Girlfriend? Fiancée. Significant other?
Way too complicated to consider.
“I have another double homicide, and since you’ve already caught a couple, I figure you’d enjoy continuity.”
“Sure.” Sliding my pile of resumes back into the folder Raquel provided them in, I drop the entire file in my top drawer and snag my cell. The battery is almost dead, but the notifications continue to pile up. “Where? Is this your formal request?”
“I’m calling, ain’t I? It’s formal.”
“You also risk disciplinary action from your lieutenant. If he listens to this recording, you may end up in court for a pattern of sexual harassment.”
Unbothered, Detective Fox actually snickers. “Don’t take life so seriously, Doc. It’s friendly banter and nothing more.”
Gritting my teeth, I hold the phone to my ear, but I push up to stand and circle my desk. “If I, the recipient of said banter, feel this is better labeled as sexual harassment, Detective, then it is no longer friendly banter. It’s sexual harassment. Would you like to request a different medical examiner while you can, which may mean avoiding all future lawsuits? Or do you consider yourself capable of controlling your unprofessional urges? The call is yours.”
Again, I can’t see him, but I know he rolls his eyes. “I’ll control myself, but I want it on record you’re no fun. I’m on the corner of Bayview and Fifth. Follow the train tracks and you’ll find—”
“I’ll plug it into the GPS,” I cut him off. “I’ll be there in twenty. Don’t touch my crime scene till I arrive.”
“Mycrime scene,” he teases. “But I’ll share.”
FELIX
It’s not breaking and entering when you have a set of keys.
It’s merely… visiting a pal.
Letting myself through the front door of Tim’s Bar, and into the dark room, despite the clock on the wall indicating it’s damn near lunchtime, I hold my beloved Glock 19 in my left hand, and my favorite switch blade passed down by my sweet father in the right.
I close the door again with ungloved hands—no one gives a fuck about fingerprints once you become me—and turning in the shadows, I head through the room and around the bar that once belonged to a prosperous mafia family.
I mean, they’re still kinda prosperous, I suppose. There are just more limbs on the family tree now, and different locations to work out of.
It’s called expansion.
The owner of the bar is upstairs asleep right now. Dozing after a nice cocktail of sleeping pills, a few shots of scotch, and the peace a man knows only after spending the night ass-fucking a beautiful woman.
My knowledge of his whereabouts remains solid, but that doesn’t stop me from slowing at the sound of papers rustling a little deeper inside the building.
I silently step through the kitchen, and heading in the direction of Malone’s ‘office,’ I spin the knife in my hands. The patterned handle. The jutting adornments.
The history it comes with.
Tim’s office is nothing more than what was once an old safe. Reinforced walls, triple barrel locks, passcode accessible. Not like the retina scan technology available to us these days.
It’s old—used by old man Timothy Malone back in the day, when he needed extra storage for cash, and keeping it at the bank wasn’t the best idea for record-keeping—but it’s soundproof, fireproof, flood proof, airtight, and if a person happens to be locked in and left for more than a couple of hours, they don’t stand a chance of walking back out again.
Perfect.
Stepping into the hall, I continue to spin my knife. I like my gun, I enjoy using it to blow a man’s brains into the lap of the person sitting beside him. But Ilovemy blade, which means it remains in my dominant hand and is my go-to when confronted.
A habit my father warns me about. But a habit he’s yet to break.
“Anne?”
The shuffling paper stops. Breathing stops. “Felix?” she whispers back. “Is that you?”
Placated, I step to the threshold of the safe and study the beautiful woman Tim has been taking to bed for the better part of a month. She’s every man’s wet dream: long legs, big tits, cock-sucking lips, and the best part, for me, is that she’s happy to fuck one man to make another happy.