“Yep,” Dorsey reported, sighing when the server put the next basket of wings down on the table. It was always good to go to Crisp with Dorsey and Ryan because they ate the same wings as me and Ian: the Seoul Sassy and the Crisp BBQ. The others liked to mix it up, but I never saw the appeal of straying from the tried and true. “Mills yells at Kage and says he’s got Kenwood on the line, and he’s about to slam the door when Kage leans out, apologizes to Elyes, and then closes the door behind him.”
I couldn’t control my smile. “Ohmygod, I can’t believe Mills is still breathing!”
“Right?” Dorsey chuckled.
“So what happened?” Ian asked, smiling as he wiped the side of my mouth. “Jesus, I can’t take you anywhere.”
I waggled my eyebrows at him as Ryan snapped his fingers between us. “Listen, this is about to get good.”
“It is,” Dorsey promised, smiling evilly. “’Cause alluva sudden Mills straightens up like you see people do in the movies when they’re freezing or turning to stone or something.”
Kage’s office was a wall of windows, so the show had to have been a good one, from where Ryan and Dorsey sat in the bullpen.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed, grinning with his deep dimples and the glinting blue eyes that explained how he had so many women hanging off him when we went out. He was one of those guys you didn’t realize was handsome until he smiled. “Mills goes rigid, and his face turns this bright red, and then Kage does that thing where he turns and looks at you like you’re the stupidest fuckin’ thing on the planet.”
“I’ve seen that one,” Ian and I said in sync.
Dorsey scoffed. “We all have. It’s the one Phillip—”
“Call me Phil, there, buddy,” I chimed in, and Dorsey, Ryan, and I all made gun motions at each other instead of pointing.
“I think I missed something,” Ian commented, squinting.
Ryan gave a dismissive wave. “You missed nothing. Tull was the nozzle who sent us all over the fuckin’ place when you were deployed and Kage was on vacation.”
“Oh, when you were in San Francisco.” Ian made the connection, wiping my mouth again and running his thumb over my bottom lip in the process.
The heat in his eyes made me shift a bit in my seat, my chinos suddenly tighter. He had a very decadent effect on me. “Yeah,” I croaked.
“Tull was a fuckin’ douchebag,” Dorsey assured Ian, “and Kage made sure he understood that his time with the marshals service had come to an end, and when he was doing it in front of all of us, he gave him that same look, like, you are such a fuckin’ fucktard, how are you even in my goddamn office right now?”
Ryan was laughing and nodding because, just like the rest of us, he was familiar with the Kage glare of disapproval.
“He wanted to go back to JSD, but those guys work too hard to have to deal with assholes like him,” Dorsey went on, mustering up even more disdain for Tull.
“Agreed,” I said as Ian curled a piece of hair around my ear. I had been letting it grow out for a while and was still waiting for Kage to say something. “Judicial security doesn’t need a guy like Tull any more than we did.”
“So what happened with Mills?” Ian asked, wiping his hands before draping an arm around the back of my chair.
Dorsey chuckled. “He stands there for a second, looking back at Kage, and then he whips around and almost runs out of the office without closing the door.”
“Oh shit,” I breathed. “Then what?”
“Then Kage walks over to the door, gives me and Mike a head tip, and then slowly closes the door,” Dorsey wrapped up. “I mean, I don’t know what Kenwood said in there, but I’m betting things didn’t go down how Mills thought they would.”
Ryan cackled. “What a dick.”
So now even after that debacle—when Mills knew his decision to try to go over Kage’s head so epically failed—still he asked him, in front of all of us, if checking warrants was necessary when every marshal on the planet knew that was procedure. Kage said it because he was programmed to say it, not that he didn’t think it was our first step. He was like a parent reminding a child to put something away, habit and nothing more.
“Yes,” Kage said with a huff, the annoyance rolling off him. “We must.”
Mills coughed nervously.
“Where’s Doyle,” Kage snapped.
“Oh, uhm, he left with the SOG team,” Mills answered, clearly flustered, fidgeting, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.
“On whose authority?”
“Mine,” he said, darting his eyes to Kage’s face.
“Do you have his earpiece?”
He cleared his throat. “I do.”
Kage tipped his head at me. “That’s his partner. Give it to him.”