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FISH WEIGHED HIS OPTIONS. If Dalton had called Manny and Adam into a briefing with Lexi, he was preparing for an op.
“Tell me, Lexi,” he said. “Why did you come to Blackthorne, and not the DEA?”
Her lips twitched in her you didn’t really ask me that, did you? smile. “Because I wanted something done about the little picture. Namely, me. The DEA is spread too thin. If nobody’s connected Gunther to the Falcon yet, I could be old and gray before they take action, much less bring him down. Assuming I live long enough to get old and gray.”
“You? You’ll live to be old for sure, but gray? Not going to happen,” he said.
She reached for her hair. “Do I need a touchup?”
Glad she was joking, Fish started to ask another question, but Lexi cut him off. “Why do you keep sidestepping my questions and taking over the interrogation? What do you do for Blackthorne?”
He sucked in a breath, blew it out. “I work on their covert side. I’m one of the guys who goes in and saves people while the officials are dicking around trying to figure out what they should be doing, which includes a lot of jurisdictional posturing, finger pointing, buck passing, and humongous balls of red tape.”
He waited for her reaction. Lexi had always played by the rules, protesting when he wanted to bypass them to get the job done. Sure, she’d bend them now and then, and on their Vice cases, a lot of the rules went out the window. But—Fish thought it was because her husband had been an attorney—she wanted everything done properly so they could actually put away the bad guys, not catch them only to see them released on technicalities.
“You like your work,” she said. “It shows. It sounds more like SWAT, and I never heard you express any desire to join that team.”
“Closer to SWAT than Vice, for sure. At Blackthorne, it’s more like I’m strictly SWAT. On the force, except for the commanders, everyone had their regular police duties. Not to be mercenary or anything, but the extra duty pay was the same for SWAT as it was for the guys doing honor guard at funerals. Getting a critical call out after putting in a full shift didn’t appeal. Mostly, I was sick of the revolving door. Catch them, put them in jail, watch them get out and go back to what they were doing before.”
“Burnout.”
“You might call it that. With Blackthorne, I can do more good.”
He caught Lexi’s gaze taking in his apartment again. “If you’re wondering, I see no reason to put my bigger paychecks into making this a spread for Architectural Digest. I have a place to sleep, to work, and I don’t need more than that.”
“No lady friends to impress with your accommodations, then?”
He shook off the memory of the one time he’d come this close to kissing Lexi. The Pineda case. A tweaker had grabbed a kid—a girl, not yet in her teens. The mother, another tweaker, was willing to let him do whatever he wanted in exchange for her next fix. The takedown was ugly. The adrenaline rush was off the scale, and after it was over, the two tweakers in custody, the kid in the hands of a loving grandmother, he and Lexi had stared at each other. The kind of stare that would have signaled Major Kiss Ahead in one of Nana’s Hallmark movies.
They’d come to their senses in time, and the kiss ended up being shoulder claps.
“I don’t need fancy furnishings to impress anyone. It’s me, take it or leave it,” he said.
The smile she gave him sent him back to that almost-a-Hallmark moment.
Not the time.
“Dammit, Marv, I’ve missed you.”
The aroma of coffee reminded him that he’d brewed a pot, and before he did or said something inappropriate, he went into the kitchen, regrouped, and filled his mug.
More in control, he went back to the living room. Lexi hadn’t moved. She stared into space, as if lost in thought. Was she remembering that almost crossed the line moment, too?
Don’t kid yourself. She’s probably wondering what’s going to happen with Blackthorne.
He sat on the couch, sipped his coffee, then set the mug on the end table. “I have one more question—of the catching up variety.”
She lowered the footrest on the recliner and sat up straight. “Ask away.”
“After your husband died—”
She frowned. “Was killed. Murdered. Don’t try to sugarcoat it.”
He nodded. “You took time off, then instead of returning to the Indianapolis force, you moved to Burnside, Oregon, took a job with their PD. I assumed you were looking for something less stressful. Fewer major crimes. What made you choose Burnside?”
“Honestly, I had considered looking for another line of work. Somewhere to put my Creative Writing minor to use, which is frowned upon for writing police reports. Then I got a letter from the Chief of Police in Burnside saying they were hiring and looking for someone with my qualifications.”
“Out of the blue? You hadn’t made any inquiries?”
“Not to Burnside. After Brian was killed, I couldn’t stand being alone in that big house. Thinking of moving got me wondering if I wanted to relocate completely. Someplace totally new, where I wouldn’t keep running into reminders of my life with Brian. The whole first day of the rest of your life cliché. I hadn’t written off cop work, so I’d sent out a few feelers, asked a few friends. I assumed—don’t say what that means—Chief Kurcz had heard of me and I figured it couldn’t hurt to follow up. I suppose I was flattered he’d approached me.” She tilted her head. “Where are you going with this?”
Fish explained what Adam had said.
Lexi’s jaw dropped. Her green eyes popped wide, then narrowed to slits. She stood. “You can’t—you mean—I—”
She yanked at her hair and paced to the kitchen and back. Twice. “Could I have been that blind? That stupid?”
***
LEXI FLOPPED ONTO THE couch next to Marv, dropped her head into her hands. “Dammit, dammit, dammit. You were the one always saying how we shouldn’t trust coincidences, and here I fell into the Falcon’s trap and never saw the connection.”
Unable to sit, she jumped up and paced again. Why didn’t Marv have a bigger place? He sat there, waiting patiently on the couch. The way he always did. Let her work things out of her system. But this thing wasn’t going to leave as easily. On the job, it was usually about other people. Suspects, victims. This was about her.
She sat. Marv rested a hand on her knee. He was here for her. Always had been.
“It didn’t cross my mind, either, if that makes a difference,” he said. “I don’t know how long it would have taken to put the pieces together if Adam hadn’t mentioned it. He’s always looking at the big picture.”
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We wait to hear from Dalton. Nothing’s changed. There’s no proof the Falcon lured you to Burnside.”
“You don’t think there’s another explanation, do you? That my name happened to hit Chief’s radar? Hell, I’ll bet they didn’t have openings. I’ll bet one of John Gunther’s charitable donations to the force covered adding a new patrol officer. That would mean Gunther has the chief in his pocket, which means the whole department is suspect. That stink is going to rub off on every single member of the force.”
“All supposition,” Marv said. “Emi and the Intel geeks at Blackthorne are probably digging this up as we speak.”
“So, we’re waiting. Sitting here doing nothing while I feel like an idiot. I’ll bet the Falcon knows exactly where I am.”
She went to the door and made sure it was locked. “Don’t you have a surveillance system here? An early warning system? I don’t remember you needing a key to get in the door. Or a passcode.”
“Or when you have to be buzzed in?” he said.
She nodded. “Yes. You know, security.”
“Ah, security. The kind where any half-brained creep knows enough to ring apartments until someone opens the entrance door.”
She ducked her head to hide the blush she felt rising to her cheeks.
“Nobody’s going to get in here. If it’ll make you feel better, the main entrance does have a camera. I can access it, if you’d like.”
“What are the odds that one of the Falcon’s henchmen would use the front door? Slim to none. You’re right. Sometimes you have to trust everyone to do what they should. Which brings me full circle. What should we do while we wait?”
“Lunch?” Marv smiled. “Food was Nana’s ultimate cure-all.”
Lexi couldn’t help but laugh. “You don’t think you can get her to deliver, do you? How is she, by the way?”
It hit her like she’d been slapped by a baton. Oh, God, he’d said was. Had his nana died? She took his hand.
He smiled again, a warm, loving expression. “She’s eighty-six—no, eighty-seven. Gramps died a few years ago. She’s in an assisted living facility, but is as sharp as ever. She gets mad because the other ladies accuse her of dying her hair. She’s the opposite of Adam. Hardly a gray strand. There’s no kitchen in her living quarters, so no cooking. That’s another thing she complains about. But as long as she has something to complain about, she’s happy.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I wish I’d met her.”
“Don’t write it off yet. We might find a reason to go to Florida some day.” He stood. “Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can rustle up to eat.”
The room seemed to grow cold without him, so she went into the kitchen. “Can I help?”
“Defrosting and heating. Since I’m in and out so much, most of my food is frozen. Or canned. Takeout is my sous chef.”
She stopped short. “You know what a sous chef is?”
“No, but I heard the term on a cooking show once when I was channel surfing. Am I close?”
“Close enough.” She flashed back to the hours she’d spent in an unmarked with Marv, how he’d keep things light, but was always focused on the job. He sensed when she was itchy, knew how to keep her calm while they waited out a boring surveillance. She hoped she’d done the same for him.
“I’m happy to be your sous chef today,” she said. “Tell me what to do.”
His brows lifted. “Oh, I get to boss you around? You’ll do what I say?”
Her face grew hot. “In the kitchen. In the kitchen.”
“Works for me.”
A short while later, they sat at the dining table eating bowls of defrosted and reheated chicken soup. Homemade, not canned.
“Nana’s recipe, but it’s never the same as hers,” he said as they ate. “This, and her roast chicken is my entire cooking from scratch repertoire.”
They ate in companionable silence. She almost—almost—forgot the Falcon while they finished their soup.
Marv’s cell phone rang, and he put down his spoon to check the display. “Dalton,” he said to her, and swiped the screen. “Frisch.”
After several interminable moments of trying to figure out what Dalton was saying by watching Marv’s expression, she took her dishes to the sink and washed them.
Still with the phone to his ear, he brought his bowl and spoon over, dumping the last remnants of his soup. “I’m with her.” A long pause. “On it.”