36

Salem, Massachusetts

Clancy was the first person Agent Stone had spotted when he’d entered the Hawthorne Hotel lobby from the rear moments earlier. His partner had been sitting on a couch in the center of the spacious room, pretending to read a magazine. The second person Stone saw was Salem Wiley, frozen in terror as the eerie woman in a black blazer turned from the front desk and walked toward her, predator written on every inch of the woman’s creepy skin. Stone had seen death row gangbangers with less hate in them.

Clancy had witnessed the same thing Stone had, but Clancy didn’t appear alarmed. Rather, he looked like a man who’d ordered the steak and been brought chicken instead and was willing to make the best of it.

Stone had discovered early in their pairing that Clancy was clandestine, his backstop deeper than Stone could dig, which is why Stone didn’t always share ops with him. He assumed Clancy returned the favor. It was unusual for Clancy to sit by on something so aggressively public, however. Clancy had been letting the woman in a black blazer advance on Wiley, and she would have gotten her if not for Stone’s intervention. The woman had since disappeared like a ghoul.

As Stone watched Wiley and Odegaard scurry out of the hotel, he wondered if Clancy had gone hard. Stone let Clancy grab him.

“What in the hell are you doing here?” Clancy’s face was red. He clutched Stone’s lapel, twisting it, his free hand fisted at his side as if itching to throw a punch.

Stone’s brows drew in and his jaw tightened. It’s not what he’d driven here expecting, but maybe it was time to work this shit out. Rather than remove his partner’s hand, he gave Clancy thirty seconds to consider how badly he didn’t want to throw down with younger, taller Stone.

It took a minute.

Clancy unclenched Stone’s lapel and swore, stalking toward the parking lot entrance. “You should have notified me of your location,” he muttered over his shoulder.

Stone followed, pissed by Clancy’s rage. “We agreed to meet here, remember?”

Clancy grunted and walked away.

Stone followed him outside. Clancy strode straight toward an illegally parked sedan.

Stone walked to the driver’s side door, blocking Clancy. “Keys?” It was a low blow, but Clancy should be grateful Stone was working his anger out with words. That’s not how he’d learned to play growing up in Detroit.

“How’d you get to the hotel?” Clancy snarled.

“Cab.”

Clancy slapped the roof of his rental and tossed Stone the keys before sliding into the passenger seat, avoiding eye contact. “We’re tailing the girls, right?”

“Best plan.” Stone slid in and started the car. He didn’t know how all the murder victims were connected, or how that extended to Wiley and Odegaard, but he intended to save their lives. That’s why he’d slipped the tracker in Wiley’s pocket back in the lobby.

He could still smell Salem from where their clothes had touched—something spicy and clean like cinnamon, and under that, a raw animal fear. For a moment, he wondered how long Clancy had been hiding in the lobby. He ultimately dismissed the thought. Worrying about another man’s motives was a sure way to drive yourself crazy in this business.

All you could complete was your own mission.