I saw my friend bristle, but before he could fire back, Kage was there and ordered both Brodie and Rodriguez into his office.
“What the hell did that piece of shit do?” Brodie yelled at Kage, correctly assuming that he knew. He knew everything.
It was ballsy, but he had to know his career with the marshals service was over at that point. I heard the catch in his voice that told me he was suddenly, as he never was, scared. You didn’t get to lose track of witnesses, no matter how often that happened in movies.
“He saved some sweet girls from being sex-trafficked,” I said flatly. “And that’s what I’m going to release to the press before he goes into WITSEC in another city.”
Both Brodie and Rodriguez were staring at me.
“My office,” Kage growled, repeating himself, and it was low, but you could hear it across the room at the same time. It was impressive. The fact that he was giving the order a second time…was just bad.
We all watched the two men go in, and immediately the elevator dinged and four guys from Judicial Support—security, basically—spilled out. Two of them took up positions at the elevator, like it was suddenly a portal to be guarded; the other two, one went to Brodie’s desk and one to Rodriguez’s. They each had a box with them, and as I watched, they plugged in flash drives to each computer to download everything, then wipe them. Personal items went into the box, drawers were checked and then taped closed, they tested for drugs on all surfaces, checked for electronic bugs, and then went through Brodie’s backpack and Rodriguez’s messenger bag. They confiscated both men’s laptops as well. It was thorough and fast, and seeing it made me sad. Careers were ending right in front of me.
Ian took Shawn to the breakroom then, not wanting him to be there when Brodie and Rodriguez were escorted out.
Normally, Kage closed his blinds when he was reading someone the riot act in his office, but as I checked on him, the blinds were open, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t yelling. Both badges were on his desk, both Glocks, as well as their backup weapons. New conceal-and-carry licenses had to be applied for before the guns they owned would be released to them, unless they had maintained their non-duty permits. As a marshal, it was suggested that you have an active civilian permit along with your law enforcement credentials, but since we all had to be certified every three months, and that one was easy to keep up with, most guys I knew let the regular conceal-and-carry lapse. I couldn’t, and neither could Ian or anyone higher up the food chain, but when I’d been an investigator, I’d let it expire. As both guns were on Kage’s desk, I was thinking that Brodie and Rodriguez had done the same.
The door was thrown open, and as expected, Brodie came storming out, breathing fire, fury all over his face. In contrast, Rodriguez looked scared to death. Brodie strode over to his desk, grabbed his backpack and the box with his personal items, and charged over to the elevator. Rodriguez did everything slower. He slipped his messenger bag across his body and then picked up his box.
As he trudged by me, his eyes met mine. “My bag’s really light without my laptop.”
I nodded, having no idea what to say.
“I’m going to do things differently when I get back from leave.”
Leave? “Okay,” I agreed.
“Not that I’ll be back here,” he whispered and then offered me his hand, which I took quickly. “But thanks for always being nice to me.”
How else would I be? “I wish you nothing but the best,” I assured him.
He gave me a slight smile and then stepped back and walked over to the elevator like he was on his way to the principal’s office instead.
Joining Brodie, they both got on the elevator, along with two guys from Judicial Support, Rodriguez with his head down, Brodie looking murderous, and the doors closed and they were gone. It was a bit anticlimactic.
“Kohn,” my boss called over to me.
I moved fast, crossing to his doorway. Kage had retreated inside and was now standing next to the dark-mahogany bookcase near his back wall. “Do you want me to close the door?”
He shook his head, and I saw how pained he looked. His brows were furrowed, and he was standing as if braced for battle. “Brodie’s out. Rodriguez is going back to training for a couple of months, and then he’ll be reassigned.”
From his tone and body language, he wasn’t happy about the information he was giving me.
“You know I’d rather have Rodriguez back here.”
And because I knew him, I could translate what that meant. He didn’t want to pass his problems along; he wanted to train and monitor Rodriguez himself. It was the same as when we’d discovered that Eric Pazzi, a transfer from Northern California, a seasoned deputy marshal, had a serious addiction to heroin that had begun with oxycodone. When Kage had him enter rehab, it was with the promise that when he was better, he would return to our district. Yes, Pazzi had been pushed off on him, but Kage was not the type to pass on a problem. He would fix Pazzi and give him a true second chance, or would move him out of our ranks. That was his way. The issue was, that wasn’t normally how it worked. He could keep Pazzi because he had been transferred in with a known defect his old boss had admitted to under questioning. It was Kage’s choice at that point whether to keep him or not. So he kept him.
Brodie had a good jacket when he transferred in, while Rodriguez was new. Both had seemingly lost their way on Kage’s watch. Because of that, he didn’t get a say in where they ended up. Also, once you washed out, you went to a slower, less demanding place until you built back up to a district like Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, where you could make a name for yourself and became promotable. I saw Burlington, Vermont, in Rodriguez’s future. I’d visited once, and it was lovely there, but there was not quite the same level of activity.
“For the press, if you’re not asked…” He trailed off, his gaze on me.
“Understood,” I replied gently. I knew he was hurting; he always took on himself the failures of his people.
He gave me a nod, which was my cue to leave, so instead of questioning him further, I got out of his office and returned to the breakroom. Shawn was there alone, eating an apple and some tangerines from the ubiquitous fruit basket that was still delivered monthly even after so many years. I was certain it cost a small fortune, but the mother who sent it still had a son because of Ian and Miro, so it showed up religiously.
As I was about to ask Shawn how he was, Ian stepped into the room.
“Hey, why is Rodriguez not gone?” I asked him after glancing at Shawn and seeing that his AirPods were in and he was tipping his head back and forth, keeping the beat.