“Are you all right?” he said instead of hello.
“Yeah, I just wanted to tell you that Kage sent Eli back to you so he can talk to the press and do all that,” I explained.
“Then who the hell is—”
“Redeker.”
Silence.
“He’s good, Ian, I swear. You’d like him.”
He gave that grunt I knew so well, the one saying he was deciding what to do.
“I’m not helpless anyway, right? I carry a gun, Hartley’s always been the biggest threat to me, and honestly, we both know whatever that was this morning had nothing to do with him.”
Back to silence.
“He might not even be in Chicago.”
Quick clearing of his throat. “Lemme talk to Redeker.”
“No,” I said gently. “Just… stop. I’ll be fine.”
“Turn on the GPS on your phone.”
“Ian,” I sighed. He knew as well as I did using the tracking software on our phones to keep tabs on each other was prohibited by the marshals service. It was probably the same for the FBI or DEA or ATF. No one wanted a cloned phone to find an undercover agent or a marshal on a task force ready to serve a warrant. If Kage ever caught either of us with it on—I didn’t even know how severe the ramifications would be.
“Fine,” he growled, “just—please.” Unspoken: Be careful, come home in one piece, don’t do anything stupid, and take care of yourself.
“Yes, dear,” I agreed. He was silent, and so was I, and in that moment, the fear of the changes being made and how we were going to cope and even if we should… drowned me. “Ian—”
“Just focus on the day, all right?” he said sharply.
I took a shaky breath because he sounded ice-cold, which meant he was pulling away, turning his emotions off, both of which were bad for me, for us.
“Focus on the job, all right? Be safe.”
I had no choice. I would keep busy so I couldn’t think. It was all I could do. “Yes.”
He hung up, and I faced Redeker. “Listen, I’m sorry that—”
“So your boss—”
“Your boss now too,” I corrected because I was a smartass.
“Jesus.”
“Sorry, but technically he is our boss.”
“Who is? That’s what I’m confused about. Who am I reporting to?”
“Becker,” I told him as he walked with me to the Custodial office. “Kage is Becker’s boss—which is weird for all you new guys because he hasn’t been all that great about giving up command.”
“You think he will now?”
“I think now that it’s Becker, who he trusts… yeah.”
“That’s good, then.”
“I think it will make things around here easier.”
“So Kage, he gets stuck with the suits a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“And Becker and Doyle, they have to deal with the on-site crap?”
“It’s brand-new for both of them, but yeah, they’ll both be there until the scene gets turned over to CPD, and then I’m thinking they’ll come back, and Becker will decide who’s going to be whose partner and have them report to him. I’m thinking Ian will have to go around to all the other offices and meet people. He’ll have to create the database of who’s where and who to talk to, and—that just sounds horrible to me.”
“Yeah, that job with all the red tape and the million different ways of doing things—I mean, what’s the SOP for a task force?”
“Is there one?”
“No, but there should be, right? I mean, if everyone is coming to work with the marshals, then the marshals should lead. It should be our rules.”
“Have you ever seen those enforced?”
“No,” he answered implacably, “but I’ve never been in an office big enough to have a deputy director either. You gotta figure our boss can have that now since he’s got a man under his supervisor to take over making sure every other agency complies with how we do things, not the other way around. Most offices don’t have someone like Doyle to take over that piece, and there aren’t enough hours in a day for the supervisory deputy to deal with it all.”
“Huh,” I said, ending that discussion.
“Huh?”
“Yeah. That’s all interesting, but I wanna be done talking about that because there’s more important stuff I need to know.”
“More—what?”
I rounded on him before we went in. “So what the hell?” I snapped.
His glare came fast as he crossed his arms. “Why’re you yelling at me?”
“That is so not yelling.”
“What’s with—”
“Speak.”
“I have no idea what you’re—”
“Don’t be stupid. Where’s your partner?”
“I haven’t been assigned one yet.”
I crossed my arms, mirroring him, and waited, hoping he saw the irritation on my face.
He groaned loudly, showing me his annoyance. “He’s in Vegas.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking.”
He winced. “We had words.”
“And then you ran away.”
“I did not run away,” he said much too defensively.
“Listen, I’m not trying to get in your business,” I lied to his face. “I’ve just seen your dynamic up close, and it works. He’s careful, and you’re kind of a cowboy.”