Officers glanced up from their desks, some stopping in mid-stride of wherever they were headed, and laughed at Mason’s obvious predicament.
“Not again, Mason,” a victim advocate specialist giggled, clutching her clipboard to her chest like a shield.
“Mason, are you sure you have a degree, man? How’d you manage to turn in your college papers? Hand delivery, or did you fax in your assignments? Because I don’t even think you know where the power button is on your monitor,” Tomkin murmured when she stepped over Mason’s mouse, shaking her head. “And by monitor… I mean the computer screen.”
Mason rubbed his temples. He didn’t give a damn about the teasing. He had thick skin after being a beat cop for eight years. Besides, the people ribbing him were friends. It was just his computer was possessed. He was sure of it.
“Does anyone know a sixth grader who teaches computers for beginners? I gave Mason the pamphlet for Piedmont Learning Academy, but I think even that’s too advanced,” Officer Vasquez sneered as he walked by with two of his loyal cronies laughing behind him as if he were Rodney-fucking-Dangerfield.
Now Mason was getting pissed. There was teasing, and then there was being a downright dick. Vasquez was on everyone’s shit list, and Mason knew his days as a crooked police officer were numbered.
“Hey, you all right, my friend?” A smooth, lightly accented voice came from behind him. Mason recognized Lennox Freeman immediately, but he was reluctant to lift his head. The narcotics task force’s computer wizard was always coming to his defense, but they kind of did that for each other a lot. “You need some help?”
“Sorry, Free. I’m trying to submit a vacation request, but it keeps giving me a red X when I hit Send,” Mason said as quietly as he could, but Vasquez still overheard him and started a rambunctious round of laughter from more of his partners. “A vacation form!”
Free spun around with a pinched scowl in the center of his handsome face, causing a majority of the bullpen to fall silent. “Vasquez, I did not know about your degree in computational science.”
Vasquez frowned. “In what? That’s not what my degree is in—”
“Really? But you know the new department software so well that you can mock others.” Free tucked his tablet that never left his side under his arm. “I am curious to know what you thought of the IT department’s memo yesterday on their statistical analysis of workforce management systems for multi-shift companies and big data aggregation trifecta tools.”
Vasquez looked as if he was trying to figure out what language Free had just spoken in. “Analysis of what?”
Free’s dark eyes widened in mock outrage. “Did you say ‘of what’? But I just literally told you. Someone get this idiot a pamphlet.”
Vasquez’s face and neck turned a deep shade of red as everyone, including his own followers, turned the ridicule on him. Vasquez cursed and dismissed the other officers before he leveled Free with a scowl that promised retribution. Mason watched in surprise as Free stood taller and held up his tablet as if it was the equivalent of Thor’s hammer. Vasquez quickly averted his eyes and hurried toward the double doors that led to the elevators.
“Something really weird is going on between you two.” Mason squinted at Free. “First he was bullying you, now you got him cowering like a wet dog. What’d I miss?”
“Surely you haven’t missed his big-ass boyfriend that heads up the SWAT team, have you?” Clark snorted. “Captain Hart is a nice deterrent for Vasquez to leave Freeman alone.”
“Free can take care of himself,” Mason interjected, drawing a sweet smile from Free. He didn’t like to think of his friend as the timid, nervous guy he’d met last year that’d let a bully almost run him away from his new family. Free was a lot more confident now, and he’d more than proven that. Though he wasn’t a law enforcement officer, he was still an integral member of God and Day’s narcotics team. His ingenious inventions for first responders had already saved multiple lives in the short time he’d been there.
“That’s right. I do not need Ivan to fight my battles. Don’t you boys worry about that piece of shit, Vasquez. His day is coming.” Free tapped a few times on his tablet, which didn’t look like any Samsung product Mason had ever seen, then turned his attention on them with a shit-eating grin on his face. “I just turned his water off again at his house. I heard he has a thing about showering at the station. It supposedly grosses him out.”
“Holy shit.” Carter chuckled quietly. “That’s messed up, Free. I think you can control the goddamn world from that one device you carry all the time.”
“I can,” Free mumbled while ushering Mason out of his seat and taking over his computer. “Vasquez is my bitch now. I will keep playing with his ass until I get bored. Then, I am going to end him.”