The Intelligence Unit Series

If Ryan's futon was for shit, then he didn't even want to know what his sister Grace's couch was. The thing had to have at least two decades to its credit, not to mention being as hard as a morgue slab and uglier than homemade sin. But Grace made fantastic hot chocolate, and her six-year-old twins were two of Ryan's favorite people in the world. Plus, he never would've dreamed of swiping the guest bedroom from Chloe. It had probably been hard enough for her to get any sleep last night, even though Grace had treated her with extreme care once she'd heard what had gone down. The limited shuteye Ryan had gotten on the couch before waking at o'dark thirty and heading to the fire house so he didn't go crazy seemed like nothing in comparison. This Myles Bishop guy had better pray Ryan never ran into him.

Reaching down, Ryan turned off the shower he'd taken in an effort to loosen both his knotted muscles and shitful mood. Not that it, or the grueling pre-sunrise workout he'd put himself through in Station Seventeen's gym, had taken so much as a chip out of his tension. But he had a full shift ahead of him, which meant he absolutely needed to get his head on straight. Rescue Squad answered the most dangerous calls in the city, from water rescue to hazardous material spills to pulling people out of blazing buildings. Yeah, all that peril was right up Ryan's alley-he was hand-made for when the shit hit the fan. But his shifts were still no joke. He couldn't work, and he damn sure couldn't keep his squad-mates safe, if he wasn't focused.

The locker room was silent, which was no great shock considering the hour, and Ryan toweled off and tugged on his uniform with efficient movements. He'd learned on his third day as a rookie to eat and hydrate whenever things were quiet, so he made his way into the common room to throw on a pot of coffee and rummage through the fridge.

His lieutenant, Gabe Hawkins, looked up from the morning paper, his brows lifting toward his salt-and-pepper hairline. "Hey there, early bird," he drawled, his Southern accent keeping the words light. "Shift don't start for another half an hour. What brings you in before the roosters?"

"Couldn't sleep," Ryan said, trying to keep it simple. He was supposed to be forgetting everything that had gone down last night. At least, temporarily. "How about you?"

"Ah. I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead," Hawk said with a wave. "You sure you're alright? Not to step in it or anything, but you look like hell run over."

Damn. Of course Hawk would notice. The guy would rather run stair drills in a thirty-story building than admit it, but he was pretty much the mother hen of the fire house, looking after everyone, whether they wanted him to or not. "I had a bit of a rough night," Ryan admitted. "Some creeper is bugging my sister."

"Gracie?" Hawk asked in surprise.

Ryan shook his head. "Chloe."

A frown bracketed Hawk's mouth, and he pushed to his feet, newspaper forgotten. "Come on, then."

"Where are we going?" Ryan asked.

"We're making breakfast while you tell me what's going on," Hawk said. "After all, we're gonna need to fuel up if we've got to whoop someone's a*s."

Ryan followed Hawkins over to the kitchen at the back of the common room. For a few minutes, they went through the motions of getting breakfast prepped for everyone on engine, ambo, and squad. The familiar routine calmed Ryan, if only a little, and by the time they had eggs cracked, vegetables chopped, and bacon sizzling away in a skillet, he was at least able to breathe.

"Ah, good timing," Hawk said, tipping his head at their squad-mates Tyler Gates and Sam Faurier as they made their way into the common room. "Dempsey, here, was just about to fill me in on some a*****e messing with his sister. Y'all are probably going to want to get in on the knowledge."

"Someone's messing with Chloe?" Gates asked, his normally laid-back expression hardening in an instant.

"Yeah." Ryan gave them all the rundown, recounting the panicked call he'd gotten from Chloe, the conversation they'd had with Addison, then the fitful night he and Chloe had spent at Grace's. "She blocked the guy on all of her socials, and she's going to lie low today with Grace while Hale digs in to everything. But she's really rattled."

"Jesus." Gates crossed his arms over the front of his RFD T-shirt. "Can this guy-Bishop? Can he just get away with that? Because that's bullshit."

Faurier nodded, snapping up a piece of bacon from the plate where Hawk had placed the finished batch. "Seriously. It sounds like someone needs to learn some manners. Also, how not to be a flaming douche canoe."

"Believe me, I want nothing more than to kick this guy's a*s into next week for scaring Chloe like he did." Ryan's fingers tightened around his coffee mug hard enough to ache. "But Hale promised to take care of it, and she made me promise to let her. I don't like it, but..."

"Hale's good police," Hawk said, plating up some more bacon, then slapping Faurier's hand away from the pile. "If she says she's on it, then she's on it."

Ryan huffed out a breath. "My brain knows that."

"But?" Gates asked, and hell, they all knew him so well.

"The rest of me wants to tell my brain to sit this one out while my fists go tell Bishop, in no uncertain terms, what happens to guys who stalk unsuspecting women with mean-a*s older brothers."

"Can't say I blame you." Faurier leaned back against the counter, crossing one booted foot over the other. "But Hawk's right. Hale's a good cop. Plus"-one corner of his mouth lifted in a trademark half-smirk-"she's f*****g hot."

Ryan's mouth opened, his words flying out before he could check them. "Dude. You could stop thinking with your d**k, just this once, and that would be okay."

"Whoa." Faurier lifted his hands in a genuine my bad. "Sorry, man. I was just stating the obvious, but I didn't mean to step out of line. Hale's looking out for your sister. This is serious. I get it."

Ha. Faurier didn't know the half of it; namely, that Ryan had been thinking with his d**k for half the night as he'd replayed everything Addison had said to him. Despite their closeness, he hadn't told any of his squad-mates about his one-nighter with her. After all, he had his fair share of pride, and her disappearing act hadn't exactly handled it with care. Plus, while he and Addison had agreed on the no-strings-attached part of their night together, the s*x they'd shared had still been personal. Intimate. Red f*****g hot. Annnd the memory of her greedy little moans as he'd thrust into her from behind was so not what he needed in order to focus.

"Just do us all a favor, Dempsey, and don't go off half-cocked," Hawk said, and oh, the irony. "You've gotta trust Hale to do her thing."

"I do trust her," Ryan grumbled. Well, mostly, anyway. Sort of. "But Chloe's my sister. You should've seen how scared she was."

"I've got to say, I'm with Dempsey on this one," Gates said, and wow, the guy rarely let his anger flag fly, but right now? He looked pissed enough to spit nails. "Sitting back while some dickhead scares Chloe like that? No way."

Hawk shook his head and threw some onions and peppers into the bacon drippings in the skillet. "How many times do I have to tell you? Bein' a hothead only leads to trouble."

Okay, fine. So Ryan tended to act first and ask questions later. Still... "You don't complain that I'm not afraid to jump in and act when shit gets critical on calls," he pointed out. "How is this different?"

Faurier's ginger-brown brows winged up in a signal that Ryan had overstepped, and hell, maybe he had.

But Hawk was Hawk, so he kept his cool. "Because there's a difference between bein' reckless and bein' able to act when things go pear-shaped, and you know it. You just happen to be good at both. It makes you a great firefighter, but hell if it don't make you a pain in the a*s sometimes, too."

Ryan's pulse flared, although not in anger. Hawk was right. Ryan was impulsive, and yeah, sometimes even reckless. He'd taken a lot of leaps before looking, and some of them had hurt. But that still wasn't going to change anything. Not when Chloe's safety was in question.

"When it comes down to it, I'm going to do whatever I have to in order to keep this guy far away from my sister. Even if I piss off Hale in the process."

"You, ah, sure about that?" Faurier asked, his gaze flicking to a spot over Ryan's shoulder for just a split second before returning home. "One hundred percent. Why?"

Faurier grinned, and oh hell. "Because she just walked through the door, and call me crazy, but I'm thinking she looks less than happy to see you."

**

Addison rana finger over the handcuffs looped neatly on her belt next to her badge and her weapon, hoping like hell she wouldn't have to make good on her promise to use them. If the conversation she'd just caught the tail end of was any indication, Ryan was clearly still at DEFCON 1 over what had happened with his sister. On one hand, she got it. She might find the family closeness thing weirder than Justin Bieber dental floss (which was totally a thing, as she'd discovered on a drugstore robbery case a few months ago), but she wasn't clueless. Plenty of people were super-tight with their siblings, and Chloe had been sincerely frightened. Ryan's overprotectiveness wasn't really all that shocking.

But it was probably about to get worse, and damn it, Addison really didn't want to have to defuse his moody, broody attitude before breakfast.

"Gentlemen," she said, dialing up a smile as she crossed the common room. It was the same spot where her flirt-a-thon with Ryan had prompted them to sneak off for their night of sheet-scorching s*x two months ago, and okay, yeah. She was going to have to kick those thoughts directly to the curb if she was going to have any shot at keeping this chat on the level.

"Detective Hale," called Lieutenant Hawkins cheerfully, waving at her with a spatula. "Speak of the devil."

Addison didn't even bother with surprise. These guys were trained to notice everything, so surely at least Hawkins and Faurier had seen her standing there long enough to hear what Ryan had said. But since it was going to take a lot more than chest-thumping to piss her off, she waggled her brows at Hawkins and smiled. "Aw. It's like you know me." Hawkins tossed out an easy laugh. "You may be feisty, but I'd bet there ain't a truly devilish bone in your body."

At that, Ryan took the opportunity to do a thorough examination of the floor tiles, and oh look, it was time for a subject change. "I hope it's okay that I came on back. One of the firefighters from the last shift let me in."

"We're always happy to see you," Faurier said with a charming smile. Despite his reputation for being basically devoid of virtue when it came to women, he was a nice enough guy. The first time Addison had declined his advances four years ago had been the last time he'd hit on her, and they'd since become friends with absolutely zero hard feelings. "Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"I've got it," Ryan cut in, reaching for a mug from a nearby cabinet with a clunk, and oooookay. Looked like he was still crabby with her about last night.

Addison took a second to throw a substantial amount of milk and sugar into the mug Ryan had filled for her before toasting the group with it. "Thanks. Ryan, any chance I could talk to you privately for a minute?"

He shifted a glance at Hawkins, who was clearly in the know about Chloe and Ryan's screw-that attitude, judging by the conversation Addison had interrupted when she'd walked into the common room. Hawkins nodded without hesitation. "Go on. Y'all can use my quarters."

"Thanks, Lieutenant," Ryan murmured, and Addison waved to Hawkins, Faurier, and Gates before following him out of the common room. Side by side, they moved down the corridor opposite the engine bay, his boots echoing on the linoleum as they headed past the gym and toward what Addison could only guess were the station's bunks.

"Sorry about that," Ryan said.

Unsure if he was apologizing for his grumpy behavior or the mouthing off Addison had unintentionally overheard, she waited a beat to see if he'd elaborate. Luckily, she didn't have to push.

"I know you have to investigate. Chloe's just really scared, and I want to do all that I can to make sure this Myles guy gets the message loud and clear to leave her the hell alone. Did you talk to him last night?"

Addison busied herself with a swig of coffee before giving in with the truth. "No. That's what I wanted to tell you."

"What do you mean, no?" Ryan asked, stopping short to nail her with a stare.

Keeping her expression perfectly neutral, she took the handful of steps needed to reach the glass door bearing Lieutenant Hawkins's name, opening it calmly despite her escalating pulse. "Why don't you come on in and I'll explain?"

His eyes flashed, dark-green and definitely pissed, but thankfully, he followed her inside and waited while she shut the door. Hawk's quarters were sparsely furnished, with only one chair at the desk and his neatly made bed with a tiny bedside table beside it, so Addison stood in the center of the room. "A background check on Myles didn't turn up anything out of the ordinary. There were no red flags or any other complaints against him."

"Are you serious?" Ryan's brows popped in disbelief. "He's stalking my sister. Don't you think that's a red flag?"

Lord, give her strength. "I'm taking Chloe's complaint very seriously," Addison said. "All I'm saying is that he doesn't have a history of this kind of behavior."

"On record," Ryan added, which she dodged around.

"I went to his place to try to talk to him last night and he wasn't home. I'm letting you know where I am, as a courtesy, but you still need to let me look into this without interfering." "You just told me you're not getting anywhere," he bit out.

"I'm not getting anywhere yet," she countered. God, he was so stubborn. "Things like this take time."

"How much time?"

"I don't know," she admitted. Which, of course, went over as well as she'd expected it to.

"You've got to be kidding me! This guy is harassing Chloe, Hale. You saw her. She's still scared out of her mind."

The memory of Chloe's sunken shoulders and lowered eyes sailed into Addison's chest, but she forced herself to stay steady. "I know," she said quietly. "She said so when I called to check on her a few minutes ago. But you need to understand-" Ryan's chin snapped up. "You called her this morning?"

Addison rolled her eyes, unable to hold back. "Give me a little credit, would you? Of course I called her. I gave her an update, same as I'm doing with you. As a courtesy, by the way."

"Oh," he said. "And she talked to you about being scared?"

"She did," Addison confirmed. "I told her I understood what that's like, and that just because I didn't get a chance to talk to Bishop yet, it doesn't mean I'm dropping the case."

Ryan ran a hand through his hair, leaving it just mussed enough to be unfairly sexy. "Okay. So what happens now, then?"

"Well, I wrote up a report last night, and I'll bring it to the unit today. We'll talk through the details and decide our next steps." She hadn't wanted to tell him this last night and get his or Chloe's hopes up, but... "Between us, I'd also like to pull the video feed from Chloe's apartment building for the night he showed up with flowers, along with any street cam footage of last night, when he followed her home. Depending on what it shows, we may be able to proceed with filing an emergency protective order." Addison held up a hand to quell the response his face said he was just shy of launching. "It's a maybe, and I'm only telling you so you won't be a pain in my a*s."

"I'm not trying to be a pain in your a*s," Ryan grumped.

"That's good, because I really am going to need you to stand down while I get this sorted out."

"Look," he said, enough intensity flashing through his stare to make Addison's pulse take notice. "I'm sure this won't come as a shock to you, but I'm not exactly a stand-down kind of guy"

"Oh, I'm aware." The half-whisper slipped right past her ironclad brain-to-mouth filter, and she clamped down on her lip, hard. This was exactly the reason she never slept with friends. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't forget the fact that you'd ridden the o****m train all the way to the station together.

In her case, three times. And oh, God, that was one trip she hadn't wanted to see end.

Setting her shoulders, Addison gave herself a mental slap upside the head and wrenched herself back to the supremely grouchy firefighter in front of her who was very much in danger of losing his cool enough to complicate this case. "I know it's shitty, Dempsey. But could you please just let me handle this? You threatening Bishop is only going to make this more difficult, and I'm doing my due diligence. I promise."

Ryan crossed his arms over his chest. But rather than argue, he surprised her with, "Okay. But just know that if he shows up anywhere near Chloe again, and I happen to be around? I'm not sitting on the sidelines."

"I get it," Addison said.

Now all she had to do was hope like hell she could get to Bishop before that happened.