“HOLY SHIT,” Ian groaned as we got off the shuttle that had taken us from the airport terminal at Sky Harbor International in Phoenix to the one where all the rental car companies were. It was only a circle of pavement, a stone sidewalk, and a glass building, deserted at this time of the morning. We were the only ones out there after the shuttle dropped us off. It was also hot, and I was surprised the temperature was already so high. “This is like fuckin’ AT out in Twentynine Palms all over again.”
I chuckled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and what is AT?”
“Annual training,” he muttered before he put on his aviator sunglasses.
“And Twentynine Palms is what?”
“It’s a hellhole in California towards Nevada, but the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center is there, and that’s the important thing.”
“Oh, you train there with them.”
He nodded. “Sadly, yes.”
“So, what, the temperature reminds you of it?”
“Everything does,” he grumbled. “The dirt I can see over there, the rocks, the cactus—God, I hate the fuckin’ desert.”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“The hell I didn’t,” he retorted.
I threw an arm around his shoulders, pulling him toward me, and sank my fingers into his hair. “It’s not that bad, and it’s really not that hot.”
He muttered something about me needing a psych eval, and I couldn’t stifle a laugh.
“We’re in the shade and it’s hot,” he complained. “It’s like standing in an oven all day.”
“If you hate the heat so much,” I teased him, nuzzling my face into the side of his neck, “you seriously should have stayed home.”
“I already told—what’re you doing?”
I was always looking for that one scent I would love and wear forever. I spent money on cologne. It wasn’t like I was forever haunting the mall, but if I was there, I checked. Ian, on the other hand, used stuff he picked up in Chinatown that was dirt cheap, that he bought off the shelf at some place that also sold supplements and herbs and seasonings. He didn’t buy anything to make him smell good. That didn’t even blip on his radar as something he needed to consider. He only bought the essentials—shampoo and conditioner, that had no English anywhere on either bottle—and something that he slathered on after he shaved to keep his face from hurting. I suspected it moisturized, but I would never tell him that. The thing was, his hair stuff plus the product—singular—he put in his hair, all of it together cost fifteen dollars. I knew because the last time he ran out of everything I’d gone with him to buy more. The man was stunning, so whatever he was using worked great, but the best part was the mixture of scents.
Holy God, he smelled good.
Whenever I got close to him I inhaled citrus and vetiver with hints of sandalwood and amber, cedar, and leather. All of it together made me want to lick him all over.
“M?” He chuckled as I breathed him in at the same time I sucked the spot behind his ear.
“You smell so good,” I almost mewled.
“I smell like sweat,” he grumbled, but I could hear the begrudging rumble of happiness. Me wanting him turned him on big-time. “Come on. Let’s go get the car so we can first report in and then figure out where we’re staying. We need a bed.”
We did, it was true.
Half an hour later, we had the Toyota Sequoia and Ian drove us out of the parking garage, heading toward the street. The temperature on the dash read 101, but I was pretty sure that was because the asphalt was absorbing all the heat. I was interested to know how people drove in the summer and wondered if they slipped on a pair of oven mitts to be able to touch the steering wheel.
“Where are we going?” Ian asked irritably.
“Okay, so right now we’re on East Sky Harbor Boulevard, and you’re gonna want to take a right onto I-10 in like a minute.”
“Then what?”
“Do you know that in the summer they cook eggs on the sidewalk out here?”
“Shut up. What do I do once I’m on the freeway?”
“Oh, are you there already?”
“This is me driving.”
True. “Okay, so then you’re gonna take the 7th Avenue exit, which is exit 144.”
“Roger that—now what?”
“Okay, now you’re gonna take the 7th Avenue ramp south, and you’re staying on that until you take a left onto Jefferson. It says the courthouse is on Washington just east of 7th, and by the way, it’s dubbed the ‘Solar Oven.’”
“Oh fuck you,” he growled.
I cackled. “In the summer, they let people who work there, security and stuff like that, wear short-sleeve shirts.”
“They do not.”
“They do, but now it’s not as bad.”
“It’s a fuckin’ blast furnace out here,” he complained, gesturing to the temperature displayed on the dash. It read 92 degrees. “It’s October, for crissakes.”
“Yeah, but look, it already dropped nine degrees from when we got in the car.”
“You think your body can actually tell the difference between ninety degrees and a hundred degrees?”
Perhaps not. “You know, Kage told me before we left the office that when he was on a task force here once that he and the other guys said it’s like a giant greenhouse from hell.”
Nothing for a moment before he turned to me. “Are you fucking with me?”
The look on his face was priceless.
“That’s what he said?”
“He says it’s like being in the devil’s terrarium.”
Ian groaned and I died.
Died.
I laughed so hard I couldn’t even breathe.
“Can you please pull your shit together?”
It took several minutes, because having to leave home because there was a psychopath after me was scary, but Ian was with me, so it was sort of like a vacation. All in all, I was feeling a bit unbalanced.
“He said”—I wiped at my eyes, still chuckling—“that it’s all glass when you walk in, and in the summer it’s like being in a sweatbox, and it’s not much better in the winter.”
“That’s because during October here, it’s still ninety-two fuckin’ degrees!”
“I bet it doesn’t cool down at night, either,” I mentioned. “Look at all this concrete.”
At first, we didn’t find parking anywhere near the building. It was all blocked off. But Ian finally saw what looked like a gated area and drove around behind it, and sure enough, that was where the people who worked there parked.
We had to stop and show the guard our badges and IDs before we were finally allowed into the atrium. And our boss was right: gorgeous building, all steel and glass, and hotter than hell. Outside, it was like standing in the blast of a blow dryer set to crispy, but inside, for whatever reason, it was hot and humid.
“This is like Chicago in July,” Ian moaned.
“And yet back outside, it’s a dry heat.”
“I wanna go home.”
The people working the coffee kiosk and some others wore shorts and T-shirts—some even in tank tops—and I got it, I did. If they were dressed like most people you saw inside a federal courthouse, they’d melt. It was hot inside the atrium, and I wondered if, as winter rolled around, it got cold inside and held that temperature too?
At the security station, we got out our badges and IDs again, passed the guns over, and were finally admitted. Before we could head up to the second floor, though, one of the deputy US marshals we had just spoken to made clear that we were supposed to report to the security director of the court and that he was in the Central Court Building, which was not where we were now. We needed to go back outside and walk a bit.
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “We’re not reporting to Security Administration & Operations. We’re reporting to a task force.”
“Oh.” He seemed startled. “You don’t do court security?”
“Not as our main job,” Ian said. “We’re not security officers, we’re inspectors.”
It was a gray area.
Kage had us both coded as deputy US marshals, but technically, as neither of us supervised anyone and because we worked with WITSEC as well as with the organized crime units and drug enforcement, we were inspectors. It was only important when we left home, because it let other marshals know what we could be counted on to do.
“Oh, okay,” Padgett—his name tag read—was still surprised. “I didn’t know we had any openings currently.”
“You don’t,” I said quickly. “We’re on loan, we’re not here to stay.”
He seemed relieved, and I understood. If you were in court security, you wanted to move up, to get into the field, to be Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, even though the issues with that flick were endless. It was the same with all kinds of TV shows and movies; it was impossible to get every little detail right. I had dated a sailor once who explained in excruciating detail all the things that were wrong with The Hunt for Red October and he thought that I should turn it off and hate it on general principle because of those inconsistencies. He went home and there was no second date. I loved what I loved, and whether or not it was wrong changed nothing.
“We’re going to the second floor, right?” Ian asked, returning my thoughts to the task at hand, that of us finding out whom we reported to. We had a name, Brooks Latham, and that was all. “That’s what we were told.”
“Yeah, you can take the elevator or the stairs,” Padgett replied amiably.
Amazing how nice people were when they knew you weren’t after their job.
As soon as we reached Latham’s office, I realized considering all the people in the room, all the different white boards, and the configuration of the clustered desks, that we were looking at not a single task force, but many.
“Help you?” a man asked as he strode over to us where we stood beside a cubicle wall.
“I’m Morse,” Ian said quickly, “and this is Smith. We’re supposed to see Latham.”
“Commander Latham,” he corrected.
“Commander Latham,” Ian parroted.
“Let me get him.”
We would not be invited into the main area until we had passed muster. And while I understood, at home we were never all about who had the biggest dick. We were a warm, welcoming bunch. Except for Ian.
There was a shrill whistle, and we both looked up as an older man gestured at us from an office in the back.
Ian groaned under his breath. “I love being called like a dog.”
“At least it’s air-conditioned in here,” I offered, pointing out a plus.
He was not impressed.
Latham held the door open and closed it behind us, not moving, staring, taking us both in.
“What kind of background do you guys have? I haven’t had time to read your sheets.”
Ian described how we’d both been marshals for three years, told him I had been a police detective and that he was Army Special Forces.
“You a Green Beret?”
“Yessir.”
He nodded, clearly in awe. “So you’re used to doing things by the book.”
I was so proud of myself for not laughing my ass off.
Latham turned to me. “The detective piece will help. This is a highly transient state, so running down people fast is important.”
“We’ll do all we can to help, Commander,” I affirmed.
“Excellent,” he responded, offering me and then Ian his hand. “Now let me tell you a little bit about how we work.”
Brooks Latham was in charge, and we would report to him, but he was simply a senior inspector, not a chief deputy like Kage.
“Normally here you’re not going to be with the same partner every day, or even on the same team. We tend to mix things up, depending on individual strengths and what’s needed on a certain op.”
We were both silent, waiting. He was not saying anything either of us liked so far.
“Are you guys partners in Chicago?”
“We are,” Ian told him.
“Great, that helps. I’ve had some trouble matching people up.”
“Not an issue with us,” Ian assured him.
He gave us a smile. “You guys hungry at all? I could feed you lunch before I give you the rest of the tour. You like Greek?”
We both did.
Crazy Jim’s was close to the courthouse, and since it smelled fantastic as soon as we walked in, my appetite jump-started. We both had pita subs—Ian a steak picado and me a chicken feta—and we shared a goat cheese salad that got hoovered down in no time.
“You guys always eat like this?”
Ian and I exchanged glances. “Normally we eat way more,” I clarified. “But since you were buying, we figured we’d go easy on you.”
The fact that he laughed was a good sign.
OUR TEMPORARY housing was close to the downtown Willo Historic District, a neighborhood Latham had called a “cottage community.”
“Which means what?” Ian asked as he took a right onto a small, quiet tree-lined street.
“I think it means they don’t have any apartments. It’s all homes.”
“That makes no sense,” he told me. “If you look in that envelope he gave us, there are key fobs in there and directions for where we’re supposed to park our car. There’s no way we’re staying in some house. It’s gotta be an apartment.”
“It’s so beautiful here,” I commented as we passed a Tudor-style home and then a Craftsman bungalow, a Spanish Revival, and many others. Each was different, and that was interesting to look at. The homes and the landscaping told me the neighborhood was old, yet immaculately kept.
“I wanna go home,” he growled.
And I knew he did. “Let’s just find the house, all right? The sooner we get there, the sooner we can dump our crap and get to work.”
“But that’s what I’m saying, M. I don’t think we’re looking for a house.”
It turned out he was right. The condo on the fourth floor of the enormous complex we would be staying in was actually adjacent to the historic district on Vernon Avenue.
After we parked the car and Ian grabbed his duffel out of the back, I got my garment bag, duffel, and the wheeled suitcase currently full of shoes out of the trunk.
“May I help you with that, sir?” Ian teased.
If looks could kill, he would have been dead, but clearly I wasn’t that scary because he only snorted out a laugh before grabbing my garment bag. He lifted it easily, even though it was the heaviest of the three pieces of luggage, and started toward the elevators.
The apartment was 1,700 square feet of boring: one master bedroom, two smaller ones, two bathrooms, fireplace—though only God knew why—a laundry room, and a tiny patio. It made me think of my first apartment when I was going through the police academy. It was sparsely furnished, very clean, and utterly adequate.
“It’s fine,” I assured Ian.
“It sucks,” he judged vehemently.
I understood his hatred. He had left a place with the same lack of character that was totally forgettable not six months before. This felt like backsliding.
“We don’t live here,” I reminded him as we both dropped the bags. Moving into his space, I kissed him, tenderly, lightly, before nipping his lower lip and stepping back.
“Where ya goin’?”
“We promised we’d be back there in an hour. It’s almost been that.”
“Fine, but tonight we find a place where we can drink, and then you promise to come home with me and fuck my brains out.”
“You don’t have to get me drunk first—no alcohol required, marshal.”
He chuckled, and the sound of him, all husky and seductive, made me want to rethink the plan of getting back to work.
“Too late,” he announced, already using his cop voice. “Let’s get going.”
No amount of talking was going to get me laid at the present moment, and I had no one to blame but myself.