The Intelligence Unit Series

Xander sat in the luxurious leather passenger seat of Tara's BMW and stared straight at the windshield. They'd traded less than a dozen syllables since he'd finished taking her statement, and those had only included necessary back-and-forth about taking her car to Remington Memorial so she'd have a way home. She hadn't apologized for lighting into him-not that Xander had expected her to. Yeah, he'd only been trying to do his job when he'd questioned her, and yeah again, sometimes the small details that seemed inconsequential could blow a case wide open. But in his eagerness to catch the a*****e who'd assaulted Amour, he'd lost sight of the fact that Tara had been on the phone with her directly after it had happened. Listening to someone she clearly cared about in pain. Frightened. Maybe even dying.

Tara might've been unrelentingly tough every other time Xander had clapped eyes on her-including when she'd tried to have him brought up on a laundry list of criminal charges two years ago-but in that moment, she'd been vulnerable. Enough to bring tears to her big, brown eyes.

Tears he had put there, albeit inadvertently, and damn it, he needed an olive branch.

"So, ah. Your car is really nice," Xander said, and Christ, as far as olive branches went, that was barely a twig. Also, a colossal understatement, since his a*s was currently parked in a seat that had programmable lumbar support and a built-in cooling system, in a vehicle that had probably cost more than he'd made in the last two years combined. Maybe three.

Tara blinked and sent him a lightning-fast glance of surprise before saying, "Thank you."

Her delivery was a little on the prim side, but since she hadn't said "f**k you" instead of "thank you", Xander took the tiny victory. "How long have you had it?"

One corner of her mouth lifted into a hint of a sardonic smile. "You don't have to make small talk with me, Xander. I appreciate the courtesy, but I know you probably don't like me very much."

"That's a little extreme," he said, unable to tell if he was more shocked or turned on by her lack of tolerance for anything resembling bullshit.

Tara shrugged. "Considering tonight's circumstances, I wouldn't blame you if it were still accurate."

"Still," Xander repeated. He hooked the end of the word upward until it became a question, and Tara's dark auburn brows popped.

"Well, yes. I assumed there was already no love lost from two years ago."

F**k. He should've known the past wouldn't stay in the past. It never goddamn did. "That was a long time ago."

Tara fell for the way he'd notched his tone right at its most easygoing setting, because she said, "Maybe. But my office still tried to send you to jail for a really long time."

"Bygones." Xander realized he'd sent the word through his teeth, and damn it, he needed to breathe. "It all turned out fine in the end."

The look on her face said she wanted to argue (hello, attorney), but Xander about-faced the subject. "Anyway, I owe you an apology for tonight."

"What?" Tara breathed. Under any other circumstances, he might've gotten a thrill at shocking her thoroughly enough to make her ridiculously lush mouth fall open like that. But he stood the ground he'd just stolen.

"Amour is your Cl, and you two obviously have a good relationship. Interview protocol is designed to gain useful information, not overwhelm the person being questioned. I overstepped when I kept pushing you for details, and for that, I'm sorry." "Oh." Tara paused, and in less than a blink, the uncharacteristic softness in her expression got back to business. "Well, don't be. I'm not."

Xander's laugh held equal parts humor and disbelief. "Okay, not to put too fine a point on it, because I do have some pride, but you handed me my lunch back there. Respectfully, I'm not really sure I'm buying that you're not sorry I pushed."

She pulled to a stop at the red light in front of them before lifting one hand from the wheel in a wordless translation of mea culpa. "I was a bit...brash. But it's not as if I don't know the process for giving a statement, and that it needs to be thorough. You were just doing your job, and I was"-she trailed off for a beat, then one more before turning to look at him through the shadowy interior of the car-"Well, I should've reacted differently."

A burst of desire moved through Xander, swift and enticingly hot, and Christ, was he nuts? This woman drove a BM-f*****g-W and was a smart, successful attorney in the DA's office. She wasn't for him. Not fleetingly. Not just in his head.

Not ever.

Xander smoothed his expression and tugged together all the no-big-deal he could muster. Once he delivered Tara to the hospital and relayed her statement and an update to the Intelligence Unit detectives who would surely meet them there, the chances were high he wouldn't even see her again. All he had to do was make it through the next hour or so. Then he could go back to keeping his head down and his a*s in his own lane.

"What do you say we just call it even?" he asked, extending his hand over the center console.

Tara looked at him, her copper-colored eyes as wide as pennies but her grasp firm as she wrapped her fingers around his and shook.

"I'd say you've got yourself a clean slate."

Oh, if only. Nothing about him was ever going to be clean.

Especially with a woman like Tara Kingston.

The rest of the ride passed in comfortable silence, with Xander trying to get the image of her sexy, sassy mouth out of his head and Tara blissfully unaware of his wicked (and wickedly inappropriate) thoughts. Remington Memorial's Emergency Department was relatively quiet, with only a handful of people spread out across the waiting room, and Tara didn't waste any time heading for the intake desk.

"I'm Tara Kingston, with the DA's office. I'm here for a patient who was brought in via ambulance. Amour Pollard. Aimee," she added, and the scrubs-clad man behind the desk nodded.

"The paramedics said to expect you. Dr. Riley is with the patient right now. You'll have to wait out here." He darted an apologetic glance at the waiting room. "But I'll let her know you're here. She'll come find you as soon as she can."

Tara tensed beside him in a way that said she was primed to argue, and Xander edged his way into her line of vision before he could stop himself. "Tara, she's in the best hands. You don't want to mess with that," he said quietly. "Plus, we have to wait for someone from Intelligence to get here to work this case before we can do anything, anyway. It's SOP, and we have to do this by the book."

To his total surprise, she eked out a small, slow nod. Thanking the intake nurse, she stepped back with a frown. "I know you're right. But..."

"The waiting sucks. I know." Xander slapped back the memory of exactly how well-acquainted he was with that particular terror and gestured toward the chairs. "Do you want to sit down? It might be a while."

"Not really, no."

"Okay." Xander tried Door Number Two. "Maybe we should find a vending machine. Are you hungry?"

Tara shook her head, knocking a strand of hair loose from the already tousled twist pinned just behind her ear. "No, thank you. I just want to wait right here for Dr. Riley."

She locked her fingers together and started to pace. Her shoes-a pair of classy black heels with slim straps around her ankles that did absolutely zip for Xander's composure-clipped a steady rhythm over the linoleum, and after the third circuit of pacing/hand wringing, he realized he was going to have to stage an intervention, otherwise she was going to fry her own circuitry before Dr. Riley could get even close to an update.

He fell into step alongside her. "Interesting story. Like, thirty years ago, there was this cargo ship on its way from Hong Kong to the United States."

"What?" Tara stopped short to stare at him, but Xander didn't let go of his steady-as-she-goes expression.

"Cargo ship. Hong Kong to the U.S.," he repeated. When she was too shocked to verbalize the WTF that was scribbled all over her pretty face, he continued. "On the route, the ship accidentally lost a shipping crate, like, smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I bet you can't guess what was in it."

She blinked. "Electronics?"

"Good guess, but no."

"Car parts." A competitive spark lit her eyes, making her even prettier than usual.

Xander forced his shoulders into a haphazard shrug and his d**k to stand down. "Nope."

“Clothing?"

"Not even close."

"Xander." His name was all warning as it crossed Tara's lips, and he had to cave.

"Twenty-eight thousand rubber ducks."

The look on her face was priceless. "I'm sorry. Did you say "

"Yup. Ducks. So, the shipping company figures they're lost, right? I mean, the crate fell into the ocean." He pantomimed a big splash with his hands. "But then these rubber ducks started popping up in all sorts of places."

"Are you serious?" Tara asked, fully hooked on the story if her expression was anything to go by.

Annnd gotcha. "Scout's honor," he said, even though he was as far from a Boy Scout as a man could get. "Australia. Alaska. The shores of the Atlantic. They've even found a couple frozen in Arctic ice."

"No way." She huffed out a laugh. "That's thousands of miles."

"I know, right? But that's the coolest part. Those accidental ducks ended up teaching marine researchers a ton about ocean currents. A few still pop up here and there to this day."

"Oh, my God, that's so cool," Tara murmured. The ease on her face lasted for a beat, then one more before her chin whipped up, and ah, busted. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

Xander slid on his poker face like it was his Sunday best. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"You used that story to distract me so I'd relax."

Her hands found the generous curve of her hips, and Xander wondered if the move was pure reflex. Focus. And not on grabbing her hips while f*****g her senseless. "Uh," Xander grunted, and what the hell was wrong with him? "Yeah, maybe. But you weren't going to last five minutes pacing the floor like that, and I know you want to save your energy for Amour."

Tara took a step toward him, her arms softening at her sides. "You're a really nice guy, you know that?"

The urge to correct her was strong, but Xander bit it in half and said, "Just doing my job."

"The standard answer when someone says 'you're a nice guy' is usually 'thank you"."

The words carried none of her usual heat, filled instead with curiosity, and hell, Xander would take her ire a million times over the beautiful, wide-open look on her face right now. "Thank you."

Another step, and now Tara was right in front of him, close enough to touch. "How come you don't like being called a nice guy?"

His pulse flared, but that shit about old habits was real.

This time, he stepped toward her, cutting the distance between them to inches. "The standard answer when someone says 'thank you' is usually 'you're welcome"."

"Oh," Tara breathed. Her lips parted to release the sound as a sigh, and suddenly, there was nothing in the universe other than him, her, and the red-hot urge to claim her mouth. "You're welcome, Xander." "Hey, you two. Hope we're not interrupting?"

The female voice-not Tara's, but almost as close by-whiplashed Xander back down to earth. "No," he and Tara said simultaneously, both of them taking gargantuan steps away from each other.

By the time Xander turned toward Intelligence Detectives Isabella Walker and Matteo Garza, his nothing-to-see-here armor was firmly back in place. "Not at all. Ms. Kingston and I were just killing time, waiting for you guys to arrive." "Right." Isabella's smile told Xander she saw right through him (freaking detectives), so he went for old faithful.

"Hey, you look great, by the way." He gestured to her rounded belly. "How far along are you now?"

Whether or not she was onto him, she took the bait. "Six months, and I look like I gulped down a basketball. But you're a doll for lying." Isabella took a second to run her hand lovingly over her baby bump before getting to the matter at hand. "And I'm still allowed to do victim interviews even if I have to take a break from actively chasing criminals, which is what Hollister is doing right now, the lucky brat"-she gave up a tart smile at the mention of her partner, Liam Hollister-"so I'm tagging along with Garza, here, in order to feel useful. Do you want to give us the rundown?"

Xander nodded and got down to business. "Aimee Pollard, goes by Amour, eighteen, assaulted in her home in North Point." He rolled through the bullet, making sure to take pit stops at the head injury, no outward signs of s****l assault, and Amour's phone call to Tara. "Dr. Riley's with her now. No update yet."

"Shit," Garza said, dividing his dark gaze between Isabella and Tara. "You think Sansone's behind this?"

"Who else would it be?" Tara asked. "You both worked that case. You know what she risked to get us that intel. And what he's capable of. If he knows she's the one who gave us what we needed to get him arrested, he wouldn't hesitate to hurt her." Slowly, Isabella said, "We do have to look at every angle. Amour doesn't exactly live in the safest of neighborhoods, and break-ins that end in assault aren't unusual in North Point. This could just be a robbery gone wrong or a home invasion. That said"-she looked at Tara, who had already opened her mouth to argue-"I agree that the whole thing is pretty freaking suspicious. Something about this doesn't quite pass the smell test. But we won't know what until we can talk to Amour."

"I'm not about to go back there and piss Tess off," Garza said, and Xander silently agreed. The doctor was part of a larger group of first responders and medical staff who hung out at his sister Kennedy's bar on the regular, and while Tess had always seemed nice enough outside of the hospital, the stories of how she ran her ED without an ounce of bullshit and even less apology were practically lore. Plus, she was married to a guy who used to jump out of helicopters. On purpose. Repeatedly. "She knows we're here," Xander said quietly. "And she knows Amour is the victim of a crime. She'll come find us as soon as she can."

At that, a tart laugh sounded off from over Garza's brawny shoulder, and they all turned to see Tess Riley standing there in her dark green scrubs and doctor's coat.

"Give the rookie a gold star. And I'm glad the gang's all here, because we need to talk."