The door to the showers was bulled open, and Danni stuck her head inside. She gave Harry a quick nod and then waved a phone at Boyd.
“It’s for you,” she said. “He says it’s urgent.”
Boyd slung the towel around his waist and hung on to it with one hand as he padded barefoot over the tiles. He plucked the phone out of Danni’s fingers and raised it to his ear.
“Maccabee,” he said. “Can I ask—”
“They found him.”
“Who?”
It wasn’t a question. The word was just on the tip of Boyd’s tongue, ready to go, and it slipped out before he could swallow it.
“Who the fuck do you think?” Shay Calloway exploded at him anyhow. “It’s him, Boyd. They found Sammy.”
Chapter Two
“YOU HAVEthe right to remain silent. Anything you say,” the younger cop recited by rote in a nervous, precise voice, “can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
With a rough hand, his senior partner shoved Morgan’s face down against the hard, polished oak of the bar while he frisked him. It was the sort of hole where this sort of thing only raised a mildly interested mutter from the other drinkers and made the woman behind the bar shift the good whiskey out of reach.
What passed for it in here.
“Hey, Lo,” Morgan ground out through gritted teeth. They’d run into each other before, him and Lo. The cop was a dick, with all the barely repressed anger of a guy who never got promoted off the beat. Morgan braced his hands against the bar and pushed back. “How about you. Get. The. Fuck. Off me.”
Lo kicked his feet out from under him and smacked Morgan’s face back down onto the bar. He tightened his hand on the back of Morgan’s neck and leaned on him.
“What’s wrong, Morgan?” he asked, voice slippery and smug as he yanked up the back of Morgan’s shirt. His fingers were sweaty as he ran them around the waistband of Morgan’s jeans. “Got something to hide?”
Spilled whiskey stung the split in Morgan’s lip. It filled his mouth with the oily taste of liquor and blood, sickly familiar on the back of his tongue. He’d always been an angry, sullen drunk, and even the taste of it got his temper ready to go.
“I haven’t done anything,” he said—nothing that he thought they’d know about, anyhow. “You have no good reason to take me in.”
Lo slapped him on the back of the head. “You’re a person of interest,” he said. “And you resisted arrest. So shut up and listen to Owen read your rights.”
He kicked Morgan’s feet apart and skimmed both hands up the inseam of his jeans. Rookie Owen cleared his throat and stammered through the rest of the Miranda warning.
“And, um, do you understand these rights as they’ve been told to you?” he asked, his voice pitched up at the end like a teenager on YouTube.
“Morgan?” Lo said. “He knows them better than you, kid. Mr. ‘No Right to Do This’ here’s been in and out of jail since he was fourteen. It’s like a dating app for him, ain’t that right?”
He groped between Morgan’s legs with hard fingers and leaned on his neck. Morgan swallowed the blood and booze that still laced his tongue and let his temper slip the leash.
Fuck it. If Lo wanted to see resisting arrest, Morgan could arrange that for him.
This time when he pushed himself off the bar, he threw his head back too. The back of his skull smacked into Lo’s face with a wet crunch and a pop of hot pain, but it was worth it as warm liquid splattered his neck and Lo lurched backward with a gargled curse.
Morgan spat a mouthful of blood onto the bar and turned around. He flashed a tight, gory smile at the swearing cop. Blood dribbled between Lo’s fingers as he staggered, a flicker of fear naked in his already puffed-up eyes.
Anger filled Morgan’s lungs with dry, scorched heat and ached in his knuckles as he clenched his fists. Hewantedto wipe the smirk off Lo’s face, break the bastard into bits, and he probably could. In a fair fight. A few steps behind Lo, the rookie cop spluttered and grabbed for his gun.
Cops never fought fair.
Morgan forced his fists to relax. It felt like there was rust in his knuckles, gritty and stiff in the joints. He lifted his hands and tucked them behind his head.
“Looks like you’ve got me, Officer,” he said. “Slap the cuffs on and take me in.”
Lo wrenched his nose straight between thumb and forefinger. It snapped back into place with a wet sound, and Lo wiped his face on his sleeve as he looked around at the interest turned his way. He pulled a sour expression, yanked a pair of zip-tie cuffs from his belt, and strode forward.
