Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Between the understanding and support Lang gives him, as well as time with his family, Del can’t afford to slip up. But then, why does his partner and best friend care who Del sleeps with? Why, if given a choice, would Lang prefer to do anything with him? Maybe Del’s been missing something important, and perhaps Lang’s not the only one who’s not seeing what’s right in front of him. Because sometimes the strongest ties are the ones that bind our hearts.
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ONE
Most people—and I’m generalizing here, but I do believe this to be true—can’t say for certain what it is that a US marshal does. They could point to the star and say that yes, that was us, but overall, because of TV and movies, they were certain all we did was put witnesses into protective custody. But that was such a small piece of it. We hunted down fugitives, which had a huge investigative component to it, we knocked on a lot of doors, had to be personable so people would talk to us, and there was a lot of running involved. More often than not, when I got off work, there was no cardio needed because I’d gotten it all in earlier. Today, for instance, if I went to the gym after work—which I would not since it was Friday and that was reserved for drinking—the only thing I’d be doing would be weights. At the moment, I’d been running for three blocks already, quickly going on four, so I had my cardio in and then some. Had this been my hometown of Wimberley, Texas, then sure, I’d be sprinting on the treadmill or swimming laps in the pool, but these were not country blocks I was hauling ass down. These were city blocks, which were so very different. This was Chicago, after all, where everything was bigger than anything I’d ever seen in all my thirty-one years.
The whole city had taken me by surprise when I’d first arrived six months ago, and I had been the proverbial fish out of water. And a country one at that. People had laughed at my accent, my boots, and most of all, my manners. I was far too proper, and that was not a good thing. I stuck out, and when you were new to a place and just wanted to fit in, that was the kiss of death. The big city and I were definitely not in sync. The one thing that saved me was that I knew how to do my job, I was good at it, and people could count on me.
My evaluations from my interim partners—first week riding with Josiah Redeker, a senior investigator, second week Bodhi Callahan, another senior investigator—were strong. I was observant, gentle with witnesses, tenacious with fugitives, and though I crossed the line at times, it was never for myself. I was not a glory hound, as Josiah Redeker pointed out to my new boss, Ian Doyle. It was the same job I’d been doing in Tyler, Texas, where I transferred from, and having that familiarity to fall back on had been my saving grace. Nobody could question my work ethic, even if they made fun of my accent. My partner was the sole person who never did. And when I told him I was going to work hard to get rid of it, he said not to, that I talked good and fine, and him I always believed.
Langston Ross was a Chicago native who used to work homicide and left to become a marshal. Older than me by two years—which made him thirty-three, not enough of an age difference to boss me around, and yet he did—Lang took me under his wing and showed me all the best stuff, from food to clubs to where I was not allowed to be in the middle of the night, especially when I was off duty. When I was on duty, as I was at the moment, again, still running, I could hear him in my ear, threatening me with salads for lunch for a week as I ran down the 1600 block of West 115th Street.
“So help me God, you will have nothing but kale for a week if you run down that fucking alley you’re coming up on!”
“And if Vargas chooses to run on down?” I wheezed a bit. The running and talking was getting really hard to do.
“I don’t give a shit,” he growled.
It made him crazy if he didn’t have a visual on me, so turning down alleys and disappearing around corners were nonnegotiable. He did not trust the GPS not to glitch and lose me. I had to admit, I was big on the whole seeing him with my own eyes myself. But I couldn’t lose our fugitive either.
“You ain’t playin’ fair,” I told him, feeling like my lungs were about to explode. The heat and humidity weren’t helping at all. Chicago in the summer was hot and sticky, much like Texas, but something about all the buildings made it so much worse. It was like the skyscrapers and the concrete locked in the heat and made everything sweat—people and roads both. The nights weren’t any better. They were absolutely sweltering, even with the AC in my bedroom cranked up high.