“Either. Both.”
“Bad boys are ongoing, based on TMZ’s coverage,” Cade said. “The last rehab was six months ago. Maybe she graduated to something stronger than Grey Goose?”
Marlow slid his fingers up under his glasses to rub his eye. “I don’t usually do motive.” His gran had loved the old classic cop shows. There had always been one on when he got home from school, and he’d wanted to be one of the detectives. But he wasn’t. “You know what they say.”
“Night Shift don’t have thenosefor detection,” Cade repeated the old jab, with sarcastic emphasis on the right part. “But you’re what I’ve got to bounce ideas off, so give it a sniff.”
“In my experience, drug dealers don’t usually kill their clients. They don’t need to. The product eventually will, and the dealer will get paid for it. And why make it… weird?”
“Good question.’
As praise went, it was brisk and disinterested. Marlow still had to bite the inside of his cheek to squelch the flush of pleasure it gave him. He wasn’t a rookie who thoughthe’dbe the one to break the silver ceiling anymore. The Night Shift was what he did, and he was good at it.
“Have you ever been to the Reserve?” Cade asked as he thumbed the fob he pulled out of his pocket. The lights on the Tesla flashed twice. It was a state-of-the-art car, synced to Cade’s tags so he didn’t have to worry about losing the keys during a shift. The problem, as Marlow assumed Cade had learned earlier, was that you could still lose the car.
“Couple of times. I went out with a cook who worked up there. He lived in, so he sneaked me in. The food was good; the boyfriend didn’t last.” Marlow paused to wash the sudden dry, ashy grit out of his throat with a gulp of sour coffee as he caught up with what had just come out of his mouth. There was no good reason that Cade needed to know Marlow dated men. None that Marlow wanted to admit to himself on this amount of sleep. He cleared his throat, which still felt dry, and took pity on the irritated look Cade had sent his way. “Don’t worry, it was before Cold Winds took the contract. Bear Arms Protection was a lot more relaxed about protocol.”
Cade didn’t look any happier.
“Then you can tell me what you think of my updates,” he said. “Farnham just confirmed that Macroy’s house was broken into, possibly during whatever attack left Haley dead. That means that you—"
“—don’t need a warrant,” Marlow finished for him as he ducked down into the car. “I was going to bring that up.”
Cade drained his Bovril and tossed the empty cup into a nearby trash can.
“Of course you were,” he said, without any attempt to disguise the condescension in his voice. “Now you don’t have to.”
Chapter Four
HE KNEW HOWto be nice to people! Despite evidence to the contrary.
Cade flexed his hands around the steering wheel and took a quick sidelong look at the cause of his irritation. Marlow was kicked back in the passenger seat, arms crossed and his chin tucked down toward his chest. He’d been asleep since before they hit the outskirts of the city.
At least he didn’t snore. That was good to know.
Yes, Cade thought irritably to himself as he focused on the road,because this is both a good ideaandgoing well.
There were dozens of people who had no idea that Cade had a reputation for being difficult or that he could be a jerk. His accountant sent him a gift basket once a year. The cleaners who kept his house in order thought him reasonable and an excellent tipper. He didn’t need to make sure they knew their place for the sake of his business or his ego.
So hecouldbe nice. Except every time he tried with Marlow, the words that in his head seemed witty—even charming—were hijacked by asshole. All he’d wanted to do was impress Marlow with the idea of a visit to the Reserve. Instead, he’d implied the man was stupid and a liar to boot.
Not that Marlow seemed to care, which might actually be more annoying.
The problem with an inconvenient attraction crawling out of the subconscious—aside from the fact there was no putting it back—was that it was a mess. It hadn’t been trimmed and tidied, compartmentalized so it fit neatly into his life.
It was just a slop of chemicals spilled all over his brain. He felt like a teenage boy with a crush, who ached at the thought of a mobile mouth and the constellation of scars down a lean torso.
Cade clenched his jaw and swore under his breath as his body reacted eagerly to that image. It was ridiculous. No one got hard over the thought of a man in cartoon mouse boxers.
Next to him, Marlow cracked one eye open. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought you were asleep.”
Marlow straightened up out of his slouch. “My eyes were closed,” he said. “Close enough. Something happen?”
Before Cade had to lie, the red strobe of road work lights flashed ahead, dim in the daylight. He just gestured to them as he tapped the brakes to roll the car to a halt at the boundary.
A dead thing lay in the road. A moose from the ragged mass of it, although the head and most everything under the rib cage had been hollowed out. What the wolves hadn’t got last night, the scavengers would today. There was still enough left to wreck a car if you hit it at speed.
