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“Files are confidential, Fenway,” I snapped, not bothering to temper my mood. “Or would you like other people walking in here, and reading this?” I asked, slapping his new file on the counter. We didn’t keep physical files after a case was closed. They were all transferred onto zip drives, and kept somewhere that only the people in the office knew the location of. And could only be accessed with the fingerprints and voice scans of three of us saying a certain combination of words.
When it came to confidentiality, we were about as fanatical as the CIA who didn’t want their dirty deeds getting out there for public consumption.
His smile was slow, arrogant, boyishly charming if you were a woman noticing it. I guess that was why a woman from such a prominent – and notoriously violent – family could be stupid enough to run away with him. “Quin, old buddy, long time no see.”
“Not nearly long enough,” I shot back, feeling no need to stroke his ego since it didn’t need it, and I was the best around, so no matter how much attitude I gave him, he would take it.
“Oh, you know you’ve missed me,” he announced, sitting down on Jules’s chair, kicking his expensive light brown leather loafers up on her desk, his hands going behind his neck. “I liven up the joint.”
I was up for a night – and if I knew Fenway, a long overnight – of pulling teeth, trying to keep him focused, demanding he follow directions I knew he would thumb his nose at. All the while he treated it like a game. Even though the Korol family was most certainly not a game, and this was the worst trouble by far that I had needed to fix for him.
And to do it, I was going to have to pull Smith, Lincoln, Miller, and Kai off of Aven’s case, as pressing as that one still was until we found the fuckhead’s identity and home base. But Miller would need to negotiate with whoever owned the yacht; Lincoln and Kai would need to deliver whatever message was going to be made to the Korols. Smith, well, he would be keeping an eye on Kai and Lincoln from afar.
I would also need to be clocking hours on Fenway’s case. That left… who? Finn, who didn’t do casework. Ranger, who was too far away to do any good. Really, it just left Gunner, who would give me a world a shit about it. This wasn’t his kind of case, even if he had the skills to handle it.
That left the case way too under-staffed.
My stomach twisted as I led Fenway down the hall, knocking on Gunner’s door as I did so.
Fenway made his way into my office, rifling through his own file as Gunner moved out into the hall to talk to me.
All of my men were badasses. Each and every one had skills that gave them extreme value. And every one of them was lethal.
But Gunner, Gunner was the only one who truly looked the part.
He was six-three, solid, covered in ink that he was currently showing off with a white tee with a sleeveless gray and black plaid shirt left open in the front. His dark blond hair was slicked back, and his beard, while carefully groomed, made chicks from here to the fucking moon go crazy.
He also looked perpetually mildly pissed off.
Even as he approached me, his arms were crossed, his brows lowered. “I’m not dealing with that fuck.”
If only we could all draw those lines.
“Figured as much. That’s why everyone else is on Fenway. But since they are, I need you on Aven’s case.”
“Aven?” he repeated, shoulders easing slightly. “The stalker case that became a full clean-up?”
“Yeah. That one. We can’t figure out who he is. We need to–”
“Figure out where he lives so we can clean that.”
“Exactly. This needs to happen, Gunner. I know it’s not your usual kind of case. But I need someone on this before it blows up in our faces.”
“Got it. I’ll head over there, see if I can find some traces in the woods that Finn would have overlooked.”
That was, after all, part of his specialty.
“Appreciate it,” I said, meaning it more than he could have known.
“Hey,” Fenway said, coming out into the hall holding some desk pendulum thing Jules had gotten me that I thought was silly, until one day, I caved and used it, and found it oddly relaxing. “I’ll give you a thousand for this.”
I went to reach for it, but he snatched it away. “It’s a hundred bucks in any office supply store.”
“I don’t want one of those. I want this one.”
I took a steadying breath, so not in the mood for his childish shit. Gunner shot me a smirk, one that said he was infinitely glad that this was on me and not him. Even if that meant trudging through the woods all night to avoid it.
