Mistake number one: the Yes, ma’am that came right after he opened the door and made eye contact with Eve Webber. The connection hit him like a blow to the sternum, dropping him twelve years in the past to boot camp, where ma’am and sir became spinal reflexes. While a bartender in need of a job might use ma’am out of respect, his tone would have been gentler, less authoritative.
Mistake number two: getting scratch on the way onto the street. Ideal employees didn’t drive like a sixteen-year-old trying to impress a girl in the school parking lot. But the adrenaline contracted the muscles in his calf, and the next thing he knew the rear tires were spinning. Once again, instinct took over and he automatically corrected for the swerve. In an effort to slow his pulse he exhaled slow and deep, relaxed his grip on the wheel, and, most important, lifted the gas pedal from the Jeep’s floor.
For Detective Matt Dorchester, one of the most treacherous parts of undercover work for the Lancaster Police Department was discovering exactly how deeply military and paramilitary organizations were carved into his bones. Twenty minutes into his newest role and he’d already made two dangerous mistakes, two more than he’d made in either of his previous, months-long undercover assignments.
Most men know how to steer out of a skid. It’s not a tell for months of training in handling a Crown Vic with the Interceptor package. Most important, you’re not clinging to your honor with your fingertips.
The sun hung low in the sky, the mid-afternoon heat index just over a hundred degrees. The humidity-saturated air lay thick and damp against his skin as he scrupulously obeyed the speed limit all the way from Eye Candy to the Eastern precinct. Storefronts’ glass windows and chrome bumpers reflected the sun’s glare as heat and shimmer, much like the thick layers of Eve Webber’s black hair fell in her face as she talked, glinting against her jaw, her cheekbone. Intellectually he knew it would be cool to the touch, but that didn’t stop his hand from tingling with the desire to slide through the strands.
Get a grip, Dorchester. That wasn’t a job interview, let alone a date. You’re a cop. She’s an informant in danger.
At the stoplight before the turn into the Eastern precinct he flexed his hand to short-circuit the sensation in his fingers, felt the scabs covering his knuckles tug at the healing skin. He’d stop tonight, get another bottle of ibuprofen for his brother, and pick up a tube of antibacterial ointment while he was at it. Battered knuckles wouldn’t go over well in a bar like Eye Candy. Once inside the building, he sidestepped Connor McCormick bringing in a handcuffed, viciously swearing man.
“Busy night?” Matt asked, taking in his arrest’s prison-honed muscles and ink. Conn was a couple of inches shorter than Matt but built like a tank. Matt knew him as a solid cop, never last to a scene, always pushing the edge to get the job done.
“Never a dull moment,” Conn said, grinning.
“What’d he do?” Matt asked, nodding at Conn’s detainee.
“Breaking and entering, assault, resisting arrest,” Conn said. “For starters. Pattern matches a string of similar incidents.”
“You got nothing, motherfucker,” the guy snarled.
“What I’ve got is DNA from when you spit on me,” Conn said, almost cheerful as the guy tried to wrench free. “Where do you think you’re going? You’re handcuffed and in the middle of a police station,” he said, tightening his grip on the pressure point in the guy’s elbow. “This dance is just getting started.”
The guy snarled out a string of profanity describing his night with Conn’s mother.
“Sounds about right,” Conn said, but Matt didn’t miss the glint in Conn’s eye. “She’s been dead for twenty years, but dead’s probably the only way you get laid.”
The guy checked for a second. “Respects, man,” he said, “but you’re still a pig motherfucker. Get your fucking hand off my fucking elbow! I can’t feel my fucking fingers!”
“Need a hand?” Matt asked.
“Nah,” Conn said. “He’s a pussy … cat. Besides, Hawthorn’s looking for you.”
Great. Matt left him to it, and took the stairs two at a time to the undercover unit.
His partner, Detective Jo Sorenson, sat at her desk. Another detective, Andy Carlucci, loomed over her shoulder, a blatant invasion of personal space guaranteed to drive Jo nuts.
“Jesus Christ, Dorchester, you’re going undercover in a strip club? Who’d you piss off?” Carlucci said, mock-astonished. “No neo-Nazis? No domestic terrorists stockpiling explosives?”