One

ONE

M ost people—and I'm generalizing here, but I do believe this to be true—can't say for certain what it is that a US marshal does. They could point to the star and say that yes, that was us, but overall, because of TV and movies, they were certain all we did was put witnesses into protective custody. But that was such a small piece of it. We hunted down fugitives, which had a huge investigative component to it, we knocked on a lot of doors, had to be personable so people would talk to us, and there was a lot of running involved. More often than not, when I got off work, there was no cardio needed because I'd gotten it all in earlier. Today, for instance, if I went to the gym after work—which I would not since it was Friday and that was reserved for drinking—the only thing I'd be doing would be weights. At the moment, I'd been running for three blocks already, quickly going on four, so I had my cardio in and then some. Had this been my hometown of Wimberley, Texas, then sure, I'd be sprinting on the treadmill or swimming laps in the pool, but these were not country blocks I was hauling ass down. These were city blocks, which were so very different. This was Chicago, after all, where everything was bigger than anything I'd ever seen in all my thirty-one years.

The whole city had taken me by surprise when I'd first arrived six months ago, and I had been the proverbial fish out of water. And a country one at that. People had laughed at my accent, my boots, and most of all, my manners. I was far too proper, and that was not a good thing. I stuck out, and when you were new to a place and just wanted to fit in, that was the kiss of death. The big city and I were definitely not in sync. The one thing that saved me was that I knew how to do my job, I was good at it, and people could count on me.

My evaluations from my interim partners—first week riding with Josiah Redeker, a senior investigator, second week Bodhi Callahan, another senior investigator—were strong. I was observant, gentle with witnesses, tenacious with fugitives, and though I crossed the line at times, it was never for myself. I was not a glory hound, as Josiah Redeker pointed out to my new boss, Ian Doyle. It was the same job I'd been doing in Tyler, Texas, where I transferred from, and having that familiarity to fall back on had been my saving grace. Nobody could question my work ethic, even if they made fun of my accent. My partner was the sole person who never did. And when I told him I was going to work hard to get rid of it, he said not to, that I talked good and fine, and him I always believed.

Langston Ross was a Chicago native who used to work homicide and left to become a marshal. Older than me by two years—which made him thirty-three, not enough of an age difference to boss me around, and yet he did—Lang took me under his wing and showed me all the best stuff, from food to clubs to where I was not allowed to be in the middle of the night, especially when I was off duty. When I was on duty, as I was at the moment, again, still running, I could hear him in my ear, threatening me with salads for lunch for a week as I ran down the 1600 block of West 115th Street.

"So help me God, you will have nothing but kale for a week if you run down that fucking alley you're coming up on!"

"And if Vargas chooses to run on down?" I wheezed a bit. The running and talking was getting really hard to do.

"I don't give a shit," he growled.

It made him crazy if he didn't have a visual on me, so turning down alleys and disappearing around corners were nonnegotiable. He did not trust the GPS not to glitch and lose me. I had to admit, I was big on the whole seeing him with my own eyes myself. But I couldn't lose our fugitive either.

"You ain't playin' fair," I told him, feeling like my lungs were about to explode. The heat and humidity weren't helping at all. Chicago in the summer was hot and sticky, much like Texas, but something about all the buildings made it so much worse. It was like the skyscrapers and the concrete locked in the heat and made everything sweat—people and roads both. The nights weren't any better. They were absolutely sweltering, even with the AC in my bedroom cranked up high.

"You stop and wait for me!"

"You know I can't do that," I ground out as Vargas took the right turn down the alley and I followed, close on his heels.

"Goddammit!" His strained voice was loud in my ear. "I'm driving on the sidewa—get the fuck out of the way!" Then to me, "I hope you're happy."

I wasn't anything but focused on Vargas, to whom, I calculated, I was close enough to dive after. There was always the risk that you might leap too late and miss, and once that happened, those precious seconds were hard to make up. It was like watching football, which I played in high school and college, and you wondered how some asshole had missed that tackle. That's what it was, a miscalculation that allowed yards or a touchdown. But what Vargas didn't know was that I had been a damn fine strong safety and might have gone pro had I not blown out my knee in my junior year of college. So when I leaped, I had years of practice on my side and tackled Vargas hard. We both struck the ground, had the wind knocked out of us, but he hit concrete, and I hit him, so I was in much better shape. I had him facedown on the ground as two guys ran up to me.

"Hey, man, you all right?" the older of the two asked me.

I should have been scared—most guys would have been, maybe even pulled their gun and told them to back off—but I still had enough small town in me to assume people were there to help first.

It was nice of them. They were security guards, going by the logo on their shirts, and they must have seen me take down Vargas from their vantage point. There were a lot of doors in the alley, and they had probably been on a break.

"I'm fine," I assured them with a grin.

"You on the job?" the same one asked me.

I leaned a bit to my left so they could see the star on my belt beside my gun. "Deputy US marshal. Thank you for your concern."

Both of them nodded as Vargas yelled, "Help! This guy's gonna murder me!"

They scowled at him.

Vargas tried it in Spanish then, thinking that might work, but they shook their heads and left us, clearly unconcerned about my prisoner, whom I had on his feet, all zip-tied and ready for Lang to pick us up.

"Really?" I said to Vargas. "Murder you?"

"It was worth a shot," he grumbled.

"Why'd you run, man? It's hotter'n hell out here."

"Same thing. How did I know you were gonna chase me? The chances of losing you were pretty fuckin' good."

Hard to fault his logic.

We both heard the car before we saw it. Lang and I got lucky and were the first ones down to asset forfeiture last time for the new cars and got a 2007 Chevrolet Monte Carlo from impound. It was clean inside—so many of the cars were not—and, bonus, the radio worked. Not that Lang and I ever had the same opinion on music, but every now and then we could find some middle ground, especially on a stakeout when it was so late, we were both past caring.

The car came to a sharp, squealing stop and was left idling as Lang threw open the door and got out, looking mad enough to spit nails.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly.

"The hell did I say to you?" he roared as he came up beside me. "If I am more than a block behind you, you do not run down an alley! What if he had friends here?"

But it turned out that I had been the one with friends, and I waved at the two guys who had come to check on me. "They would have backed me up."

The scowl said he was not convinced.

"This is police brutality," Vargas complained to my partner.

"Shut up," Lang barked. "The hell were you thinking, running in this heat?"

Vargas groaned. "Put me in the car, man."

The car was an oasis of cool, easily a twenty-degree difference, and Vargas and I were quiet, absorbing the change in temperature. We enjoyed the ride, the only sound the blowing of the arctic air through the vents.

"You're lucky you didn't get heatstroke."

I was. Lang was right.

"And now we have to stop and get water so you and our fugitive can hydrate."

"Yes, please, let's get some water," Vargas agreed. "I'm sorry I was stupid before. I feel like I'm gonna throw up."

"Do not throw up in this car," Lang warned, taking a left and turning into a gas station. "I'm going to fucking kill Pazzi."

I was too tired from running to defend Eric Pazzi. He was a nice enough guy, but somehow or another, if something got screwed up, it was usually because of him. Some guys simply had that kind of shitty luck.

This particular incident had started when we went to the strip club where Vargas was getting a lap dance, and Deputy US Marshal Eric Pazzi had not immediately secured the fugitive because he had not yet run his fingerprints through IAFIS. Technically, until we had a positive ID, we could not say with absolute certainty that we had our fugitive. All we had was a grainy picture from the camera at the warehouse he helped rob, but we had information from a credible source—Vargas's ex—that his new girlfriend stripped at the Honey Trap and that he would, without a doubt, be there. She even hooked us up with his Instagram account since she'd deleted all evidence of him from her phone, her cloud, and all her social media. So we knew what Albert Vargas looked like, but until we ran his DNA through CODIS, we couldn't say for certain that the guy now sitting in the back of the car was the person we'd found evidence of at the scene. But since the guys who'd done the job with him had rolled and said that yes, Vargas was the brains of the operation, it was enough to detain him.

I told Pazzi: we take him in and get to the bottom of it.

Pazzi told me we had to run his prints to make sure this guy was actually Albert Vargas, even though the driver's license he had on him said he was. It was a ridiculous waste of time, and to me, it was Pazzi flexing because he was the senior marshal on site.

I insisted we restrain him while we ran his prints. That was SOP right out of the US marshal manual.

Pazzi didn't like that, said that could easily become a PR nightmare and would not look good to the community at large. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. But first of all, we were not out in the community, we were in a strip club, and second, I would argue that most people liked to see us restrain fugitives who were a danger to them or their families. So yeah, Pazzi was wrong and I was right, and even his partner, Yamane, admitted that Vargas should be zip-tied while we waited for the proper identification to come through. But then Vargas said he had to pee, and the apprehension went to hell in a handbasket once he climbed out of the bathroom window that, really, I didn't think a full-grown man could get through. I didn't waste time trying, instead flying out of the men's room and out the back door. That had been the beginning of the four-block chase.

Pazzi and Yamane remained at the club and called it in, and Lang and I went after the fugitive, as we were lower in the food chain. Now, as far as I knew, they were still at the club, and I was guarding my exhausted prisoner while we both waited for water and Gatorade.

"I should have stayed in that bathroom," Vargas whimpered, lying down in the back seat. "Man, I'm getting a headache."

So was I.

There were ice packs in the glove compartment, the kind you cracked and shook to get cold. I got one for Vargas and leaned between the front seats to put it over his eyes.

"Thanks, man, you're all right."

When Lang returned, I got in the back and helped Vargas drink some Gatorade and then gulped down a bottle myself.

"You two ready to go now?" Lang asked sarcastically from the front seat. "Or should I drive through and get lunch while we're at it?"

"I could eat," Vargas replied.

"Were you not taught sarcasm as a child?" I asked, giving him some water.

"Fuck off, man, I'm hungry. Why can't we eat just because he's pissed?"

"He has a point," I told my partner, who shot me a look of death in the rearview mirror. "Are you gonna be mad all day?"

"I don't know. Will you be doing any more stupid crap today, or are you done?"

"So done," I promised him, and finally, I got the grin and the shake of his head that told me I was forgiven.

"Don't do it again," he warned me softly, under his breath. "You don't want me to trade you in."

No. I really didn't.