Marlow made a visible effort to bring his shoulders down from around his ears. “No,” he said. “I thought it was just because he was a jerk.”
“It didn’t help,” Piper admitted. “No. It was nothing official, nothing that went on his record, but it was made clear to him he’d never be back on active duty. So he came to San Diego and applied here. One of the Night Shift brass in SF actually came down to give me a heads-up about him. They thought it was a warning. I took it as a reference. Turns out, my mistake.”
Cade rubbed Marlow’s back. His thumb grazed the neat shallow scallop of scar tissue he’d kissed before. It made his throat tighten with an odd retroactive clutch of panic—how close had he come tonevereven meeting Marlow. An inch? Less?—but it made Marlow relax back into his touch.
“This isn’t a High School reunion,” Cade said. “Don’t waste our time with reminiscences, Piper. Your bargaining chip was Franklin’s name, and the value of that just crashed. So what else do you have to trade?”
“I’m on speaker?” Piper said. “You should have said, Marlow.”
“You shot me,” Marlow said, his voice dry as dust. “Why don’t we call it even.”
There was a pause. In the background of the call someone coughed, wet and thick and prolonged. Piper waited until the cougher wheezed into silence. He exhaled, a tight, controlled noise.
“Fair enough,” Piper said, his voice clipped as he got down to business. “I have all the time in the world to shoot the breeze, but I get that you’ve got more demands on your time. What I’ve got will give you Franklin wrapped up in a pretty red bow. Enough evidence to prove that Franklin was eyes-deep in what I was doing, and more. Enough no one is going to trust his word.”
Cade frowned and rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck. The post-sex buzz that pulled lazy and liquid at his bones wanted to take that at face value. They were free and clear, and they could just spend the rest of the day in bed.
“If that’s what you have,” Cade said, “why did you only offer a name last time we talked?”
Piper snorted. “How did you end up with your own company when that’s your idea of how to run a negotiation? I wasn’t going to put all my cards on the table. If all I had to give you was Franklin’s name, then I could get Franklin back on a short leash. Now, like you said, the situation has evolved, and so has my approach.”
“Why should we believe you have anything?” Marlow asked. “You’re a convict. You’ve nothing to lose by lying your ass off.”
Marlow left the phone in the middle of the bed as he slid out of the sheets. The clothes he’d stripped off stayed on the floor, and Marlow grabbed the jeans he’d left folded on top of the dresser instead. He was still bruised from his fight with Franklin, the stain of color spread under his scars, but Cade could still pick out the marks he’d left. A hickey on his throat, still wet and fresh, would still be there tomorrow.
It was averysatisfying thought, and it felt… rooted. The idea made Cade squirm internally. He wasn’t here—assisting in a felony and making deals with felons—justbecause he had a crush on Marlow. If he needed to at any point, Cade could justify the majority of his involvement over the last month for mostly pragmatic reasons.
The next person on Franklin’s hit list—once he had Marlow out of the way—would be Cade and Cold Winds for the resources the company gave whoever was in charge. They would be loose ends, and Franklin had already shown a willingness to do whatever it took to tie those up.
Still, he could hear himself.
Majorityandmostly.
So he had feelings for Marlow? That was hardly a surprise. They were completely appropriate feelings for someone you were into but had known only a month, that was all. Nothing that would tie his wolf to a half-mile radius around Marlow, as if Marlow had just become the heart of the wolf’s territory. That would be stupid… and possibly one-sided.
So it was fine.
Cade scrubbed his hand roughly through his hair, damp at the roots and tangled, as he pulled his attention back to Piper’s voice on the phone. The accent had sharpened since the last time they’d spoken as Piper picked up the old habits of speech from them.
“…know me better than that,” Piper said. “You think I’d leave Franklin in charge without a leash on him? Even if I trusted him—which I wasn’t dumb enough to do—he’s not a predictable man. He’s not one to stick to a plan.”
Marlow snorted. He left the stolen shirt crumpled on the dresser and just grabbed the hoodie to shrug on over bare shoulders instead.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, his voice grim.
Cade raised an eyebrow at Marlow, but just got a shrug in response. Whatever was eating at Marlow, he wasn’t ready to share with the class just yet. That was fine. Cade had his own questions.
“How good can this information be?” he asked. “Franklin doesn’t seem to be too worried about what you have on him. He doesn’t seem to answer to you at all anymore.”
There was a pause.
“Yeah,” Piper said. “I can’t explain that. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to barter for it or not.”
“And in return…”
“Same as before; I want out,” Piper said.
“Can’t do that,” Cade said. He didn’t give Piper a chance to argue. “What I can do is get one of the best lawyers I know on your case. I can’t promise what the outcome will be, but it’ll be the best you can get.”
