Bending the Rules

THE FAINTEST GLIMMER of the connection between a recent spate of burglaries that Robbery had been fielding itched at the back of Jase’s mind. He couldn’t quite get a grasp on it, but it floated close to the edge of his consciousness then disappeared, floated nearer yet, then dove out of reach once more. He thumbed back through his notes, knowing that something in there must have triggered it, but the pale flicker of whatever it was retreated. So he emptied his mind and sat quietly in the noisy squad room in hopes that the association he sought would swim a little nearer to the surface of his brain. And the glimmer came closer, closer—yes, come to Papa, baby, almost there…

“Yo, de Sanges!”

And it was gone. Swiveling his chair around, he saw Bob Greer leaning out of the door to his closet-size office. “Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah. Come in here a minute, will ya?”

He did as he was bid and knew he wasn’t going to like whatever was coming when Greer said, “Close the door.”

He did so and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he studied his superior. “What’s going on?”

“Take a seat.”

He took a seat.

His lieutenant perched on the edge of his desk. “I got a call from the commissioner, who got a call from the mayor.”

Oh, shit, he thought in disbelief, she wouldn’t have. Not twice. But a bad feeling crawled the nape of his neck. “And?”

“And apparently someone is seriously connected, because guess what you’ve just been assigned to?”

He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “Tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with those merchants’ tagger kids.”

“Sorry, Jase. You are now the official head honcho of the—get this—Neighbors United Through Art program.”

He slumped back in his chair. Breathed, “Fuuuck,” stretching out the single syllable until by rights it should have snapped beneath the attenuation.

“Look at it this way,” Greer said. “It puts you on the mayor’s radar. Do a good job and he’s gonna remember when it comes time for you to take that lieutenants’ exam. A word from him could mean the difference between a decent placement and Peoria.”

Right. Like the man was still apt to be in office by the time the next lieutenants’ exam rolled around. But he nodded as if that were a genuine consideration and said, “Yeah, there is that. So what does a ‘head honcho’ on one of these committees do?”

“Make damn sure those three kids toe the line. No screwups.”

He sat upright. “You’re kidding me, right?” Looking at the older man, Jase could see that he wasn’t. “Jesus, Lieutenant, we all screw up now and then—and teenagers more often than most. Are you seriously taking me off the streets to be their frigging hall monitor?”

Greer shrugged. “What can I say? The mayor wants to accommodate his friend by giving the kids a break. But he’s a politician first and foremost, so he’s also covering his ass by making sure they don’t do anything to get the merchants or general neighborhood up in arms. And you’re the lucky bastard who was nominated to ride herd on them.”

“Lieutenant, we’re dealing with that rash of burg—”

“Oh, you’ll get to work your burglaries, trust me. You didn’t think watching some baby taggers was going to be your only job, did you? Hell, no. But, hey, our Man in Office is all over sweetening the deal. While you might have to fit this in around your regular work, the mayor authorized up to—wait for it—twenty whole overtime hours.”

“Oh, well, then. As long as I can die a rich man.” Maintaining a neutral expression, he discussed what few particulars his lieutenant knew for a while longer. But by the time he left Greer’s office, he was steaming. The second he reached his desk he flipped back to the November notes in his tattered notebook, located the Babe’s phone number, then headed straight for a reverse directory.

IT WASN’T LIKE he was bending—never mind breaking—any rules here, he assured himself as he pulled up to an apartment house in the Fremont district a short while later. Miz Calloway thought she had a pet cop on a leash? Well, he was a paid public servant for the populace at large, not just her and her wealthy friends, and he was merely stopping by to let her know what she could expect from their upcoming association.

Hey, it was in her own best interest.

He frowned up at the old brick building as he climbed out of his car and locked up. This wasn’t exactly where he would have pictured little Miss Ritz living. He’d pegged her more as the renowned Epi Apartment type, with its views of the ship canal and artsy stainless steel curlicues wrapping the south tower. But what the hell did he know? Maybe this was one of those…what had he once heard Hohn’s wife call a piece of furniture that Jase had just thought needed a good coat of paint? Oh, yeah—shabby chic. Maybe it was one of those places.

But the joint had an elevator the size of a British telephone booth and that had an out-of-order sign on it. His brows drew together as he hiked up to the third floor, unable to visualize Calloway here. They cinched tighter yet when he saw the flimsy lock on her door. Maybe that was the reason he pounded a bit harder on it than he’d intended. But what the hell was the woman doing in a place with nonexistent security?

When his commanding knocks didn’t garner an immediate response, he rapped his knuckles against the panel with even more force. At least it was made from a nice solid piece of first-growth Seattle fir.

“Hold your horses, for God’s sake,” he heard her say from the other side of the door. “I’m coming.” A second later the door whipped open.

And he was face-to-face with her.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “It’s you.”

He merely stood there staring at her, feeling the way he did every damn time he’d seen her—which, okay, counting this evening had only been three. It seemed like more, maybe because it was always accompanied by this hot spear of lightning ripping up his spine and electrifying neurons along the farthest reaches of every nerve path winding through his body.

He scowled down at her. “You don’t even look out your peephole before you open the door?” he demanded. “And why don’t you have a chain on this?” Not that chains weren’t a joke in the face of a determined burglar, but since they only allowed the door to be opened so far they did offer the possibility of slowing things down for that important nanosecond the home owner could take to slam it shut again.

Her chin angling skyward, she narrowed her eyes at him. But in the next instant she flashed him a smile of such singular sweetness he knew to brace for trouble.

And he got it in spades when she chided, “Oh, Daddy!” and, moving faster than a cat, looped her slender arms around his neck to give him a brief, fierce hug. “You are so sweet, always worrying about me.” Gazing up at him, she touched her fingertips to his jaw and for a warm, moist second they breathed the same air. “The designer stubble is new. You give up shaving, Papa?”

“Very funny,” he said, even as he stood still as a statue while another of those lightning arcs flashed through him. He was ruthlessly banishing it even before she took a swift step back. Yeah, yeah, she had big brown eyes and creamy skin and a soft cloud of curly blond hair that he wouldn’t mind wrapping around his fists. Hell, he’d strip her down and do her against the nearest wall in a New York minute if she’d let him.

But that wasn’t going to happen, and his shoulders hitched in a barely conscious move. Oh, well, he thought mendaciously, life was just full of disappointments. You learned that young growing up in the foster system. Or—as in his case—mostly in the system, since he hadn’t spent all his time in foster care after his mother died. Sometimes whichever male relative had been cut loose from the pen would swing by his current dwelling to spring him for a while—against Child Protective Services’ rules, of course, since the state didn’t consider any of the de Sanges men good parent material.

CPS rarely had to mount a hunt for him, however, because it was never long before Dad or Pops or his brother Joe broke parole—and Jase would find himself delivered back into foster care about the same time the loco parentis of the hour was loaded shackled into the back of a van for a fast trip back to the slammer.

So big deal; Blondie wasn’t going to provide him with a handy outlet for all this electricity zinging around inside of him. It wasn’t the reason he’d come here anyhow, so it was time he dragged his attention away from the subtle sheen of lavender smoothed from her lashes to the crease of her eyelids and got down to business.

He took a step forward and felt a little spurt of satisfaction when she fell back. Eradicating that as well, he watched without expression as he backed her step for step into the short hallway of her apartment and closed the door behind them.

“You’ve had me pulled off a crucial case to attend to what you decided is important for the last time,” he informed her in a low, even voice. “So, here’s how we’re going to work this. You want me to waste my time on this Arts For Thugs project? Fine. I have my orders from the mayor and I’ll follow them. But I’m doing this my way and I plan to watch those kids’ every move. You better hope to hell they don’t screw the pooch, Ms. Calloway, because I’m going to be breathing down their necks every minute. And if they so much as spit on the sidewalk I’ll haul them in, lock them up and throw away the key.” Or not. But damned if he was giving her a single reason to suspect he might not be serious.

“Oh, yeah, like that won’t all but guarantee that they’ll mess up!”

He shrugged. “Not my problem.”

“Well, guess what, Detective? I’m making it your problem.” She took a hot step forward. “I was feeling kind of bad about you being dragged away from your work, so I thank you. Your oh-so-sensitive approach to dealing with kids just knocked that clean out of my repertoire of regrets.”

She got right in his face and he smelled clean skin, felt warm breath fan his chin. “I’ve got a flash for you, de Sanges, I have strings I haven’t even begun to pull. You think the mayor is as high up the food chain as I can go? Think again. So here’s how I say we’re going to work this. You will stay ten—no, make that fifteen—feet away from my kids. The price for you being any closer than that is your willingness to work alongside them. I expect you to be civil. And you can bring your own damn paintbrush, too!” Cheeks flushed, breathing quick and shallow, she stepped back. “Now I’d like you to leave.”

He stared down at her and the temptation to give in to the de Sanges genes sang through his veins like a sweet narcotic. He knew ways to make her back down—ways that, without issuing an actual threat, would scare the spiral right out of those long, blond curls. All he had to do was lean down and whisper a few succinct sentences in her ear.

Snapping shut the lips he had opened to do just that, however, he turned and strode to the door. He hadn’t spent all these years rising above his genes just to cave in now. But he stopped with his hand on the doorknob to look back at her, raking his gaze from her chocolate eyes, to her round breasts that pushed against a surprisingly worn-at-the-seams gray hoodie, to the slice of Nordic pale skin showing between the jacket’s hem and the hip-band of its matching drawstring pants, to her sock-clad feet.

Then he sent it in a reverse journey back up until he was once again looking directly into those startlingly dark eyes.

She might have won this round, but he had a little news flash of his own. “I’ll stay the requisite fifteen feet from your minithugs or pack my paintbrush. But I’m putting you on notice, Ms. Calloway. This is it. I don’t give a flying…flick who you know. You ever go over my head again or jeopardize my ability to do my job and there will be consequences. Count on it.”

And seething in places he’d never allow to show, he let himself out the door.

HEART RACING like an Indy 500 contender, Poppy watched the door softly snick shut behind de Sanges and abruptly buckled at the knees, lowering herself without grace to sit on the hallway floor. Her kneecaps wavering in front of her face, she braced her elbows against them and lowered her head into her hands. “Holy shitskis. Holy, ho-ly shitskis!”