Page 111 of Under Cover
“Will we see that in your phone records?” Crosby asked.
“I’ve got a second laptop,” she said. “In the gun safe.” She did something funny with her eyes then, something that said she wasn’t being entirely truthful.
“She’s got a gun safe with a booby trap in her apartment, Chief,” Crosby said. “I’d bring the explosives team.”
“Fuck… you…,” she breathed, and Garcia realized the color had washed out of her face.
“Look, Marcy,” he said, “we’re going to have to leave you so the medevac can get you on a stretcher and take you away.” In the background he could hear the choppers closing in. “You’ve got exactly one minute to give us something we didn’t fucking know or you get no deal from us.”
“Second phone,” she said. “In my locked office drawer. Cavendish was my boss, and some prick named McEnany, a fed who works in the IA office, kept promising us a new mole. Some guy named Rick Young was gonna infiltrate the Twenty Fourth for us. We needed it. All our workers lived there—the cops kept getting close. The fuckers killed off our main distributor a few days ago.”
“Rick Youngkilled off your main distributor,” Crosby rasped, growing almost as pale as she was. “But it’s good to know we should search that guy’s phone and computer. We just thought he was another junkie. See what poisoning your work force does for you? Anything else?”
“Two guys in the DOJ—don’t know their names. Cavendish creamed himself whenever they called. They gave him cases, he gave them fuckin’ money. Their numbers are in there.”
Garcia grunted and looked up to see the guys in the medevac lowering a stretcher, two of their medics taking a ride down.
“Thanks, Marcy. You’ve been a peach,” Garcia said. “And I don’t mean that in the gross way any of your people do. Good luck with that pneumothorax. I understand those are super fun.”
“So fun,” Crosby muttered. “So. Much. Fun.”
And with that they moved away and let the medics have her, after Garcia called a warning not to take her cuffs off even if she was anesthetized and seemed out of it.
They nodded—they understood criminal patients, apparently—and the next stop was the edge of the warehouse. Garcia took a good look at Crosby as they stared down at the big rescue air cushion at the foot of the building. It had been set up about six feet to the side of the ladder, probably because the ladder could be problematic for a jump. Or for deflating the thing.
“How’s your lungs, partner?” Garcia asked. He was never taking that for granted again after Crosby’s last encounter with a bullet and Kevlar.
“Fine. Shot hit me in the back shoulder.” Crosby took a breath. “The next hit grazed my arm. Fuck. Me.”
“Not with comms on,” Garcia muttered, and he knew there would probably be hell to pay, but he was not expecting Elsa’s snort.
“Yeah, right. We all know Olaf tops,” she muttered, and he and Crosby met eyes and managed a tired smile.
“So much for being undercover,” Garcia said, and Crosby gave a one-armed shrug.
“I was never any damned good at it anyway,” he said, and then he looked over the ledge again. “So we ready to get down from the fuckin’ roof?”
Garcia grabbed his hand. “On three.”
They had to let go of each other’s hands as they fell, and the landing was a confusion of rubber-coated canvas and tactical gear, but Crosby struggled to his feet just like Garcia, and together they set off to find their team.
Bad Guys in Suits
IT WASsweet of Harding to get him, Chadwick, and Carlyle in the same room, but Crosby didn’tspeakChadwick and Carlyle, just liketheydidn’t speak Crosby and Garcia. By the time they’d all been checked out and given fluids and—in his case—antibiotics and stitches and pain relievers, and—in their case—CT scans regarding their organs and heart rates and so forth, he was as convinced as Garcia that they’d been sleeping together for the last year.
A thing he planned to discuss in earnest with Gail, becauseshe’dalready been treated and released,dammit, and sent off by Harding with the others to do who knew what. Which meant she’d missed the show.
“Seriously, you guys,” he said at one point, “how much musical theater can two people watch?”
For that transgression he was treated to a full-throated duo rendition of “It’s Hard to be the Bard” that dissolved into the two of them giggling loopily, but hey, that’s what happened when you were given a pure dose of opioids and left to marinate for two hours.
“How you doing, Crosby?” Harding asked, giving Rogers and Hammerstein a disgusted look as he strode in.
“Seriously, Chief, how long are they gonna be that stoned?”
Harding grimaced. “Well, for one thing, they’re lucky they’re not dead. The doctor said they were given borderline overdoses of heroin. The only thing that kept it from being lethal was that apparently they’d been fighting like hell, and theykeptfighting even as the drugs took over. Add that to the fact that it was a pure opioid and not a highball like you got, it basically sedated them until they finally slept.”
“I don’t care,” Crosby said earnestly. “Drugs are bad, kids. None of us will ever do drugs again. When can we get out of here and go arrest the fuckers who shipped the drugs?”
