Marlow nodded his agreement as they headed back toward Cade’s car. Despite that, Cade kept his hand on Marlow’s back, spread over the space between his shoulder blades, as if he thought the other man was still a flight risk.
Chapter Four
MARLOW SHRUGGED THEstolen hoodie off. It probably smelled more like him than the original owner by now. He still felt better once he’d shed it. He tossed it over the back of a chair and looked around. His gaze took in the heavy, soft leather couches, the smooth plastered walls decorated with black-and-white line art, and colorful 3D sculptures of geometric animal heads mounted on the walls.
“I know you have a low opinion of the SDPD,” he said, “but I think we’ll be able to find your apartment.”
They would. Marlow didn’t care. He’d hit empty about two hours ago. Right now, if Bennett turned up with a warrant, he’d take two hots and a cot as a good deal. He wasn’t tired, not any more than usual, he was justdone.
“Give me some credit,” Cade said. “This is a Cold Winds safe house for clients or operatives that, for one reason or another, don’t want anyone to know they’re in town. It’s owned through a shell company, and I’ve never been here before. I don’t have an apartment in the city.”
There it was, that faintly prickly note in Cade’s voice that meant he felt his status had somehow been called into question. Marlow supposed it was weird to find that flash of insecurity endearing, but he did.
“I remember,” Marlow said. He gave in to temptation and sat down on one of the overstuffed couches. It wasn’t actually as soft as it looked, but close enough. “You own a ranch outside of town. It’s probably very expensive, and I am appropriately impressed, don’t worry.”
Cade gave him a hard look. The raw wound to his ego that drove him to flash cash and shove his way to the front of every line probably wasn’t at all amusing from his side.
“Sorry.” Marlow straightened up and scrubbed his hands over his face. “In my head, that was not… being a bastard.”
Cade studied him for a second. Then he tilted the corner of his mouth up in a wry smile.
“I was actually annoyed you wouldn’t remember everything I told you about myself,” he said, “for the record.”
Marlow folded his arms behind his head. “You’ve not exactly told me a lot,” he pointed out.
“All the more reason to hoard what information I do share,” Cade said. “Also, not sure anyone would describe you as an open book, Marlow.”
“What do you want to know?” Marlow asked with a shrug. “Why my gran called me Kit? How she ended up raising me? Do the eyes run in the family? Or—”
“How involved were you in Piper’s organization?”
That question knocked the wind out of Marlow. He could feel the old ache in his chest, the dull shock of impact the second before the bullet hole in his shoulder had started to hurt. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, not now.
Too clever to con and too moral to corrupt.Franklin’s judgment—Piper’sreally—bounced around the inside of Marlow’s head. It should have felt like some sort of dispensation, he supposed, but all he could think about was the uneasy ground in the middle and how long he spent there. Every time he’d looked away or gave Piper the benefit of the doubt. It had to be a hundred easily justified little compromises over the years. More.
“Less than I could have been, more than I should have been,” Marlow said after a moment. He lowered his arms and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. It eased the phantom ache in his chest. “Not enough to be any good to us now.”
It wasn’t an answer. He knew that. Cade still accepted it as one, with a twitch of his mouth to suggest he was disappointed.
“Fair enough,” he said. “What—”
“Piper always had a good reason for what he did,” Marlow said. “He never came out and asked if you wanted to make a shit load of money doing crimes. He just eased you into it, one blind eye turned at a time. It always made sense. So he let some gangbangers walk instead of arresting them? We were Night Shift, not Vice. Besides, it was useful to have people who owed us on the street. Yeah, Adam Rodriguez should have been charged when he killed his girlfriend—it was borderline, the courts should have had their say—but his father Carlos fed Piper info about people trafficking. We saved more lives than were lost by giving the kid the benefit of the doubt. Okay, Piper took a backhander from some guy in the Reserve to escort his null girlfriend in and out, but he gave a chunk of it to Harris to rebuild his goddamn shoulder after a wolf near tore it off. Seems fair enough, right?”
Marlow heard his voice crack and stopped. Old guilt, finally unstoppered after all these years, felt sticky as it filled the back of his throat.
“This might not be the time to mention it,” Cade said. He straddled the arm of the couch, close enough that Marlow could feel the heat of the wolf under his skin. “But like I told Bennett, Cold Winds offers excellent medical benefits to our null employees.”
“Asshole,” Marlow said.
Cade chuckled, short and husky, and cupped his hand around the nape of Marlow’s neck. Maybe to a wolf it would have meant something specific, tapped some instinct pulled up close to the skin by the moon. Marlow just caught his breath from how hot the possessive grip of practical, callused fingers was.
“What made you draw the line?” he asked.
“I don’t know if I did, if I would have,” Marlow admitted. “I wasn’t part of it. I heard about it later. Franklin told us all about it like it was a joke. People on the Reserve used to pay forextras. More patrols, discretion if any of their kids acted out, that sort of thing. Money for nothing, Piper called it, since he never did any of it. Which is why one guy, a local politician, decided not to pay after his son got Crated and charged the next day. Deliberate Endangerment. Franklin grabbed this guy off the street before the moon rose, drove him up into the mountains, and kicked him out just when he started to shift. The wolf probably had a good time, but the poor bastard had no idea where he was when he woke up the next morning.”
“Did he die?”
“I think I would have turned them in for that. For murder,” Marlow said.
