT so we have backup. It’s basically for our safety since we don’t wear body armor.”
We had body armor back home because we worked tactical operations upon occasion because of where our office was located. Other pieces of possible marshal duties, like Asset Forfeiture or Judicial Security, Ian and I didn’t do, though Kage supervised other marshals who did. But to hear that Segundo and his partner never wore armor was a surprise. When it was a full breach, when it was us picking up a fugitive someplace where there could be heavy gunfire and God knew what else, all of us, the whole team, went in suited up in our tactical gear. The only way to tell us from SWAT was by the letters on our backs.
“Never?” I pressed, because it was so odd.
“No. Have you guys?” Segundo asked.
I tipped my head giving him a maybe without committing before I got in trouble for oversharing. That, too, was an issue with Latham. Without meaning to, Ian and I ended up going on and on about how we did things in Chicago. It was not endearing us to our current boss. And I understood, I did, no one liked to hear how they were not measuring up in comparison, but if the information could be helpful and the job could be done better, how was that not a good thing? Ian said the Army was just like that. Heaven forbid someone wanted to make a change so things ran more efficiently. “So where’s your partner? I’d love to meet him,” I said to change the topic.
“He got paperwork duty, but he’ll be done shortly,” Segundo answered, putting a hand on my shoulder.
“Well, we’re on our way out, so we’ll catch up with you guys tomorrow,” I said, trying to extricate myself.
Ian’s scowl had been immediate. He was not a big fan of new people putting their hands on me. Even before we were anything, he’d been very possessive of my space.
“Hey,” I said to my partner. “We better go find some place to eat before we both pass out from hunger, right?”
“Yeah,” he agreed quickly, reaching out and taking hold of my bicep, easing me forward to stand beside him. “I’m starving.”’
We didn’t make it to the elevator that was not even five feet away.
“Hey, you should let me and Hewitt take you guys out to one of our favorite places. We can swap war stories, eat, and get our drink on.”
I wanted to go to the store, get food, and go back to the condo and veg with Ian, but it was not the smart thing. We needed to bond with the people we were working with, and Segundo seemed like a good guy. Even more importantly, I didn’t want to sit around and talk to Ian about Hartley and he didn’t want to share the reasons… again… why he didn’t want to get married. We were sort of talked out and if we weren’t alone….
“Yeah, sure, just tell us where it is,” I agreed quickly, drawing a frown from my partner. “We can meet you there.”
“We can actually walk it. That way no one has to drive if we overindulge.”
“But it’s a school night,” I teased.
“Work hard, play hard—isn’t that the marshal motto?”
I didn’t think it actually was.
THE CULINARY Dropout at The Yard was on 7th Street, a few blocks from the courthouse. I had thought to drive because normally it was cooking outside, but at the time of day we were walking, right around six, it had cooled somewhat, down to the high 80s, so it wasn’t horrible. Without humidity, strolling, not running, it was almost nice.
Usually when we went out to eat, we went home first and changed out the Glock 20s so we were both carrying our secondary weapons. Ian had a SIG Sauer P228 semiautomatic, and I had a Ruger SR9C Compact Pistol with laser and stainless-steel slide that I could keep either on my hip or in an ankle holster. He’d bought it for me after hearing me say enough times that, unbelievable as it was, I did own only one weapon. Ian found that whole idea horrifyingly sacrilegious—he owned three, counting his M1911 that he took with him when he was deployed. So he remedied that when he moved in with me. I got the gun, which he liked and found both dependable and easy to conceal, in a beautiful wooden box with my initials carved in the top right corner. Kohn had given him crap about it, not understanding why it wasn’t a nickel-plated Desert Eagle or something, but Ian being Ian said it was the man carrying the gun, not the gun itself that made it badass.
It felt odd to be walking around with my duty gun strapped to my hip when I was off for the night, but everything about Phoenix was weird, so it was simply one more thing in a long list. I had also wanted to change out of my undershirt and button-down and trousers, but it wasn’t in the cards. In Chicago I would have made certain to wear a jacket, but it was just too hot here to even contemplate. Ian looked a bit less miserable in his Dockers and denim shirt, only the AMI Alexandre Mattiussi Black Chelsea boots he had on dressing up his outfit at all. Of course, Ian had no idea what was on his feet. I bought shoes, put them in his side of the closet, and he wore them. It was probably good that he didn’t know the prices of any of them.
We sat on the patio away from where you could play shuffleboard and ping pong, on couches around an unlit fire pit. Apparently in the winter—mid-November, December—it got cold enough to use it. I couldn’t imagine.
Ian got a beer—they had the Dogfish 90 minute IPA he liked—and I had the Green Flash they had on tap, plus water for both of us because really, hydration was important in the heat. We let Segundo do the ordering, getting us appetizers, meat, and cheese, and though he suggested the prosciutto deviled eggs, since I was not a big egg eater outside of omelets, I had to put the kibosh on that. It was nice that his partner, who had not made the walk over, finally caught up and joined us.
Hewitt was the exact opposite of Segundo—blond-haired, blue eyed, with a golden tan and a lean, long muscled frame. Segundo’s body was gym-toned, cut and hard, and between that and his deep, dark brown eyes and thick black hair, I was betting that he had never in his life been starved for female companionship.
“It’s about time I get to meet the guys who are giving our commander an aneurysm,” Hewitt greeted us happily as he stood and leaned over the table, offering us each his hand one after the other. “I hope you’re planning to stick around for a while. I’m looking forward to seeing his brain explode.”
Segundo snorted out a laugh. “He really don’t like you guys.”
I knew that already.
“Please tell me you both like to play pool,” Hewitt said hopefully.
“Who doesn’t like pool?” Ian asked quietly, but I heard the edge in his voice as he bumped his knee against mine and let it rest there.
“Well, then, we should go after this. I know the best place.”
I was going to say that we’d see, that if we were vertical we could decide, because the two of us were operating on zero sleep and I knew from experience that the less rack time—as Ian called it—he had, the more on edge he would get. And not like cranky the way I got, or prickly and generally a dick. Ian had occasional night terrors that the shrink who regularly cleared us all for duty said was mild PTSD.
Kage made us all go talk to the staff psychiatrist every six months. I hated going, made sure to smile a lot and give answers so he’d think I was simple. More than likely Dr. Johar knew I was bullshitting him, but he was nice enough to never call me out. But my partner was another story. Dr. Johar had concerns about Ian and his bad dreams, which could wake him up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, panting for breath. Since he’d moved in with me there had been none, but he confessed that he got them when he was deployed or if he slept somewhere else other than with me. Lately, being overly tired all the time, sleeping so hard when he finally did, he’d been having nightmares. I had planned to get him to bed at a decent hour, sometime before midnight, and so playing pool seemed like a bad idea.
“Sure,” Ian agreed, leaning back on the couch, taking hold of my sleeve. “I’m a shark, right, M?”
I looked over my shoulder at him. “Definitely.”
After the one beer, Ian and I both stuck to water, so by the time we left two hours later, we were the sober ones. Both Segundo and Hewitt had pounded down drinks, easily two an hour, so since they were stuck walking the rest of the night, we were as well.
The pool hall Hewitt took us to wasn’t his favorite, he said—that one was out in Mesa—but the family-owned place downtown would suffice until the weekend, when he’d take us to his spot. On our way in, I noticed a little boy standing outside an alley on the opposite side of the street, and as we waited in line to get into the pool hall, he tried to get the attention of people walking by. No one stopped to listen to him even though once or twice he even grabbed for the clothes of those passing him by. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but between how scared he looked and the way he wrung his hands, head turning left and right, I could tell he needed help.
“I have Cardinal tickets for a couple weeks from now,” Segundo said, draping an arm around my neck and squeezing gently. He was obviously one of those guys who you got a few drinks in and got all touchy-feely. I didn’t mind, he was harmless, but Ian’s glare was getting icier with every passing second. “You and Morse should come with us.”
I made a noise of agreement, still distracted.
“You don’t like football?” he asked with a belch, pulling me in tighter. “Come on, man, everybody likes football.”
“No, I… hold on,” I said, easing free, checking both ways on Central Avenue before darting across to the little boy.
The way his eyes lit up when he saw the badge on my belt, you would have thought he’d won the lottery. He bolted over to me, and as I dropped to one knee so we were closer to the same height, he fisted his hands in my shirt.
“Hey, I’m Deputy United States Marshal Miro Jones,” I said without thinking. “Who’re you, kid?”
The tears came fast and as I wiped them away quickly, he hit me with a stream of Spanish I could not hope to follow.
“Shit,” I groaned, before looking across the street, seeing Ian on his way, Hewitt and Segundo following. “Hey, Javier, you speak Spanish?” I called over.
“Why?” he yelled back. “Just because I have a Spanish name?”
“Yeah!”
“That’s racist, man!”
“Do you or not?” I spat, annoyed.
“No, man, and fuck you.”
Returning my attention to the little boy, I realized he was shivering as he cried. I put my hands on his arms to calm him. “Mi nombre es Miro. ¿Cómo te llamas?”
Big gulp of air. “Oscar.”
“Oscar,” I repeated, really pissed at the moment that I had not remembered much Spanish from college. I needed to remedy that at some point. “¿Ocupas ayuda?” I asked, even though it was clear that he did, in fact, need help.
“Sí,” he answered. “Mi hermana está en problemas.”
Sister. Okay. “¿Dónde?” I said, which I was pretty sure meant where.
He slipped his hand into mine and tugged.
“What’re we doing?” Hewitt asked.
“The boy needs help,” Ian declared, stepping in close to me. “So we’re helping.”
“No, no, no,” Hewitt said, waving his hand. “We’ve all had a few, it’s late—just call the police and let them handle it.”
I scowled at him before turning back to the little boy and gesturing for him to lead me. “Show me where your sister is.”
He pulled on my hand and we would have taken off running, but Segundo moved around in front of me. “This is a mistake,” he insisted angrily.
“We help. It’s what we do,” I said levelly, stepping around him.
Oscar yanked on my hand again, and when he went from a walk to a jog, so did I, and when he started running, I kept up easily, with Ian beside me. Hewitt and Segundo followed after us, each explaining why what we were doing could go wrong at any second.
We passed several side streets and a parking lot, went up and over a six-foot chain-link fence and across a vacant area full of cigarette butts and beer bottles, and finally came to another street that we crossed to reach a three-story apartment building that looked abandoned but, the closer we got, was clearly not.
We went around the side and down a short alley to the back, where dumpsters stood shoved up against the wall. There was a small laundromat directly across from them on the left-hand side. Five men hovered near the door that led into a building, and when we got closer, Oscar pointed, like that was it: inside was where his sister was. It was fortunate they were busy talking, smoking, and drinking and didn’t notice us. The way we were standing in the shadows didn’t hurt either.
“Okay,” I told the little boy as I grabbed his shoulder, walked him around a parked car on the street, and crouched down beside him. I think he thought I was going to let him go in with me, but that was certainly not going to happen. When he tried to follow, I lifted my hand, indicating for him to stay. He nodded and then lunged at me, wrapped his arms around my neck, squeezing tight and shivering. He pointed at my gun and then at the men, and I understood. Letting him go, I rose, patted his head, and returned to Ian and the others, still standing in the shadows away from the group of men.
“And?” Ian prodded.
“Those guys are strapped.”
“Of course they are,” he said, grinning and pulling his Glock. “What else would they be?”
“Oh, fuck no,” Hewitt cautioned, putting a hand on my chest. “None of us are wearing vests. We can’t run in there. We have no idea how many there are!”
“Right,” Ian agreed before he stepped into the alley where they could see him if they noticed, arm behind his back, and began his walk toward the door.
“Call for backup,” I directed, immediately following Ian.
“Fuck,” I heard Segundo growl behind me a moment before he touched my shoulder. “You and Special Forces over there better know what you’re doing.”
I grunted to let him know I’d heard him, but I was laser focused on the men we were approaching.
Normally, we had vests on, dressed up as something else: homeless men on the street, tuxedos like we were coming from a black-tie affair, or suits if we were going as drug dealers. Whatever the op called for, we had an outfit. But no subterfuge here, because we had no good reason to be in that alley. It was really deserted, we were far from the rest of the nightlife downtown, and all the surrounding buildings were dark but for the laundromat and some stairwells.
When the first man finally saw us, he shouted at the others and they all pulled their guns fast.
It was actually pretty frightening to watch the speed with which Ian dispatched people. He shot three, and I took out one and Segundo the other.
“Holy fuck,” Segundo gasped from behind me.
Ian ran around the fallen men and stopped at one’s side. Bending quickly, he holstered his Glock, took a Heckler & Koch P30L fitted with a compensator off the body, checked his pockets for extra mags, found two, and then went to the entrance.
Ian was listening as he made sure the new gun was loaded, stuffed a mag into each of his pockets, and reached for the knob to open the door.
“Why would he take that?” Segundo whispered, tilting his head at the gun in Ian’s hand.
“Because it’s a good gun,” I replied quietly. “With the recoil compensator attached, when he shoots a lot, the barrel won’t lift like it usually does. It makes your shots more precise.”
“How many people does he plan to kill?” Segundo asked cautiously.
“Anyone who shoots at us,” I answered, following Ian in as he threw open the door and darted through the opening.
He had run right so I went left, fanning out, Segundo following me as we faced not a large space with apartments, as I’d imagined, but a hall with a stairway at the end. There were four doors, and at that moment I really hoped Hewitt had called for backup. If we were at home, any other pair from our team would have made me feel safe. It was whoever-went-through-the-door-last’s job to call Kage. Our boss always sent everyone when we called for reinforcements. I had no idea who would show up here.
I moved in beside Ian but was ready to turn and fire at anyone who came out with guns blazing.
Ian kicked in the closest door and ran through, announcing himself as he went, “Federal marshals! Everyone out!”
I stayed in the hall, covering his back, praying there was no one in the house with a shotgun or an Uzi, and he flushed a couple from that room—early twenties, Caucasian, I was guessing meth addicts from their ruined complexions of telltale blotches and sallow skin—who explained quickly that this was a flop house and nothing else.
“You see any kids here?”
The guy coughed, loud and wet. “No, man, we—”
“I think upstairs. I heard someone crying a while ago,” the woman said.
“Go back inside,” Ian ordered, and they scrambled fast to obey.
It wasn’t an apartment building at all, we discovered after we went through each of the remaining three doors, but instead an enormous house with individual rooms and connecting Jack and Jill bathrooms.
Except for that couple, the floor was vacant, so with Segundo covering us from the back, I headed for the stairs. Ian stopped me with his hand, like he would have if I was in the front seat of the car, splayed across my chest.
“What’re you—”
“Me first,” he demanded.
“Why? Did you become bulletproof and didn’t tell me?”
If looks could kill, I would have been in trouble, but as it was I got the Green Beret death stare before he turned to sprint down the hall and start up the stairs. I was right behind him, with Segundo following.
As soon as we hit the hall on the second floor, we drew gunfire.
“Fuck!” Segundo yelled as I ducked back behind the corner of the wall, then leaned out for a second so I could see where everyone was before stepping out and laying down cover fire as Ian dove through an open door, rolled to his feet, and shot whoever was in the room.
Retreating for a moment, unnerved because I couldn’t see Ian, I yelled for Segundo. “Cover me so I can cross the hall!”
“What? Where the fuck are you—”
“There,” I yelled again, pointing at the first room on the right.
He gave me a quick nod, and I rushed across the hall, hitting the door with my shoulder before exploding into the room and falling to a crouch.
Five men were inside—two armed, who immediately fired at me. They missed, having aimed too high, not anticipating the textbook maneuver we were all taught upon breach. I returned fire, dropping them both, and then faced off with the other three who were standing around a naked girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve tied to a bed.
“On your knees!” I roared, hearing gunfire around me as well as Ian’s familiar shout of “federal marshals” before the pop-pop-pop of what had to be his gun.
The men were exchanging nervous glances, deciding what to do, so to help that along, I moved closer, twisting my body just enough so I was sure they could see the star on my belt.
“Federal marshal, get on your knees,” I snarled. “Hands on your head!”
Ian had the stare—the scary military one that made people understand he’d seen worse and done worse and they wouldn’t live too much longer if they didn’t comply with whatever order he was giving at the time. I didn’t have that stare, but what I did have was my hard, muscular physique, and I could make myself look pretty damn intimidating. Me there with the gun in a small space, my weapon already drawn and none of them even having their hands close to their holsters became the deciding factor.
All three went to their knees as the door flew open behind them, and Ian came through, gun out, blood spray on his shirt and face and in his hair.
“Clear,” he reported even as he saw the girl.
“You got them?” I asked, moving slowly to the side of the bed.
“I do,” he responded woodenly, and I saw how scrunched up his face was, how pained. He put them on their stomachs and pulled guns off all three.
“Make sure the two I hit are down,” I ordered, not wanting them to get up and shoot at me, Ian, or the girl.
He darted over, checked for a pulse on each, and then shook his head. “They’re both gone.”
“Okay,” I sighed, resigned to what I’d had to do.
Moving to the bed, I holstered my gun and tore off my long-sleeved shirt, covered her, then unbuckled her wrists and ankles. Scrambling to get up, she clutched at me, threw her arms around my neck, and plastered herself to my T-shirt–covered chest, trembling. I felt her intake of breath, and then came the high-pitched howl of a terrified, wounded animal.
“Fuckers,” Ian swore, his voice dangerously low.
“Police!” I caught from somewhere in the house before I heard Segundo identify himself from the stairs. Then the sound of thunder, of several boots climbing before I was looking at SWAT, automatic rifles pointed at us.
“Federal marshals,” Ian said, explaining who we were, raising his ID and letting them see the star on his belt.
In that moment, I realized that was why Oscar had trusted me, why his sister would not let me go: the star. Sometimes it was nice to be reminded about the badge you wore and why being one of the good guys was so very important.