Page 16 of Memphis Heat

Chapter One

“Callahan. Black. My office. Now.” Snorrasan’s abrasive voice ripped through the squad room.

Jamie Callahan took his time buttoning his shirt before he headed down the hall to answer the summons.

Granted, Snorrasan was his commanding officer, and Callahan would never openly disrespect a superior in front of those in his command, but Snorrasan was a son of a bitch at best. Callahan had disliked him from the moment they’d met. Still, the man was good at his job.

“Congrats on the promotion, Callahan.”

Callahan glanced up to see Amanda Black heading for Snorrasan’s office, those long, long legs of hers eating up the distance between them.

And the look didn’t stop there. He trained his attention on her face, because looking lower was unprofessional.

Not that it helped -- her face was one of her best features.

Hell, just the mention of her name was enough to kick Jamie Callahan’s libido into overdrive.

Except for one persistently nagging issue that even time couldn’t sweep under the history books.

“Thank you, Officer Black. Glad to see you’re back on duty.” He was now her commanding officer. And that meant she was off limits. Which didn’t help a whole hell of a lot, but sometimes addressing her formally, saying her rank out loud, made him acutely aware he had his integrity to protect.

“The feeling’s mutual, I assure you. Fucking hospitals give me the creeps.

Especially the one I came from. I felt like a giant lab rat.

Work seemed the only cure.” Her smile seemed to light up the world, taking away some of his tension over almost losing her.

But not all of it. He doubted that fear would ever completely dissipate.

“We’ve missed you.” I missed you . They’d lost Smith and Reginald, and nearly lost Black and White as well.

Callahan held open the door to Snorrasan’s office, acting like the gentleman his mother had wanted him to be and not the horny teenager he felt like around Amanda.

“Black. Callahan. Glad you could make it.” Snorrasan’s humorless tone still managed to convey his general dislike at being kept waiting.

“Sit down.” Snorrasan didn’t waste time with preliminaries.

“We all lost friends in that clusterfuck last month. Now that Black’s back on full duty, I want you to work together.

I’m officially assigning you Black as your new partner, Callahan. Try to keep this one alive.”

Keep this one alive ? Fury ignited deep in Callahan’s chest. It’d been an ambush, plain and simple, and no one had asked the question he needed answered. “Yeah? That’d be a hell of a lot easier if I know someone’s got my back.” Where the hell had Snorrasan and his team been?

“Funny you should mention that.” Amanda slid in smoothly, looking down at her long fingers, inspecting her nails like a queen addressing a peasant.

“White and I were supposed to have a team coming in behind Callahan and Reginald. If I’m not mistaken, that was the plan devised by…

” She trailed off as she looked up at Snorrasan, capturing his gaze in one so cold, Callahan was sure the room chilled by ten degrees. “ You .”

Snorrasan stiffened. “Just what are you trying to say, Black?”

“I’m saying, before you go making snide remarks to my Lieutenant, get your fucking facts straight. If anyone dropped the ball, it was your team. Not Callahan.”

That was way more than insubordination, but Callahan wasn’t touching it. He suspected Snorrasan wouldn’t either. Mainly because Amanda was dead on right.

Snorrasan smiled. “Just as I suspected. You two will be perfect for one another.”

Callahan bristled at that one. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Why the fuck do you think I promoted you, Callahan? Not for your charm, that’s for damn sure.

You’re one of the most insufferable, hair-triggered bastards in my squad.

As for Black, you take insubordination to new levels.

You’re also two of the finest cops I’ve ever worked with.

You’re both too damn honest to keep your mouths shut, even when it’s in your own best interest. Which means I can trust you.

And right now I can’t say that of everyone on this squad. ”

All Callahan’s animosity drained away at the deadly calm in Snorrasan’s tone. A spike of electricity ran up his spine like the razor edge of a needle. “What are you sayin’, Boss?”

“I’m saying, watch your backs. You’re asking the right questions, but you need to ask them a little more carefully.

We were set up out there, all of us. I don’t have all the answers.

Yet. You’re going to help me find them. You’ll be working with Lieutenant Carson and Officer Regan on this.

I want to know who sold us out, and I want to know before we lose another team.

Don’t trust anyone else, pack or not. Are you in? ”

Damn it. Under any other circumstances, Callahan would have gone off on Snorrasan for assigning him the hottest single woman in the precinct for a partner, but Snorrasan was right.

If the squad had been compromised, there was no place Amanda was safer than in his sight.

His dick would just have to learn to ignore her delicious body and let his other brain focus on work. “Fuck, yeah. I’m in.”

Amanda turned to look at him while she answered Snorrasan.

The tip of her tiny pink tongue crept out to wet those already shiny, chocolate-covered-cherry lips.

“Do I wanna partner up with the hottest hunk on the Men of the Memphis PD calendar and go hunt down the bastards who murdered our partners and made me and White into werewolves? Oh, yeah. I’m liking the sound of this. ”

She’d seen that damn calendar? Alarm bells went off in Callahan’s head. “You know you’re insane.”

Amanda’s grin turned feral. “I’m glad you finally noticed.”

Callahan stifled a groan. “It was for charity, and I’m your commanding officer. Regulations…”

Snorrasan snorted. “I’m not hearing a word of this.

I know you’ve been skating around one another for months, trying to ignore what the rest of us already knew, but I don’t need to hear about it.

Yet . I need the two of you together. Right where you are.

You work the rest out however you need to -- just keep your private business private until this is cleared up. ”

Callahan closed his eyes. I am so fucked … Snorrasan had all but given them permission… No. He couldn’t do this. It went against everything he’d ever believed. Didn’t it? Regulations were there for a reason and he’d always followed the regs.

He looked up and saw Amanda grinning down at him. “What’s the matter, white boy? You got a problem with black pussy?”

Yeah. He was fucked.

“Go. You have work to do.” Snorrasan shook his head and waved them away. “And I know it’s against your natures, but try to use a little discretion!”

He was an idiot. He’d read her so wrong. She’d been leading him around by the cock ever since she got out of the academy, and he was the only one who hadn’t known it. And his commander was feeding him to the wolves. Literally. “You’re black? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Baby, I’m just a bitch. A bitch in heat, and you’re looking a lot like lunch these days.”

Callahan grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her out of Snorrasan’s office, but kicking the door shut in his wake couldn’t drown out the sound of his commander’s laughter.

* * *

Callahan stared through his field glasses at the warehouse off in the distance.

The night made it nearly impossible to see anything clearly even with his night vision goggles, but he could sense movement.

What, he couldn’t tell, but movement nonetheless.

This was it. This had to be it. All the intel they’d managed to gather pointed to a string of warehouses rented under this company front, and spotters had seen three tractor-trailers arriving just this morning.

“Looks like a go,” he said over the radio to the rest of the team. “Red Bandits on the move. Proceed with extreme caution.”

“Red Bandits?” Amanda gave him a sidelong glance. “We’re part of an elite team of werewolf cops and all you could come up with was ‘Red Bandits’?”

He shrugged. “They’re not paying me for creativity, sweetheart.” Then they both shifted and crept down the slope to the warehouse.

Their unit had fanned out to the east and south, coordinating their movements so they all arrived at about the same time, but far enough back so they could catch any stragglers that tried to flee before the main fight.

Callahan lived for this part. The chase.

He scented the air, searching for any sign the rival pack knew they were coming.

Fear. Excitement. All these things could mean they’d been made.

Except the closer they got, the less Callahan saw.

Or scented for that matter. Where were the tractor-trailers?

The lights in the building were all off except for a cargo dock light on the back loading bay.

There were no delivery vans, no box trucks, no…

anything. Not even a car in the employee parking lot.

Shifting back to human form, he keyed the mic again. “Report. Any activity?”

“Negative,” Officer White responded.

“Nothing here,” Carson shot back. “I think we’ve been had.”

Callahan ground his teeth in frustration. “Regroup. Top of the knoll on the other side. Keep an eye out for anything that doesn’t belong.”

“I see something,” White shot back. “In the tree on the ridge. Wolves.”

Callahan focused his goggles on the ridge and saw dozens of pairs of glowing eyes in the dark. Bastards were watching them, laughing as they made their move -- too late, again. As if on signal, the Russians all shifted, heading for the ridge. Not this time . Arrogant pricks.