Page 112 of Under Cover

Harding laughed a little. “Don’t you want to know why they gotdifferentdrugs?”

Crosby squinted at him. “I’m going to assume it’s because Cavendish was expanding the operation and tonight’s little delivery was not just meth and fentanyl?”

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” he said, and Chadwick picked up on it and started singing “Funiculi, Funiculà”—some sort of version involving food—and Carlyle joined in.

“Dear God,” Harding muttered. “Somebody find them some Led Zeppelin on Spotify. I’m begging you.”

“You’re just lucky you missed the second act ofHamilton,” Crosby snapped. “Now go on about different drug deliveries and whether or not we should care.”

“We should care,” Harding said, manfully tuning out a not-bad version of “The Immigrant Song,” sung by Carlyle with Chadwick on air guitar. “Because those four guys in the boat you took out weren’t the Florida dealers Beauchamp was using for the fentanyl and meth. They wereTurkishdealers, and we used their identities to pinpoint the guys in the DOJ on Beachamp’s phone who had just abandoned cases against the dealers for—as they claimed—lack of evidence.”

“Was there a lack of evidence?” Crosby asked, feeling a little bloodthirsty.

“No, young Judson, there was not,” Harding said, relish in every syllable. He looked up at Rogers and Hammerstein and snapped, “If you two don’t sober up, you’re going to miss all the fun, and haven’t you missed enough?”

Immediately, he had Chadwick and Carlyle’s complete attention.

“I don’t know, Chief,” Chadwick said. “Seems like we already missed quite a bit of fun.”

“Will we get to kill someone with this fun?” Carlyle all but begged.

“No killing, I don’t think,” Harding said consideringly, “but if we bring you clothes and let you shower and change, would you like to go arresting? ’Cause I’ve got five warrants, and Natalia, Swan, Pearson, and Harm are on their way to Washington with two of them, but I thought the lot of us plus Garcia could go arrest our hometown scumbags. What do you say?”

Crosby grinned at him, feeling an entire surge of adrenaline. “Would Iknowone or two of those scumbags, sir?”

Harding’s grin was all teeth. “You just might.”

TWO HOURSlater, Harding pulled his department-issue SUV right in front of the steps of One Police Plaza, and Garcia followed suit.

When they got out of the vehicles, four uniforms met them, trying to insist they couldn’t park there, and they had to go around to the parking complex down the block.

Harding held up a warrant on his tablet and said, “This is signed by three different judges, and this case is big and ugly enough that if we don’t walk these two perps down the front steps, the entire city is going to getveryupset. Do you understand?”

The ranking officer paused to read the warrant and then blinked. “We’ll guard your vehicles, sir,” he said, leaving the five of them, in tactical gear and fresh uniforms, to make their way up the stairs. Carlyle and Chadwick had been worked over before they’d been drugged, and their faces were flush with new bruises, split lips, and cuts over their eyes, but Crosby knew his face was still worse, and the fresh bandages over his stitched stab wound and the gunshot graze gave emphasis.

Garcia just looked tired, and as they were walking up the stairs, Crosby said, “Hey, did anybody feed you?”

The other three men looked at them, and Garcia smacked his uninjured arm. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Crosby grunted and pulled out a protein bar he’d bought at the vending machine in the hospital while waiting for Chadwick and Carlyle to be discharged.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he muttered. “When we’re done here, I could fuckin’ eat. Anybody else?”

It was weird—it was like they all realized it was suddenly ten o’clock in the morning.

“Yeah,” Chadwick muttered. “I could eat. Pizza for breakfast, anyone?”

“Steak and eggs,” Carlyle said dreamily. “And bacon.”

“Egg-white omelet,” Harding said as they neared the pillared entrance. “Goat cheese.”

“Eggs Benedict,” Garcia said promptly. “Extra ham. Crosby?”

Crosby thought about what they were about to do. “Steak and potatoes,” he said, feeling his smile get bloody. “Extra rare.”

Harding had called ahead and learned, fortuitously enough, that their two subjects had a meeting together that morning—along with some other gentlemen. “Community leaders” is what the receptionist called them. The receptionist had been asked not to relay any information about Harding’s team incoming, not even to the other officers and detectives at the plaza.

He flashed his credentials at the desk and was directed to an elevator several floors up. Every step, every floor, every breath in the small car was a buildup of anticipation, and none of them spoke a word.