By Tuesday, the box of supposedly bleach-enhanced Chapstick left on Ford’s desk in the squad room had been swapped with a new kind of supposed gift. There, on his stack of case files, was a brown paper bag with eyeholes cut out. Ford stared down at it. The fuckers had even done a half-assed job of drawing a pair of women’s open lips below the eyes, with an opening cut into the middle. Fury, hot and immediate, rushed up from his toes, and his gaze locked in on Gallo and Ruggiero, who were watching him.
“You two don’t know who happened to leave that, do you?” Ford didn’t bother to try to hide the anger burning in his gut as he grabbed the latest anonymous so-called gag gift from the stack of case files on his desk and crumpled it into a tight ball that he flung into his trash can.
Gallo just grinned his shit-eating grin and shook his head. “Nah, but it looks like someone hit a sore spot, huh, Johnnie?”
“Probably a PTSD reaction to his last assignment,” Ruggiero said, his voice thick with fake sincerity. “You’d think for that kind of hazard duty he would have at least brought back some useful information.”
“Sure,” Gallo said. “But you can’t be too hard on him. Hartigan probably barely made it out of there with his virtue intact.”
He knew what they were doing. The dipshit duo had gotten yanked into the captain’s office a few hours ago for a reaming loud enough that everyone in the squad could have written direct quotes. The pressure was building for results, and the organized crime task force had gotten almost nothing beyond the date of the heroin delivery. Without a time and location, that bit of news was worthless.
Ford had spent the last two days interviewing CIs, tracing down warehouse owners on the waterfront, and every other idea he could think of to actually use some detective skills to uncover the information they needed. Gallo and Ruggiero had been hitting the streets as well.
They’d all turned up shit.
So yeah, it’s possible the two detectives were just taking out their frustration on him any way they could. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t pissed off regardless.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, closing the distance between his desk and where Gallo sat on the corner of Ruggiero’s desk. “Did the captain chew you a new one for the task force’s lack of results? I mean, sure, you might wish that was because of one operation that didn’t pan out, but you’ve been in charge for months and working the Espositos for years.”
The entire squad room went silent. Even the precinct’s admin assistant stopped typing. Gallo got red enough in the face that Ford wondered if the portly detective was about to have a heart attack.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Hartigan.” He stood up and took what he probably thought was a threatening step forward. “Maybe if little pukes like you did their jobs right, we’d have something to nail those bastards on. Instead, we just got some weak-ass story about how the brown-bagger doesn’t know anything about what her brothers are up to.”
For as quiet as the squad room was before, it totally disappeared at that moment. “What did you just call Gina?”
“A brown-bagger.” Gallo puffed up his chest and put a swagger in his step as he took the last two steps before stopping just inside Ford’s personal bubble. “Why, would you prefer grenade?”
“You need to shut the fuck up, Gallo.” And he needed to mentally remind himself grown men did not lose their shit on their superiors at work. Besides, Ford wasn’t the hot-headed stereotypical kind of Irish. He liked rules and order. He was just about to turn and walk away when Gallo jabbed his finger into Ford’s chest.
“Why, what are you gonna do about it? I’m point on this task force, so you need to remember that, sit your ass down, and do what I tell you, unless you want to be stuck with Butterface duty again.”
Ford’s fist connected with Gallo’s nose before Ford had even realized he was taking a swing at the other man. Gallo stumbled back, but like the bull of a cop that he was, he kept his feet planted. He let loose a roar of fury and came right at Ford.
The older detective may have been putting perps behind bars since before Ford even dreamed about the academy, but the donuts and the laziness had done their job. Ford easily sidestepped Gallo, spun on the ball of his foot, and followed up with a right hook that landed on the sweet spot of the older cop’s jaw, leaving him wobbly on his size ten rubber-soled shoes.
Gallo raised his right fist, but Ruggiero grabbed his partner before he could throw a punch. No one grabbed Ford. There wasn’t a need. The sight of Gallo with the look of murder on his face as his partner held him back was enough to bring him back reality. He’d lost it and slugged a superior officer—definitely a violation of a dozen regulations. Ford never lost it. But this time he had, and in doing so he’d tried to knock his direct supervisor’s head off.
And surprisingly, he didn’t regret a single action.
“Ford. Gallo.” The captain’s yell cut through the chaos of the moment. “My office right the fuck now.”
Chapter Twelve
Ford accepted the beer Frankie handed him as he paced the length of his brother’s deck. Anger and adrenaline were still pumping through his veins, making his steps jerky as he moved from one end to the other while Frankie watched, an amused look on his face.
“Damn. Mr. By the Book got suspended.” Frankie took his phone out and started thumb typing. “I’m gonna have to put this information in our family group chat.”
Annoyance eating away at his stomach lining, Ford whirled around and shot his brother a glare. “That’s what you’re taking away from this, that I’m suspended with pay for the next week? Not that the moron who was leaving all of that shit on my desk and being a disrespectful asshole only got a three-day suspension?”
“No, I got that part,” his brother said as he sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs that Frankie had been forced to paint lime green with yellow polka dots after losing a bet with Finian. “And I also got the part about how you’ve got it bad for this chick.”
“Did you inhale too much smoke at the last fire you responded to? Because your thinking is messed up.” Got it bad. That was fucking ridiculous. Gina was funny, smart, and yeah, being around her pretty much turned him into a horny teenager, but that didn’t mean he wanted any more than the one-night-only sex—which had been pretty damn phenomenal—that they’d both enjoyed. “I don’t have it bad for her.”
“Uh huh.” Frankie started typing again. “Sure you don’t.”
Ford’s phone buzzed, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to look at it. He had the jackass texting right in front of him, grinning at him like he was some TV shrink about to solve all of Ford’s problems.
Pissy? Me? Not at all since I walked out of Gina’s house at the crack of dawn, thank you very much.
“What does that mean?” Ford asked, taking a seat in the other obnoxiously painted deck chair and taking a long drink from his beer.
“Well, Mr. Detective, using the information you provided as well as my own keen observational skills, I noticed that you couldn’t stop looking at your”—he made air quotes—“‘just friend’ as she gave you the hey-good-lookin’ eyes during family lunch. Then, you defended her honor to the point that you broke police rule nine hundred and forty-six and tried to clean the clock of a guy who happens to outrank you. So, by putting on my Sherlock hat, I was able to deduce that you have a major hard-on for one Gina Luca.” Frankie’s phone buzzed in his hand, and he glanced down. “Felicia agrees, and since she’s the only one of us in a committed relationship, I’m gonna declare that means I’m one hundred percent correct.”
Ford glared out at the pristine backyard. “You’re an idiot.”
“Not when it comes to women.”
Okay, Frankie may have made the rounds a few dozen times among Waterbury’s single women, but that didn’t make him a relationship sage. “If that’s the case, then why is Felicia the only one of us in a committed relationship?”