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Kuzo gave it a few seconds before his smooth voice came through the car speakers. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, not good enough. Try again.”
“I truly don’t know, Ez. It’s like he’s got a rat up his craw all of a sudden. I tell him to do one thing, and he wants to end the world over it.“
“What happened with the Mayor’s daughter’s case?”
I heard an audible sigh. “That was a whole ass mess. I had a few things to take care of at the office, so I sent Lance to go get them with the team. I thought I made it pretty clear that he was supposed to bring the kids here first so I could take a good look at them before sending them to the Feds. But he didn’t. Said he took a look at them himself and decided they weren’t a threat. They were just messing around. I told him it wasn’t protocol, and he lost his shit at me, telling me that I wasn’t the boss of him. As if we were five. As if I’d ever say such a thing.”
I sighed because the whole thing made no damn sense. Kuzo and Lance had worked together for years, and while they weren’t exactly best friends, they’d never had this type of issue before.
Was this a power struggle?
There was no formal hierarchy at the agency. I just let people handle what they were good at. Interrogation and danger assessment was Kuzo’s strength. Lance was better at hostage extraction. So why was he going against the policy now? Was he offended by something Kuzo said or the fact that he had to defer to Kuzo on something?
“And the fight?” I pressed. “First of all, why didn’t you tell me about it?”
Kuzo sighed again. “I didn’t say anything because it all sounded so stupid. It started with me telling Lance that we were going to do some intel sweeping at the building over on the 5th. He said he didn’t want to. Just like that. Told me that he had shit to deal with. Fine. Honky dory. I told him if he wasn’t going to go with me, he was at least going to have to scrub through the surveillance videos because we needed to get started on the Monroe case. Then he goes, ‘I told you I got shit to do…blah blah blah,’ and flies off the handle. I tell him that he’s making a scene, and if he doesn’t calm down, I’m going to have to do something. And just like that, he charges at me, swinging. I fought back because I’m not a pussy, and then that was it. He stormed out and hasn’t been to work since.”
“Have you gone by his house?”
“Yup. He’s there, but he doesn’t want to speak to me or anyone. Sulking like a fucking child.”
Lance wasn’t known for his emotional maturity, but this was extreme. It looks like I would have to step in.
“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “You keep working on the Monroe case. And get Toni on it to replace Lance.”
“Will do, boss,” he said and hung up. I spent most of the next day fixing up my garden and sweating it out. In between that, I was also thinking about the Max issue. Maybe I was approaching it wrong. Maybe instead of asking about Max, I should include his family in the descriptions so people might be more likely to remember them as a set, in case they moved out of town. I’d seen a picture of his wife on his cell phone. She was blonde and pretty, average height but with no distinctive features.
His daughter would be more difficult since I hadn’t seen so much as a photo of her. But from how Max described her, she had his coloring—dark hair and dark eyes. Her name was Matilda or something like that. There were other traits he mentioned, like how her smile reminded him of daisies or whatever, but I didn’t think that was particularly helpful.
And when I got tired of thinking about that, my thoughts shifted to my neighbor. The touch and the challenging look in her eyes as she stepped up to me sparked something inside me.
As annoying as she was, it was also hot as fuck.
And it had been a long time since I was so physically attracted to a woman.
So much so that when I stepped in the shower, I had no thought of what I was going to do. But as my hand wrapped around my dick and I jacked off, it was her face that appeared in my head.
“Damn it,” I snarled. I didn’t want to be thinking about her, her flashing blue eyes, or her lean legs in cutoff jeans, but that was what I was thinking about anyway. As I pumped, pleasure ratcheted up my spine and tautened my body, but the physical sensations weren’t enough. I had to imagine her, imagine that it was her hands around my cock to drive me closer to the edge.
It doesn’t matter who you think of,I told myself.This is just for the release.
But I also imagined those stubborn lips, kissing them. I imagined taking her on my bed and fucking all that challenge right out of her. Maybe fucking some sense into her and making her cry out in pleasure until she collapsed, spent in my arms. And then she would stay there for the rest of the night.
Precum began to dribble out of my dick, and I clenched my hand against the tiles, feeling it coming.
I threw my head back and groaned to the ceiling as I came.
I didn’t think about the fact that the groan sounded suspiciously like her name.
SEVEN
TILLIE
It’s a shame a girl like you is so determined to waste her life.
I was still fuming over the words the next day.A girl like me.What the hell did that even mean? Was it a compliment or an insult? It had to be the latter because of the tone with which he said it and the way his gray eyes scanned me as if they knew me when he had no fucking clue who I was. He didn’t know what I’d been through or what was going on in my head. He couldn’t see past the impression he already had of me, what people thought of me.
