“WHAT WERE you even shooting at?” Chandler White asked from where he sat across the table from me the following night.
“At the guy trying to run you over with his car,” I explained again, since he’d missed it. I should have been on the receiving end of some serious gratitude, but instead all I was getting was grief.
“Yeah, but you missed,” Ethan Sharpe, White’s partner, reminded me.
“I didn’t miss,” I argued. “You missed.”
He scoffed. “In your dreams, Jones. I’m the one who shot the car. I made him swerve and run into the side of his own house!”
“Again with this?” Ian sounded bored as he sat down beside me at the table, having returned from the bathroom. “Just wait for the damn ballistics report to come back. Why’re you even wasting your time arguing?”
After work on Wednesday night, White and Sharpe had invited us to have dinner at Haymarket Pub & Brewery down on Randolph. Since it wasn’t far from work, right there in the West Loop, and since we were both on our second wind—not having slept in a full twenty-four–hour period—we went along. Normally, White went straight home to his wife, but apparently she was out having drinks with her friends, so he had decided to hang with his partner and colleagues. I was wishing Ian and I had begged off, though, if White was going to keep believing his partner instead of me. I got that, the loyalty, but not in the face of overwhelming empirical proof otherwise.
“I shot the car,” I reiterated to Ian, growing more indignant by the second.
“Okay.”
“No, not okay, you have to believe me.”
He shrugged, taking a sip of his beer, the Angry Birds Belgian Rye IPA he liked. He preferred the Mathias Imperial IPA, but that wasn’t always on tap. I was not the beer drinker he was, but I did like The Defender American Stout I was drinking at the moment—on my second glass, feeling better than I had when I came in.
Because we’d all been involved in a shooting that day, our primary weapons were collected for processing, and we were all carrying our backups at the moment. A deputy US marshal had to be strapped at all times. That didn’t mean it had to be the standard issue Glock 20, as long as the gun was approved to carry. It also didn’t need to be in plain sight, which, when we went out, it normally wasn’t. I’d been caught without a weapon on a few occasions, once even by my boss, who’d been good enough not to write me up for it, but since then, I’d never once been in breach of protocol.
“Not from where I was.”
“What?” I was lost, thinking about our guns.
He snickered, pointing at my glass. “How many of those have you had?”
“Two,” I said defensively.
“Try four,” he said with a chuckle, draping his arm around the back of my chair.
“Who cares, not the point,” I flared. “I was in the driveway. How could you even see what I did or didn’t hit when you were in the front yard?”
“Because I ran up behind you.”
“Not before I fired.”
“Yes, I did,” Ian said patronizingly. “It was way before you fired.”
“Obviously not, since you didn’t see me shoot the car.”
“I shot the car from the street,” Sharpe chimed in.
I turned from Ian to him. “How? You were behind me.”
“You don’t think I can shoot from behind you and not hit you?”
“That’s not what I said,” I muttered. “I know you don’t have to hit me, but I also know you didn’t hit shit.”
“No, you’re right, I didn’t hit shit—I hit the car, asshole.”
“No, you didn’t,” Ian groaned before eating another of the smoked chicken wings we’d ordered for an appetizer. He really liked the buffalo ones while I preferred the barbecue.
The thing was, Sharpe thought he got the car, but I knew it had been me. It wasn’t like Tony Bayer, the driver of the car, could tell us who put the bullet in the radiator of his Ford Focus, thus making him swerve and hit the side of the split-level ranch, because he’d have to come down from his PCP high, first. He’d violated his parole in Austin, Texas, and then skipped town. But we’d gotten a tip from the Dallas field office that he was out in Northbrook, laying low at his sister’s, and it had turned out he was.
He’d come running out of the house—naked—with a gun, car keys, and his brother-in-law’s wallet. Once he was in the vehicle, he came barreling down the dirt and gravel driveway from the back of the house and tried to run over Deputy US Marshal Chandler White. It was then that I fired at, and hit, the subcompact getaway car. The best part of the whole thing was that his brother-in-law, Bobby Tanner, came out of the house after we had Tony cuffed and facedown on the front lawn and brought us some of Tony’s clothes. He hadn’t wanted to see the guy naked any more than we had.
Sharpe interrupted my thoughts as he pointed at Ian. “Wait. You think Miro shot the car too?”
“No,” Ian grunted. “I shot the car.”
White’s laughter drew all our attention. “Are you kidding? You too? All you fuckers hit the car? Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”
“When,” Ian began sanctimoniously, indicating us all with an imperial wave of his hand, “we get the ballistics report back, you two are gonna be really fuckin’ embarrassed.”
“I hit the car,” I repeated as our waitress brought burgers for me, Ian, and Sharpe and a grilled chicken breast for White. “What the hell is that?” I asked, horrified, pointing at his food.
“That’s why I will outlive all of you by a great many years,” White assured me.
“Maybe,” Sharpe said in disgust. “But we’re gonna have way more fun.”
“I’ll say nice things about you at each of your funerals.”
We all threw fries at him.
AFTER DINNER White got a call from his wife and she wanted him to meet her at the club she was at in Lakeview. He of course didn’t want to go alone, and Sharpe had no choice, as a partner never did. Ian and I begged off, but White was insistent and very whiny, so we all piled into a cab and took the twenty-minute ride, in traffic—because there was always traffic—to join her and her friends.
“Maybe the ballistics report will come in tonight,” I said from the backseat where I was sandwiched between Ian and Sharpe. White was in the front seat with the driver.
“Oh, will you let it go,” White groused, turning in his seat to gesture at Ian. “He’s supposed to be the competitive one.”
Normally Ian was, and for whatever reason, that filled me with affection for him and I let my head fall sideways onto his shoulder.
I realized what I’d done as soon as it registered how comfortable I was, and felt my stomach drop. We had agreed that work was work and home was home and never would we mix the two. With how things were going lately, it was especially important. And even though we weren’t on the clock at the moment, we were still with Sharpe and White, and they fell more into one category than the other. Plus, we didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. It was great that no one on our team cared that we were together, but none of them wanted to sit through us making out, either. At least none that I knew of.
I lifted my head a bit, but Ian reached up and pressed gentle fingers into my hair, keeping me there, wanting me there. I loved it when he was affectionate, whenever he let me see his desire, and it took more concentration than usual, as tired as I was, not to simply burrow against him. I really wanted to go home and get in bed with him.
White was texting his wife and Sharpe was asking him about her friends—who was single, if any of them were hot, and which, if any, were married. That last part caught my attention.
“Why does that matter?” I asked, sitting up and turning my head so I could look at him.
“What?”
“The married?”
He shrugged. “If they’re married, they just wanna screw around. There’s no bullshit.”
“Ohmygod,” I said, thoroughly revolted.
“You’re a pig.” Ian passed judgment on him.
“What?”
“You cannot sleep with a married woman,” the cabbie informed Sharpe. “You will go to hell. Consider your immortal soul.”
“And the fact that the husband who finds out might be packing,” White added.
“And if he is packin’, I might not be there to shoot him for you,” I threw in.
“I shot the car,” Ian insisted.
“Jesus, where is the fuckin’ ballistics report?”
What was interesting, even to my inebriated, exhausted brain, was that no one in the car, even the driver, gave a crap that Ian and I were very obviously together.
THE CLUB was noisy and packed in the front but not in the back, where it was more lounge than bar. White’s wife, Pam, had a table with her girlfriends and three male admirers who were buying the five women drinks. I noticed the round of cosmopolitans on the table that looked untouched.
“Ladies,” Sharpe announced as he got close, and Pam was up quickly and in his arms, hugging him tight before turning to the others and introducing her husband’s partner.
“This is Deputy United States Marshal Ethan Sharpe, everyone, who’s very newly single.”
The marshal part did the trick, and the guys, apparently looking to score, disappeared and a waitress came by to collect the drinks no one wanted.
“I liked your partner better when he had a girlfriend,” I told White.
“My wife is trying her damnedest to fix that,” he snickered.
Sharpe ordered a round of Kamikaze shots for the women, and Ian turned and stepped into my space before I could order a beer.
“You wanna drink or go home with me?”
What was I, nuts? “I want to go home with you,” I replied adamantly.
His laughter was warm. “You’re so wasted, but it’s nice that even though you are, you pick me.”
“Always,” I burped. “But I’ve been much more wasted than”—Eric Lozano—“than now and—wait.”
“Why am I waiting?” he pried, leaning in like it was noisy, so that’s why his mouth was so close to my ear, but in reality his breath was there, on my skin, and—
“Shit,” I gasped, jolting away from him, reaching out and grabbing his bicep. “Ian, I think Eric Lozano walked into the bathroom.”
“What?” he asked harshly, clearly annoyed. “I’m trying to—”
“I swear to God.”
And that fast, because he was not only my lover but my partner as well, he brushed off seductive mode and stepped back into the marshal. “Let’s go.”
There was no thought given to alerting Sharpe and White. We simply bolted.
Ian went first, as usual, and we waited until we were outside the bathroom to draw our guns. But as soon as we stepped into the bathroom, we first, quickly and quietly, made sure it was clear, and then walked to the last stall, where it sounded like Lozano was getting lucky.
I myself had had many encounters in restrooms over the course of my sex life, but never with women. So I was impressed, really, by the balance displayed by Lozano’s lady friend, who had her legs wrapped around his waist, her back arched like a rainbow, and her hands on the rim of the toilet. It was important to note that she had wads of toilet paper between her palms and the seat.
“Why didn’t you simply bend her over?” I asked from where I stood, up on the toilet in the next stall over.
“It’s a good question,” Ian apprised from where he was standing on the toilet in the stall on the other side of them. We had them bookended.
Lozano’s head snapped up and his eyes bugged out, glancing from me smiling at him to Ian, who was scowling over the top of the dividing wall on his other side, and back to me.
“It would’ve been faster.”
“And easier,” the girl said, because, really, what the hell—why wouldn’t she weigh in?
“I’ll fuckin’ kill you guys,” he threatened, which really showed a lot of balls, because for one, his pants were around his ankles, and for two, there was no way he was getting out of the stall without getting her legs off him.
“We’re federal marshals,” I informed him, holstering my gun under my sweater even as Ian lifted his over the side of the divider so Lozano could see the P228 clearly. “You wanna maybe rethink that?”
He sighed deeply. “I thought I gave all you guys the slip when I left Des Plains.”
Ian lowered his gun, knowing as well as I did that Lozano wasn’t going to give us any trouble. We were already talking like regular people, and we’d been marshals long enough to know what that meant. Lozano, like most of the people we busted—when they knew we had them—was going to come along easy.
“You were in Iowa?” I grimaced. “Aww, man, I’m sorry.”
“Hey.”
The new voice made me look up, and I saw three men behind us, all in trench coats, all in suits, and I wondered, as I often did, why these guys didn’t simply put on nametags that said “Hi, I’m a mob enforcer.”
“Hey,” I greeted them loudly, putting on. “Come watch my buddy take a shit, man. We’re putting it on YouTube!”
“He’s gotta stand over the bowl,” Ian announced, even louder than I was, before he pretended to fall off the toilet in his stall. “Oh fuck!”
I howled with fake laughter. “Awww, man, you didn’t get shit on you did you?”
The one in front pressed his closed fist to his mouth, one of the guys behind him turned and darted, and the third guy almost retched.
Shooting people in the head was one thing. Getting some other guy’s fecal matter on you was a whole other ballgame.
The guy in front was breathing quickly in and out through his nose in an effort, I assumed, not to hurl. “You assholes see anybody else come in or outta here?”
“No,” I cackled, lifting my phone. “Dude, you gotta see this… it’s epic!”
That was it—he pivoted, shoved his friend who was also trying to not throw up toward the door. They were gone seconds later.
Ian came out of the stall and knocked on the one Lozano and his girl were in. “Kick your gun out under the door, and then you and—”
“Donatella,” she chimed in.
“You and Donatella come out of there.”
His Heckler & Koch P30 slid out under the door and Ian stopped it with his foot.
“Do you want mine too?” Donatella asked.
“Yes, please,” I answered as Ian did a quick brass check on the gun.
Donatella’s micro Uzi was a surprise.
“I have a big purse,” she said defensively as the door opened and she and Lozano stepped out. And she was right; her Juicy Couture bag was enormous.
I held up the automatic weapon for her. “Why do you need this?”
She gave me a look like I was stupid, made all the more obvious as her eyes were so heavily frosted and her lashes so very fake.
“Okay, fine. Tell me why you’re meeting Lozano here to fuck in a bathroom stall. You seem classier than this.”
“Oh, do I?” she baited.
I took a step forward and stared her down. “Yeah, Donatella, ya do. I think the Four Seasons or something. I think this is slumming, for you.”
And with that, the dam broke and she launched herself at me, wrapped her arms around my neck as she sobbed and chanted over and over that she loved him, hand to God.
“For crissakes, Lozano,” Ian said, waving the gun he’d picked up. “Why didn’t you tell the marshals that took you in that Donatella had to come with you?”
His brows lifted almost to his hairline. “I can do that?”
Ian groaned and Donatella lifted her head to peer up at me with her now swollen raccoon eyes. “I can go to Iowa too?”
“Well, it won’t be Iowa anymore,” I assured her as I pulled my iPhone from the breast pocket of my slim-fitting motorcycle jacket and called the office. We needed backup.
“Yeah? Could it be Brooklyn? I got family there.”
I rolled my eyes as she sighed and cuddled against me, fiddling with the hem of my gray cashmere sweater.
“You gotta girl at home, marshal?” she asked seductively.
“What?” Ryan barked from the other end of the phone.
“That is not a greeting, asshole,” I assured him.
“What the hell do you want?”
“I need Ching and Becker and an extraction team to meet me and Ian at Kid Lobo over on Clark Street. We’ve got Eric Lozano and his friend Donatella—”
“Fenzi,” she purred, tightening her arms and nestling even closer. “I hope you have a girl, marshal, ’cause all this here should not be going to waste.”
“Fenzi,” I repeated as Ian grabbed her arm, spun her around, and shoved her at Lozano.
“Are you fucking with me?” Ryan cracked, sounding incredulous. “You and Doyle caught Eric Lozano, accountant for the Tedesco crime family?”
I moved the phone from my mouth and watched Lozano smiling down at Donatella, who was wrapped around him even tighter than she’d been around me. It was easy to see the difference between the friendly, appreciative hugging I’d been getting and the seductive body press she was giving Lozano. Sadly, Ian didn’t have any female friends, so he didn’t know what the friendship kind of snuggling looked like.
“You’re an accountant?” I asked Lozano.
He looked over at me. “Yeah.”
“I thought you killed people.”
“No, man—I do taxes, I launder money, move it around, shit like that.”
“Do you even know how to fire a gun?”
He made a face like maybe and then nodded.
“What the fuck, Jones,” Ryan grumbled over the phone.
“Extraction team,” I insisted.
“Coming now.”
“We’re in the bathroom.”
“Of course you are,” he said as though he were in pain, clearly appalled. “Where are White and Sharpe?”
“Doing shots.”
“You know what, don’t tell me anything else. I’m hanging up now. Just stay there. Ching and Becker will be on site in twenty.”
“Way-way-way—is the ballistics report back on the shooting?” I asked eagerly.
“What shooting?”
“The car!” I rasped, dying.
“The car?” He was indignant.
“Come on,” I whined. “Are the guns back yet?”
“You look like a grown-up, but you’re actually only ten,” he groused.
“Please,” I begged with a little whining thrown in for good measure.
“Doyle shot the car,” he informed me. “You hit one of the tires and Sharpe hit a tree. Happy now?”
“What? That can’t be right.”
“You were running; so was Sharpe. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hit something when you’re moving?”
“Shit.”
“You will never hear the end of this.”
He had no idea.
“Ching and Becker are eighteen minutes out. Do not move from that bathroom.”
“Did you just tell me to stay in the bathroom?”
Apparently I was too annoying for words, as evidenced by him hanging up on me. I was going to explain to Lozano and Donatella that these were their tax dollars at work, but as they probably didn’t pay taxes, the observation would be lost on them. Also, they wouldn’t have heard me anyway because they were much too busy making out. I would have made them stop, just to be a dick, but I felt lips on the back of my neck.
“Get off me,” I complained, not meaning it.
“I told you I shot the car,” he murmured in my ear.
Yes, he had.
“We should go to the shooting range, and I can give you some pointers.”
I stalked away from him and went to the bathroom door, making sure no one could come in.
“You want me to come over there and protect you since I can shoot straight?” he teased.
“I have the Uzi,” I volleyed.
“Yeah, but what can you hit with that?”
“Fuck you, Ian!”
He lost it.
IT TOOK the whole night and into the early morning before we were done processing Lozano and Donatella, and when we finally got home, I was not only hungry and sober, but tired and prickly, having been rubbed raw by the ribbing from every single person on my team, including my partner.
I was surprised when I was seized from behind and shoved down on the couch. Ian followed fast, curling over me, grabbing hold of my legs and wrapping them around his hips.
“What’re you—”
“Kiss me,” he demanded huskily, rubbing his groin against mine before bending to capture my mouth.
I evaded his lips. “That teasing was brutal, Ian.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You were an ass.”
“Yeah, but you love me when I’m like that, so who cares?”
He was right, I did. I loved him like crazy.
“So,” he said, his voice cracking as he gripped my thighs, making sure I stayed there, “could you get over being annoyed and kiss me already?”
“You know, that was pretty great what you did earlier.”
“What was that?” he asked as he shifted over me.
“Just the way you followed me, no questions asked.”
“Always,” he said, smiling at me. “So… about that kiss?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, taking hold of his tie and easing him down to me. “I think I can manage that.”