CHAPTER 1
DEPARTURE
Taylor
Well,shit. Who invented Mondays? Mondays were never great. Never even good, actually, and today’s Monday wasdefinitelynot going as fucking planned. One minute, Taylor had been balling up cardboard fingerprint slides and lobbing them across the field for the police dogs. The next he found himself shoved into a briefing room full of stone-faced alphas from a different police force.
Falkington, according to their epaulettes, and just why thefuckFalkington were in West Newton was anyone’s guess.
The door creaked and their own inspector stepped inside the briefing room, his shoulders hunched and police-issue chequered tie hanging loose around his neck. Johnny straightened in the seat next to Taylor, his black eyes hard with concern.
Taylor sniffed, because someone,someonewas pumping some serious fucking alpha pheromones into that room, and he would have preferred to snort bleach straight from the bottle than have it offend his nostrils for a second longer.
Breathe.
Shit.
The inspector sat at the desk in front of them, making Taylor’s knee begin to bounce uncontrollably. Johnny clapped a hand around it, squeezing it hard.
“Your firearms, PC Campbell. Put them on the table,” the inspector said, lips wet as he spat out words at a machine-gun pace.
Taylor reflexively brushed two fingers over the holster at his hip, his nails catching on the familiar fault in the stitching. He stared at the inspector from across the desk, watching how his eye twitched.
When Taylor didn’t answer, the inspector back-handed a pen pot and stabbed a Biro into the surface of the desk. Taylor jumped as ink splattered everywhere.
Okay, the inspector was mad.Bigmad, if the way his fangs protruded was any indication. He was diabolically ugly, too. Terrible comb-over, massive moustache and about fifty hair-filled moles across his face.
The moustache did look soft though, like a fluffy brown caterpillar, and Taylor had the sudden urge to push his fingers through it. Perhaps he’d slide them into the inspector’s nostrils. Perhaps he’d be able to hook out his brain. There’d be blood. A lot. They’d need an ambulance and?—
Suddenly, the pens were all over the floor. Dozens of them. Biros everywhere. One rolled under the inspector’s chair and?—
“PC Campbell, what’re you?—”
Someone pinched his arm.
“Stop spacing out,” Johnny whispered next to his ear.
When Taylor blinked, he realised he was underneath the desk on his knees with twenty or so pens in his hands and an eyeful of the inspector’s crotch. Johnny was under it too, staring at him with tight annoyance as the short coils of his black hair got squashed against lumps of old chewing gum.
Fuck.
Disgusting.
Taylor took another breath. A deep one. “Pens,” he said, as the room pulled back into focus. “Why am I…”
The computer virus in his head was gobbling up his brain cells again, making it impossible to think straight. It was the inspector’s fault. Obviously. He should have known better than to ambush them like that.
Or maybe Taylor was the problem.
People usually said he was the problem. And he didn’t actually have a computer virus in his head, of course, but it was what his dad used to say.
“Not the fucking time, dude,” Johnny whispered through gritted teeth. “Forget the pens and give your piece to the boss.”
Taylor sniffed—man, the boss had the smelliest feet; popcorn or cheese or something—and carried on picking up the pens.
“I’m not giving him anything, JP.”
He went to reach under the inspector’s chair, but Johnny gripped his arm. “You don’t have a choice, Tay.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder to the five sets of combat boots closing in behind them.
