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“No problem, Detective.” The teenage babysitter trudges through his apartment and flops onto the couch, freeing my partner up so he can leave his four-year-old at home and get back to work.
“How is this the same case? We haven’t even arrived to I.D. the body yet.”
“No, but uniforms on scene have identified him as another cop, considering the badge he kept in his pocket.” He steps through his door and pulls it shut with a quiet snick, locking two girls inside his apartment for safekeeping. “I’m going out on a limb here and making an assumption. Don’t suppose you’d like to join me?”
“For fuck’s sake.” I scrub my face in frustration, awake now, and grudgingly aware I’ll be in the pre-dawn cold annoyingly soon. “Fine. Grab a cruiser and swing by to pick me up? I’ll be out front in ten minutes.”
“Bring coffee,” he bargains. “You got those to-go coffee cups in your kitchen now. Hook me up.”
“Yep.”
Ten minutes later, almost to the second, I leave my wife, warm and sated in our—allegedly—bacteria infested bed and stalk through the heavy glass door that separates our apartment from the street. If I worried I’d be standing in the cold for long, waiting for my partner, he proves me wrong instantly, pulling up at the curb and lifting his chin as I juggle two cups in one hand and yank the door open.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” He snags his coffee with no concern for the risk he might send the other sprawling into my lap, and tips it up at his lips, hissing when it burns on the way down. And yet, he doesn’t stop. “Shit,” he groans. “First coffee of the day always tastes the best.”
“Not if you scald all your tastebuds off.” I reach back for my seat belt, dragging it across my chest and down to click into the catch. “Why didn’t dispatch call me?”
He pulls away from the curb, driving one handed as he wraps his other around his warm beverage. “They called me first. I told them I’d call you. Sleep alright?”
“Six hours.” I bring my coffee up and take a cautious sip. “Give or take.”
He glances across, smirking at the qualifier in my answer. “In bed for six. But not sleeping for six.” He looks back at the road and turns a corner. He doesn’t bring us across the city hot—sirens and lights are so unnecessary at four in the morning—but he drives fast, navigating sharp corners smoothly and crossing city blocks without slowing us down. “You’re a lucky motherfucker, ya know that?”
“Yep.” I take another sip. “I know.”
“You married up, and I’m not ashamed to admit you hit the jackpot and leave me jealous every damn night I go to bed alone.”
“You can’t sleep with my wife.” Teasing, my lips curl behind the cup. “I won’t let you. And even if I had a stroke and lost my fucking mind, Minka isn’t one to be passed around. She’d stab you before you touched her.”
He chuckles, narrowing his eyes when an ambulance zooms past us and heads in the opposite direction. “Christmas is coming up soon,” he murmurs. “Maybe Santa will help me out.”
“You can’t ask Santa for my wife, either. She’s mine.”
“No. But maybe I can ask him to make me less of a screwup.” He checks his watch, a quick twist of his wrist, before he glances back to the road. “Not pissing people off could be a good start to a new year, ya know? Once that’s taken care of, maybe then I can expect someone warm and decent in my bed.”
“I thought you were uninterested in the commitment side of female companionship. You were pretty content with fucking a new chick most nights.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t happen anymore.” He lifts his shoulders and slows as we approach our crime scene. Already, the place is lit up like the Rockefeller Center at night, police lights swirling in the air to paint the surrounding buildings red and blue. “I don’t go to the bar to pick women up anymore, since I always have Moo with me. And I can’t take random chicks back to my apartment because… same. Moo.”
“Which makes you a newly reformed and totally respectable member of society… Finally.”
He scoffs, bringing us around a tight corner and careful not to scrape a blue and white cruiser blocking most of the turn. “I don’t have the time or ability to date anymore. And I don’t want another twenty-minute fuck where I send her on her way before the sheets even cool.”
“You’re in your feelings about Fifi.” I cut to the chase and earn a scowl from my partner when he stops as close to the barricades as he can manage. “She’s mad at you. Minka was mad at you. Mia’s asking to see Fifi because she misses her. And your ex-wife is still kinda M.I.A. after her, ‘I’m gonna be decent now, Fletchy-Baby. I promise.’”
He firms his lips, unimpressed with my version of the woman he once swore his life to.
“Things are really hard right now. Your daughter is young, so you have no room to sneak out to get your fix. And the situation with Fifi is currently in flux.” I clap his shoulder when he unsnaps his belt and reaches for the door handle to get out. Then I turn to the back seat and snag a vest, dragging it forward and slapping it to his chest. “Seems kinda superfluous, I know. But it’d make me feel better if you wore this.”
He rolls his eyes and accepts the eight-pound protection. But then he pins me with a glare. “You too. This isn’t gonna be one of those Mercer/Wright things where I’m left here to mourn your loss, dickhead. You’ve gotta live, because hitting on your wife after you die is less funny and more disrespectful.”
I shake my head and reach for a second vest. “Pretty sure it’s already disrespectful. At least where I come from.”
“But you’re not there anymore.” He shoves his door open and sets hiscoffee on the roof, then he uses the door as a shield and fusses with his shoulder holsters so he can shrug into his vest. “You all set for New York tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” I climb out on my side and match my partner’s actions, shrugging into the heavy material we both hate. And honestly, considering the tungsten tips this motherfucker possesses, it almost seems like a waste of our timeanda hindrance to our flexibility. But this is what we do. To be cautious and make it home to our families at the end of a long day. “Cato sorted accommodation last night before I got home. I’ll call Felix today and organize our ride.”
