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two
“For someone who just closed a case, you should be in a better mood.”
Sean gave his partner a weary look as he leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms over his head. His whole body was stiff. “That case was over before it started. I knew it was the ex-boyfriend from the second I took that woman’s statement. And I knew she was just as shady as he is.”
Sonia Castillo shrugged. “It’s always the ex. Be happy. You got it done.”
“Meh.” Sean reached for his duffel bag under his desk. “I’m going to hit the gym tomorrow. Sweat this whole week out.”
“Man, you have it bad. You just can’t resist the long chase, can you?” Castillo leaned against the door frame, coffee cup in hand, ankles crossed. “But you’re not supposed to actually want to take months or years to make a collar. The whole idea is to catch the bad guys.”
Sean shook his head. Sonia could be such a sap sometimes. She really believed in all this good and evil shit, when the truth was, the world was about a million shades of gray. “Didn’t you think it’d be different?” Sean cleared his desk of today’s mess: coffee cups, a paper plate, a clump of staples. He’d started making that a closing routine at the end of each shift. He’d read a book about starting your day with a made bed and ending it with cleaning up all the messes you’d made along the way. It was supposed to leave him with a sense of ownership and accomplishment. Instead, it just made him feel sorry for mothers everywhere.
“Thought what would be different?”
“When you were a kid and you wanted to be a cop. Didn’t you think that collaring ‘bad guys’ meant taking down the bandit in the mask who held up the innocent bank teller, not cuffing the scumbag boyfriend stealing dope from his ex-girlfriend’s apartment, after he gave her a good beating?” And when Sean had cuffed the scumbag boyfriend, the girlfriend had started crying and begged Sean not to arrest him because shestill loved him. “Didn’t you think that ‘protect and serve’ actually meantprotect and serve?”
Castillo nibbled on the green plastic stopper from her coffee cup for a second before lofting it into the trash. It hit a pile of papers and disappeared. “I wanted to be Jennifer Lopez when I was a kid.”
Sean flipped off the lights and edged Sonia out of the office. “You should’ve done that, Castillo. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Aw, Sean.” Sonia wrapped an arm around his waist and gave him a buddy hug. “Don’t sweat it. You’ll get a hard chase soon, I’m sure.”
Sean went home and got some shut-eye, then woke in time for the mid-morning class at the gym. He’d learned to live on four hours of sleep for years, but the one place he couldn’t avoid showing his hand if he was tired was Semper Fit. The truth was he wanted to see Red so he could schedule a massage, and odds were she’d be there. But he couldn’t just show up to see the gym owner’s girlfriend without Santos giving him a rash of shit, so he’d have to work out first.
He sat in his car until the last possible second, eyes closed, dozing in the wind that blew in through the open windows before he forced himself awake. His lungs were full of clover and honeysuckle and all the spring things. Semper Fit was packed, as usual. There was no downtime at this gym, its success due to a variety of factors like location and results, but mostly the no bullshit vibe. Those that wanted to flex and curl in front of mirrors were quickly weeded out and what was left was a community, staff and programming that would pick you apart, layer by excruciating layer, until your ego was curled in the fetal position in the corner, begging for mercy.
Sean eyed the whiteboard, where the workout had been written in elegant red letters—back squats, box jumps, handstand walks, toes-to-bars. Handstand walks? Ugh. Zoe, who was clapping her hands and calling everybody in for the preworkout prep, had obviously coached the earlier class, too.
“What the hell you doing here, Callahan?” Rhett Santos cuffed him on the shoulder as his deep voice boomed over Sean’s head.
“Not trying to read your chicken scratch, thank God,” Sean said. “You should let Zoe write the workout every day.”
“Why would that matter to you? You only come in once a month.”
“Some of us work for a living, Santos. Don’t have all day to mess around on the monkey bars.” Sean nodded at the rig, where some people were already doing a kipping warm-up.
“Alright!” Zoe raised her voice. Her diamond nose ring sparkled when her nostrils flared. “Everybody quiet while I go over the workout. That includes you, Santos.”
A chorus ofoooooohs went around the gym as everyone cast glances at the six-foot-five gym owner who took Zoe’s reprimand with a huge grin. Red, who came sprinting out of the office, laughed the loudest. Fit and bursting with energy, she was a far cry from the quietly withdrawn woman hiding under oversize clothes Sean had met over a year ago. Red gave Rhett’s ass a smack and he grabbed her around the neck in a fake choke hold, which turned into a hug.
“Hey, Sean,” Red whispered, her eyes going big when she spied him. “You need to come see me about a massage. It’s been a while.”
“It’s like you read my mind.” Sean was still laughing when he turned his head to face Zoe and the whiteboard. His gaze trailed past her, to the right-hand corner of the gym.
Humphrey, nestled in his dog bed a few feet away, caught Sean’s eye. Rhett’s old beagle was the official gym dog. A rescue who had barely escaped death about ten times over, Humphrey went just about everywhere with the Marine Corps vet. The old guy trotted at Rhett’s side without a leash, slept in the corner while everyone banged their weights around, even went with Santos to the grocery store, where the management allowed him in to shop despite not technically being a service dog. Usually, at the start of the workout, Humphrey was snoozing in his bed by himself. Today, a woman Sean had never seen before squatted next to him, petting his ears while she smiled softly. It was a Polaroid moment, because Humphrey usually only tolerated touch from Santos or Red. Everyone else just had to admire him with words.
The strange woman, this dog witcher, glanced up at that moment.
Her eyes caught, then held Sean’s. Big and bright, Sean could tell even from across the space that they were an unusual light brown, like butterscotch.
No. Not like butterscotch. Likescotchscotch. Specifically, like Highland Park Fifty Year. From Glasgow, a rich, fruity, complex scotch that Sean had been treated to by the grateful, wealthy father of a woman Sean had extracted from a bank robbery years ago. Sean didn’t have any trauma about that day, even though guns had been drawn and his life had been on the line, but he’d readily admit that even ten years later, that scotch haunted him. Sometimes, at night, he could still feel it on his tongue, rolling and warming like silk, tasting like strawberries, oranges, raisins and vanilla. The bite that dragged across the end of the swallow was like the caress of a banshee. Both soft and rough. A danger you craved.
The woman’s smile fell. She turned away. She stood up and ran a hand through her short, dark hair and squared her shoulders, which were bare in a plain gray tank top.
Sean had stared too long, losing himself in those whiskey eyes. And it was hard not to keep staring, at the little V of feathery hair at the nape of her neck or the smooth, cut muscles of her arms and shoulders. She was a sweet, hard, dark-haired pixie with the eyes of a desert cat, and Sean wanted to follow her back to whatever magical, secret, dark place she’d come from and curl his body around hers.
Shit. Jesus. WTF?
