“Ryn,” he called.
It just blooms. Then it’s yours to give. And you give it.
He had an awesome pad.
He cooked great.
He fucked amazing.
He was beautiful.
He complimented my outfits.
He liked lots of ketchup on his onion rings.
He did the work (albeit belatedly, he still did it) to get shit straight between us.
He got uber pissed at the thought of his friends being mean to me.
And he lost it when he thought he was falling down on the job of protecting me.
And now…
This.
“Ryn!” he said sharply when I kept drifting on the gentle waves of how great my hopefully-now-official boyfriend was.
My hands shot up, I caught his cheeks, I yanked him down to me, and I declared, “I like you a whole lot, Boone Freaking Sadler.”
“And I like you a whole lot too, Kathryn Sweet Fuck Jansen.”
I felt my eyes widen.
Then I collapsed against him and burst out laughing.
He put his arms around me.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.
When I quit laughing, I said into his ear, “Totally beat you on the breakfast thing.”
“Tonight, you get to make dinner.”
“Shutting up now.”
He lifted his head and looked at me, doing this chuckling.
He started to stroke my back, and he kept his tone light, but I knew it wasn’t when he asked, “Okay now?”
I nodded.
“Good, baby.”
I grinned at him.
His tone stayed light, but still serious, when he said, “You need to talk about this shit more, you know?”
I sighed.
Then I nodded again.
“And don’t think you got out of the holding-your-breath discussion.”
Well.
Shit.
I rolled my eyes.
I rolled them back when I felt his mouth on mine.
He kissed me quickly, pulled away and nabbed our bowls, handing me mine.
“Finish your oatmeal.”
I did a salute before I took the bowl.
“You were a good girl last night, but warning, I got a great memory, so you can be good at the time, but I’ll remember if you earned a spanking.”
I rolled my eyes again.
He chuckled again.
I let us finish our oatmeal and I let him bring me more coffee without instigating any further heavy.
Boone seemed content to stand between my legs, one hand on my thigh, staring out the window and sipping from his mug. And I was content to watch his handsome profile doing this, liking it a good deal that he could get in that zone of just being with me like that, but I shook myself out of it because I had to.
And then I prompted, “Boone. Brett.”
He turned to me.
“We got dick,” he announced.
Was he serious?
“What?” I asked. “It’s been four days.”
“Cops on our crew have exhausted all avenues to try to find someone who might know if Tony Crowley was investigating a couple, or a syndicate, of dirty cops. And after two of our boys went and struck out, Ally visited the widow, hoping she’d open up to a woman. But she’s locked down tight. Scared as shit. They got to her, but she knows something. So we did some checking, and in a thorough search of her house, no files, no hidden panels with folders filled with damning evidence—”
Hang on.
“You searched her house?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Who searched her house?” I pressed.
“Me and Mag.”
Hang the fuck on.
“You, like, broke into her house and searched it?” My voice was rising higher.
“Yeah,” he repeated, like he hadn’t committed a felony, even if it was for the greater good, like getting Brett off the hook for a crime he did not commit and getting me safe.
“Okay then,” I said, though I didn’t mean either word.
Because, seriously…
What if he was caught?
“Did a search of her,” Boone carried on, still like he did not just admit to committing a crime. “And Crowley. And those close to them. Brothers. Sisters. Parents. Even friends. No one has a storage unit where they might be keeping something important. Ditto safe deposit boxes. And none of them, at least the ones who live in Denver, are keeping anything hidden in their houses.”
“You searched their houses too?”
“Well…yeah.”
“Like you personally?”
“I did her mom and brother. The mom with Mag again. The brother with Mo.”
I closed my mouth.
“Babe,” he said slowly, “we’re not cops.”
“Unh-hunh.”
He studied me before he stated, “Ryn, there are different players in this town like there are probably the same in every town.”
“Unh-hunh,” I repeated.
He tried and failed to hold back a grin before he launched into educating me.
“There are cops who have very specific rules and they take an oath to follow them. When they don’t, if they’re caught, that’s not a good thing and that manifests itself in a variety of ways.”
“Right,” I said, because I knew that.
“Then there are guys like the Nightingale crew, who are licensed investigators who have professional standards, but like any citizen, they need to operate within the letter of the law. It’s just that with Lee and his crew, they decide what standards they like and how they feel about any given law depending on how significant an obstacle it is to them getting where they want to go.”