“I tried not to be geeky about it. I made sure not to ask any of them to punch me in the face.”
“That’s probably a good idea ’cause they probably would have hit you.”
“Oh.”
“So are you busy next Saturday?”
Crush leaned in and whispered in case any of her aunts were around, “Is that the wedding?” Dr. Davis had mentioned he’d be needed for a wedding. God, the things he did to protect his favorite team.
“No,” she whispered back, “that’s at the end of the month. I’m talking about the Ice Party next Saturday.”
“Ice Party?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice back to normal. “Ice Party. You’ve been, right?”
“No.”
Her mouth dropped open. “How can you be a polar and not have gone to the annual Ice Party?”
“Luck?”
“Well, you can come with me.”
“I agreed to a birthday party and a wedding.”
“Those are requirements to prevent me from beating up the old woman.”
“Stop saying that.”
“But the Ice Party will be a blast. You gotta come.”
“No thanks. Islanders game.” He looked at his watch. “I better go. First real day of work tomorrow.”
“Good luck and be careful. I honestly don’t think those bears were here for me or mine.”
And he knew she was probably right.
Cella watched the bear head toward his truck. Tommy came out of the house and stood behind her.
“You want me to follow him?”
“Just make sure he gets home okay. I’m not sure who those guys were that Ennis and the boys dealt with.”
“No problem.”
“Bring Kevin or Liam with you.”
Her brother nodded and walked off, and Cella went back into the house to help her family finish the cleanup.
But before she returned to the backyard, she pulled out her phone and speed-dialed a number.
“Yeah?”
“Smith. It’s Malone. We may have a bigger problem than we realized with BCP.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Knowing she had a busy day ahead, Cella woke up early. She took a quick shower and dressed. Once done, she pulled up the leg of her sweatpants so she could tape up her knee, deciding not to think too much about how it already hurt when she hadn’t even worked out yet.
She was just finishing when her daughter walked in. There was a knock first, but barely. It was more like one fluid movement. Kind of a knock-open thing.
“Morning, baby.”
“What’s going on?” Meghan asked, closing the door behind her.
“Be specific. You know I hate vagueness.”
“Fine. So you want me to believe you’re actually dating that bear?”
“I am for the time being,” Cella muttered, pulling down her pants leg.
“I don’t see what the big deal is, Ma. Cousin Petey has an RV dealership.”
Cella’s head snapped up, her hands curling into fists.
After a moment of mutual staring, Meghan laughed. “I’m only kidding.”
Letting out a breath, Cella fell back on the bed. “Do not do that to me!”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to give you a heart attack so early in the day.”
“Just don’t get caught up in this craziness.”
“I don’t mind the craziness.”
“How can you not?”
“If it bothers you so much, Ma, how come you get caught up in it?”
“I’m trapped by circumstance, baby. You’re not.”
“And poor Detective Crushek?”
“He’s ... being a very good guy.”
“He is a good guy. So be nice to him.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Because he’s a thoughtful, calm, well-spoken nice guy—that’s not really your type.”
“Maybe I’m going a different way this time.”
Meghan laughed. “Yeah. Right, Ma.”
Cella stood, took a couple of steps to make sure she’d taped her knee up right, then went to her dresser and picked up her brush. She could see her daughter in the mirror, standing by the door, her hand on the doorknob.
“Now what’s wrong?” Cella asked, facing Meg.
“Have you told him about what you do?”
“No problem there. He’s a huge fan. Not of me, but at least of your grandfather.”
“No. Not hockey.” Hand still on the door, she turned her body toward her mother. “Your other job. Does he know about that?”
“He’s a cop, baby. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Shouldn’t be and aren’t are two different things, Ma. He’s like proper town sheriff and you’re covert ops. He may not be okay with that.”
“That’s not my problem. I just wish you didn’t have such an issue with what I do.”
“I just worry about you. But then I remember ... you’re the best, right?”
“Yeah,” Cella answered honestly. “I am.”
Crush sat at his new desk, at his new job, at his new precinct. And he was bored. Really, really bored.
Was this to be his life? Sitting around? Waiting. Even MacDermot hadn’t come in yet. Apparently she had flexible hours. Must be nice.
It seemed their being partners wasn’t a done deal yet. It was—get this—“up to MacDermot.”
Up to MacDermot? She got to make the decision whether they’d be partners? And yet she hadn’t?
Crush didn’t know whether to be disgusted or hurt. Just two more years until he hit his twenty years ... would he make it? He didn’t know anymore. A month ago, he would have thought he’d make it to his thirty years before even thinking about retirement. At least. But now. Sitting here?
“Hey!”
Crush looked up. MacDermot stood across from him. Smiling. Holding coffee. Having worked with MacDermot in the past, he didn’t remember her being much of a cheery person before noon. Someone got laid this morning.
“Here.” She placed a large Starbucks coffee on his desk. “Your hair looks good. Now ... you busy?”
He looked around to emphasize he was just sitting here, then looked back at MacDermot. He didn’t say anything. The beauty of MacDermot? Apparently he didn’t have to say anything.
“Then come on.” She walked off and Crush sighed, picked up his coffee, and followed.
Cella put on her practice clothes and headed out to the rink. If any of the rookies showed up for the coaching she’d offered, she figured she could work with them for a couple of hours, then get in her own practice before heading out to meet her mom in Midtown for her first meeting with Blayne and her whole gang of wedding trouble. Getting Cella’s mom hadn’t been as hard as Cella had feared once she told Barb it was the fiancée of the very wealthy Novikov who needed her help, then her mom was all over it. Still, with the involvement of a grizzly sow and an O’Neill She-lion, Cella felt she should at least go for the initial meeting. But, first, practice.
But when Cella walked out onto the ice, she stopped, her mouth dropping open a little. She’d expected the rookies, and even then only one or two. Most of the guys had day jobs, getting their extra training in when they showed up for practice during the week. But all the rookies were there, and the second string. About twelve guys in all.
Reed skated over to her. “There might be more tomorrow.”
“More?”
He shrugged. “I only told a couple of guys, but the information spread pretty fast. Sorry.”
“No, no. It’s okay. I’m just surprised.”
“You shouldn’t be.” Skating backward, he winked at her. “Well, tell us what to do, Coach.”
Figuring she could still meet her mom, but that her own training would have to wait, Cella motioned the rest of the guys over.
“Let’s go. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Dez MacDermot knocked on the door again.
Okay, so maybe working regularly with Lou Cru
shek wasn’t the best idea for her. Gentry had been pushing it since Dez’s last two partners had transferred back to their old units. According to the first one, Jerry the fox, the reason he’d left was, “MacDermot is fuckin’ crazy. I wouldn’t work with her again if you put a gun to my head.” Seemed a little bit of an extreme reaction to one bad incident involving a rocket launcher. Everybody got out alive, didn’t they? So what, exactly, was the problem? And she’d always felt she’d work best with the canines, yet they didn’t follow orders the way well-trained dogs did.
Then there was Joanie the cheetah, whom Dez left alone with Cella and Dee-Ann in an interrogation room while she went to get a soda. Gone from the room ten minutes, tops. But by the time she got back, Cella had the cheetah pinned to the floor, basically throttling her with those always-bruised fists, while Dee-Ann was going through Joanie’s purse for no other reason than, “Just curious what a cat keeps in a purse.”
Needless to say, Joanie ran back to her old precinct.
So Gentry had once again brought up Crushek. “He’s a bear. You’ve worked with him before. He’s a bear. Smith and Malone can’t just pin him to the ground, nor does he carry a purse because he’s a bear... .”
And it had sounded very reasonable to Dez. Hey. She was flexible. After living with a man who sported a mane and a constant sense of entitlement, Dez felt certain she’d do great with a bear. Based on what she’d seen on Animal Planet documentaries, they were real easy to get along with as long as you didn’t leave food lying around and didn’t startle any females with cubs.
Now, however, Dez was starting to think she’d been wrong about all that. Or, at the very least, she shouldn’t have assumed that grizzlies and polars were just different-colored versions of each other. Because, man, was Crushek a cranky asshole!
“Are we just going to keep standing here and knocking?” he suddenly demanded, making Dez grit her teeth. It was the trick she’d learned in the Marines so that she didn’t pull her gun on people who irritated the shit out of her. “We have a warrant,” he needlessly reminded her.
“Yes,” she replied, trying not hiss like Cella sometimes did. “But maybe you haven’t realized where we are—”
“You mean Staten Island?”
“Yes,” she said again. “A street in Staten Island populated completely by bears.”
“Is that why you brought me? Figure I could make things easier for you with the bears?”
“That is not why I brought you along, but can you just let me handle it?”
“Whatever.”
Deciding to get away from him, Dez said, “You stay here. I’ll go around the back.”
“Fine.”
Dez waited until she’d pulled open the back gate before rolling her eyes to the sky. Who knew one flippin’ bear could be so damn difficult? God, how did Conway manage to put up with Crushek for so long?
She walked to the back door and banged on it with her gloved fist. While she waited a moment, she readjusted her Kevlar vest. Honestly, they didn’t even try to make these things for women with tits bigger than a B-cup, something Dez hadn’t been since she was thirteen.
The door opened a bit, a woman peeking around it, eyes squinting at Dez. “Yeah?”
“Mrs. Martin?”
“Yeah?”
“Detective Dez MacDermot. We have a warrant to search your house.”
“This ain’t a good time right now.”
“Warrant, ma’am. Doesn’t need to be a good time for you. Just open the door or it’ll be torn off its hinges.”
“By you?”
“Not me, because I would just set it on fire.”
The woman sniffed and pulled the door open, standing to her full height. God, she was at least six-four. Definitely a She-bear.
“Is it just you?” the woman asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just curious if I’m going to have a bunch of ham-handed cops tromping through my house.”
Dez peered at the woman for several seconds. Moving slowly, she placed her hand on the gun in her holster and took several steps back and to the side. “Please step out of the house, Mrs. Martin.”
“Why?”
With her right, Dez gripped her weapon; with her left, she dropped the warrant paperwork. “Because I told you to get your ass out here.”
Grinning, the sow took a step out of her house. “Or what, full-human?”
Using her right hand, Dez raised her gun, pointing it at the sow’s head.
“You better be a very good shot, Detective.”
“I’m one of the best. But I wouldn’t waste the bullets.”
Dez pulled the trigger on the bear mace she held in her left hand, hitting the sow in her sensitive nose. Screaming and cursing, the sow covered her face. Dez shoved her gun back in its holster and pulled out her baton. She flicked her wrist, the baton extending to its full length, and swung at the sow’s knees. Something cracked and the sow dropped, still screaming, definitely still cursing.
Dez was reaching for her titanium cuffs when she heard the roar. Mace raised, she spun toward the male grizzly running at her from the other side of the house. She wanted him to be closer before she hit the trigger, but he didn’t even get ten feet within range before the boar went flying, shoved off his feet by Crushek.
“Go to your gun!” he barked.
She dropped the mace and again reached for her weapon. A Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum with custom grip that took her six months to qualify on. She’d just started to turn, hearing the heavy footsteps running up behind her, when Crushek wrapped his hand around her head and yanked her behind him. She heard shots ring out. Other than Crushek taking a couple of stumbling steps back, he was silent.
The footsteps were now moving away from them and Dez went around Crushek. “Are you okay?”
The polar jerked his shoulder. “Just hit the vest. Come on.”
He started off.
“I need to cuff her.”
Crushek raised his hand and slapped the grizzly sow’s back between her shoulder blades. She’d been trying to get to her feet, but she went back down, out cold.
Shrugging, Dez ran after Crushek as he stalked across the Martins’ yard. He walked to the detached garage, stopping at the wood door. He lifted his arms chest height, palms out, and rammed them forward. The door snapped off its hinges, careening inside, and Crushek went in after it.
Both hands on her weapon, Dez followed the bear inside. The big garage door was open and the inside was empty except for a piece-of-shit Chevy.
“We follow?” she asked about the bear they could see running off down the street.
Crushek didn’t answer. He simply lifted his head and sniffed the air. Following his nose, he moved to the car. Sniffed around it. With a little snarl, he gripped the car under the front grille, raised it, and flipped it up and off, knocking it out of the garage.
Trying really hard not to be impressed, Dez walked over. The pair of them stared down at the metal door built into the floor. Crushek reached down, gripped the ring, and tugged. Twice.
He motioned Dez away with a jerk of his head and stood right next to the door. He sort of jumped forward and down, big hands ramming into that metal door, power coming from those shoulders and arms. Mouth dropping open, Dez took another quick look around to make sure they were still alone, then watched the polar hammering away at that solid metal door, over and over until it bent and buckled under him. Off the hinges, the door fell into the open hole and Crush stared into the darkness.
He lifted his gaze to hers and Dez now jerked her head. “Go.”
Crushek jumped down while Dez stayed put, her gun still up, finger on the trigger. A few minutes later, Crushek came back up, a little canister in his hand.
“What’s that?”
He shrugged, lifting the top. Sniffed it and frowned. Then he stuck the tip of his pinky into the contents and brought it to his mouth. He tasted it, dark eyes rising to meet hers.
“Well?” she asked
.
“Honey.”
Dez couldn’t help gasping, annoyed. “They tried to kill us for honey?”
Crushek grinned, something she wasn’t sure she remembered ever seeing before. “Honey infused with cocaine.”
“Dude ... that’s so many levels of wrong.”
Then they laughed and Dez suddenly felt that maybe they could make this work, after all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After a great session with everyone who’d shown up, Cella had been forced to take another shower. No way did she want to hear her mother complain about Cella “stinking like a damn male.” Now, back in her sweatpants, T-shirt, sneakers, and a hoodie sweatshirt, Cella jogged up the stairs and out the main front doors, ignoring all the full-human males checking her out. Men who could never handle her.
“Cella!”
She smiled and ran toward the waiting cab. She got in and slammed the door. “Van Holtz Steak House on Fifth,” she told the cabbie before settling in next to her mother. “I see you have your power suit on.”
It was a black suit that made her mother’s gold eyes pop and gave her that air of total control. A control the woman always seemed to have—except when it came to her husband’s family.
“So what’s the skinny minny?”
Cella chuckled, marveling at how the woman was able to refresh her lipstick in a wildly moving taxi. “I’m glad you wore your suit. You’re going to need it. Although, you may have wanted to add a little body armor.”
“My sweetest girl, you still don’t have faith in your dear old ma?”
“I always have faith, Ma. But I know the players in this and you’re in for a battle, I think.”
“We’ll see. I’m just here to help.”
Cella looked at the coat her mother had on. “Aren’t you hot in that?”
“I’m melting, but it is snowing, sweetie. Don’t want to confuse the prey.” Her mother’s nickname for full-humans.
“Stop calling them that.”