Page 4

CHAPTER 4

As the lowering sun slanted through the windows of Costa’s office, he ran through a quick check of work emails and messages on the intra-office chat—from which he deleted yet another anonymously posted “feral hogs” meme and its associated cluster of “haha” emoji.

It was either Delgado or Caine; they’d found an online treasure trove of the things and kept sending them to him or leaving them on his desk. Someone in the computer department was definitely in on it, because they were the only people who had the know-how to post things anonymously on the intranet. He had been running the place long enough to know that making a big deal out of it would only make things worse. Everybody loved a boss with a sense of humor. Anyway, he’d been hazed a lot harder than this as a new agent.

Still. There would be retaliation. He was positive Caine was in on it, even if Caine hadn’t been the original instigator, and the guy had a wedding coming up at some as-yet-unannounced time in the summer or fall. Which meant Costa had a bachelor party to plan.

Oh yes. There would be payback.

Speaking of the devil. Caine caught him stretching his hamstrings in the hall by the drinking fountain. As Caine sauntered up in his usual sunglasses and dark suit, Costa teetered wildly, nearly fell, caught himself and leaned casually on the wall.

“You’re here early, Caine. Know anything about any recent posts on the office chat?”

“Haven’t even checked it,” Caine said, perfectly straight-faced. “So what’s this about you showing up at noon, drenched in sweat and staggering?”

Costa glowered at him. “Nearly every part of that is a lie. You weren’t even here.”

“You ran all the way here from the U of A campus, didn’t you?”

“It’s only, what, ten miles?”

“More like fifteen.”

“Whatever. Can’t a guy jog fifteen miles without everyone giving him the side-eye?”

Caine swiveled around to lean his shoulder against the wall. “Something’s eating you.”

“You get engaged and suddenly you’re all touchy-feely,” Costa grumbled. “I liked you better when you had no sense of humor, hated everyone, and barely said ten words a year.”

“I still hate everyone, especially you,” Caine retorted. “So this is the thanks I get for coming in while the sun’s still up. Fine, keep your problems to yourself and run your feet off.”

“Thanks, I plan to. You’re here early, so I’m gonna head home. I have a family shindig and a date to prep for.”

“A date with?—”

“A date with no one who is any of your business. Walk with me to my office; I’ll give you a quick rundown of anything to watch out for on the night shift, although there isn’t much happening these days.”

“Are you limping?”

“No,” Costa snapped.

Luckily shifter healing would make short work of blisters.

* * *

He’d had one of the interns retrieve his car from campus earlier, so he picked it up from the employee parking garage beneath the Arizona SCB’s desert facility and drove home. It was a gorgeous commute, warm and beautiful, the early evening sky painting the desert in a thousand shades of blue, pink, and gold.

Costa stopped by a grocery store to pick up a fruit plate and a medium-priced bottle of wine. He texted Auntie Lo to let her know what he was bringing, then turned off his phone to avoid the reciprocal flurry of texts that he could guess the content of by heart, namely:

- We have plenty of food. So much food.

- But can you pick up this grocery list on your way.

- Never mind, forget items 2 and 19, cousin L is getting those.

- But here are six more things to pick up.

- Are you bringing that lovely Diana girl? When are you doing the proper thing and making her your wife, Cesar Quinn?

Maybe, he mused as he let himself into his condo, he would see if Di was interested in staging a fake breakup tonight, just to get the family will-they-won’t-they dance over with once and for all. She would throw herself into the drama; he just knew it. That lovely drawling late-night-DJ voice was just as sexy when it was yelling at him, as he knew from experience.

No, if he ruined Uncle Roddy’s birthday party with a breakup fight, the aunties would never let him hear the end of it. They would probably also set out to reconcile him and Diana ... oh God. It could, in fact, be worse.

A quiet breakup with no witnesses around, he decided as he put the wine on the counter, the fruit plate in the fridge, and shed his rumpled sweats on the way to the shower. A big public blow-up would be satisfying in its finality, but unfortunately the family would talk of nothing else for years. What he wanted was for them to forget all about it, and Diana, and him.

He stepped into the shower with a groan of relief.

If Di can’t make it tonight, then let’s make this the night, he resolved as hot water sluiced the dried sweat off his skin and the soreness out of his aching ligaments. He could report the breakup tonight, and tell Diana she was no longer his fake girlfriend the next time he saw her. Yes, that ought to work.

He ignored the unhappy shiver that went through his middle at the thought. It wasn’t like they were actually together, so breaking up should make no difference; it would be more real than anything else about their relationship. But just thinking about it felt disloyal somehow.

Diana would thank him, he thought firmly. He scooped a handful of all-in-one shampoo-conditioner and worked it into his hair.

Actually no, he mused, sudsy water sluicing over his shoulders. Diana would hit the ceiling if he broke up with her without telling her. She would want a say in it, and anyway, they needed to get their stories straight.

He reached for a towel. Fine, then: if Diana couldn’t make it tonight, or even if she could, they would plan their impending breakup for sometime between tonight’s engagement and whatever family or work event fell on both of them next. Which was what, Di’s workplace’s spring greet-the-new-hires picnic, probably? It was a little unnerving to realize that he knew the date by heart.

He was halfway through shaving when there was a brisk knock at the door, and a fresh ripple of pleasant anticipation coursed through him.

Diana. She’d made it after all.

“Hang on, I’m coming.”

Half-shaved, towel around his waist, Costa went to get the door, only realizing as he reached for the doorknob that it was possible he was about to scandalize some Mormon missionary or Boy Scout popcorn-selling parent. Oh well, life’s tough sometimes.

He opened the door.

It was only once he saw Diana on his doorstep that he realized there were, possibly, some good reasons not to expose his mostly naked body to his fake girlfriend as she stared at him.

Diana was not dressed for a date, fake or otherwise. She wore her typical work clothes, a khaki Park Service shirt and a pair of extremely dusty jeans with practical boots. In fact, she was covered with dust from head to foot. Her thick dark curls were tucked under a baseball cap, spilling in a loose ponytail down her back. Her face was, as always, so beautiful he could get lost in it, a strong jaw and snub nose with a deep tan from her many hours outdoors. She was holding something in her arms, which Costa barely glanced at, a bundle the size of a large ham that was wrapped in some sort of soft fabric.

“I hope that’s a dress you’re carrying, or at least a nice blouse.”

“I—what?” Diana blinked, wrenching her gaze away from his bare chest. “I need to—come in.”

“Stop ogling the merchandise. Fake boyfriend, remember?” Costa held the door for her as she hurried inside with a furtive glance around. There was an almost comical air of nervous alertness to her, and she visibly relaxed once she was inside. “Did you steal a dress?”

“What dress?” Diana said.

“For the shindig tonight? Unless you’re planning on going as-is, which I don’t have a single problem with, but you might want to take a shower?—”

“Oh, right, that. I forgot. Look, we’ll deal with that later. I have a bigger problem.”

“You stole something more expensive than a dress?”

“Could you put a shirt on?” Diana said. “It’s very distracting.”

Costa grinned and folded his arms, intentionally flexing. “Sorry, distracting from what? Maybe if you’d change into your?—”

At that point the object she was carrying squirmed, made a small peeping noise, and extruded a tiny pink arm. Costa, who was leaning a hip on the arm of the couch, very nearly lost his balance and also his towel.

“Is that a baby? You stole a baby?”

“I did not—” Diana began indignantly. “Well, okay, I did, technically, but?—”

“You what?”

“Will you let me explain?”

“Only if there are actual explanations!”

“Here,” Diana said. She thrust the bundle in Costa’s direction. “It has been a really long day, it’s not over yet, I drove here with a baby on the floor of the backseat of my car?—”

“ What ?”

“—which she handled very well, by the way, not that I didn’t panic every time I passed a highway patrol cruiser— Costa, take the baby —and I need a drink.”

Costa took the baby because otherwise it looked like Diana was about to drop ... it? her? on the floor. The small weight settled against his chest, warm and heavy and soft.

Diana, free of her burden, marched into the kitchen. Costa followed her, jiggling the baby. From what he could see of her in the blanket, she was adorable, very pink and healthy with a mop of light brown curls.

“Di, did you kidnap this baby?” Costa asked Diana, or more accurately, the dusty and very nicely shaped ass of her jeans, as Diana rummaged in his fridge’s vertical freezer.

Diana’s answer was mumbled. She straightened up and unerringly opened the cabinet where Costa kept the hard liquor.

“Di.”

Diana poured two fingers of whiskey over ice. She took a swallow.

“Okay. That’s better. There is a story here, which I will tell you as soon as you put some damn pants on.”

“Can’t, I’m holding a baby.” Costa looked down and jiggled the baby some more. The small round face, topped with a dusting of dark fuzz, blinked up at him and then, very charmingly, smiled. “Hi there, you adorable little kidnap victim. Di, whose baby is this?”

“I have no idea.” Diana took another swig of whiskey. “Trust me, if I knew, I’d—well, okay, possibly not give her back immediately, given that there are some highly suspicious circumstances involved in however she got to where I found her?—”

“Okay, so you found her,” Costa said patiently, feeling like he was pulling the story out of her with tweezers, one word at a time. “And where was that, exactly? Yes, hi, you’re still very cute,” he added as the baby grabbed a handful of her blanket and pulled it into her mouth. “No, don’t eat that. Di, any information you want to add, you can drop in at any time.”

“The Chiricahua mountains.”

“You found her in the mountains?”

“I found her next to a crashed airplane, the one we were looking for. My paramedic ride-along was with me. Luis. I think you met him at the park employee spring mixer last year.”

“Yeah, sure,” Costa said. He had a sharp memory for faces and names, but the various events to which he and Diana had accompanied each other as a plus-one fake date all ran together in his head, as did the many people he’d met at them.

“He’s willing to keep her secret for now. He gave her an exam and said that she seems healthy, and we fed her at his place with some emergency formula he keeps in his supplies. Then I, um, made a blanket nest for her in the rear footwell of the car and drove straight here, because all I could think of—” She abruptly snapped her mouth shut.

Costa found himself wondering how she was going to end that sentence, but he was pretty sure he knew where she was going with it. You’d fix things . Somehow, for all the ups and downs, he and Diana did seem to have that going for them.

“You drove here from the Chiricahuas?”

“From Sierra Vista, where Luis lives. It was about two hours and I sweated buckets the whole way. Head on a swivel, terrified of getting stopped. I must have looked like an absolute lunatic.”

For tact’s sake, and also because Diana had a strong throwing arm, Costa decided not to point out that nothing about the way she was telling this story helped with that impression. “Do you have any baby supplies at all?”

“Oh right, Luis gave me a couple of extra diapers. He keeps some stuff around. I should probably go out and get them,” Diana said. She set down her whiskey glass.

“Maybe first you can tell me why in the Sam hill—” Costa always found himself turning into his granddad when he was irritated and trying to keep a lid on it. “—you walked off a crash site with a baby? Did you actually find her in a crashed airplane?”

“In the brush near it,” Diana said. “Oh wait, I left something out?—”

“You think? Just one thing?”

“She shifted when I found her. I think she must’ve shifted and got out of the crash that way.”

“Oh, she’s a shifter,” Costa said. He should have realized; now that Diana mentioned it, he felt the slight frisson of recognition that shifters felt for each other. It was strangely distant in this baby, though, even more than in most young children.

The baby was now trying to grab handfuls of his chest hair.

“Yes, hi, still cute,” he said, detaching her one-handed. “Thanks for burying the lede, Di. At least this explains why you didn’t want to report it. Sort of. You need me to put out feelers and see if anyone in the local shifter community has reported a kid missing lately, maybe try to find a foster family until we can find where she comes from?”

“Yes—no—okay, yes, probably, but you haven’t seen what she turns into.”

Costa sighed. At this rate, he was never going to.

The baby chose that moment to twist in his arms, nearly fall out of them, and began to wail.