Page 80 of Under Cover

Crosby relaxed his flex because crushing McEnany’s larynx would have been too damned easy.

“Whose ass are you trying to impress?” Crosby growled, and when McEnany whined in protest, Crosby flexed his foot again.

“Cavendish,” McEnany whispered. “Courtland Cavendish. He’s the one who got me this job.”

Aces. Crosby flexed his foot again. “You fell down the stairs,” he said brutally.

“Creedy won’t—”

“You got drunk and fell down the stairs,” Crosby reiterated. “I hear a whisper of anything else, we’re gonna have this fight for real.”

McEnany whined, wind whistling through his broken nose and spattering blood, and Crosby thought sourly that he wanted to arrest the guy, take the guy in, but Creedy had his goons watching the squad—and a room full of methed-out cowboys half a flight of stairs and a hallway away. If Crosby tried to get McEnany out of this building, his odds of seeing daylight were not great, but McEnany was a coward, and Crosby had the goods on him, the thing that would get Creedy gunning for him too.

Crosby needed to talk to his team, talk to Harding, see how they could use this situation to their advantage. But first he headed to his room to grab his stuff.

He unlocked all three locks in record time and strode in, peering around the room with a practiced eye to see if everything was as he left it.

It wasn’t. There was a kid crashed on his couch.

“Goddammit, Junior,” he muttered, and Junior—fully clothed and looking like someone had caught a good one in the eye himself—rolled off the couch and onto his knees.

“What? Sorry, Ricky, I—”

“How did you even get in here?” Crosby demanded, locking his door again and shoving the kitchen chair under it. “I have three goddamned locks there for a reason!”

Junior gave him an almost bashful glance. “Well, you know, I can pick a fuckin’ lock—” And then he seemed to see Crosby for the first time.

“What the hell happened?”

Crosby was rooting under his bathroom sink for a box of bandages and first aid supplies he’d bought on his first day, and he didn’t answer.

As he stood up, Junior answered for him. “Did my old man give you what for ’cause you killed that guy?”

Crosby stared at him with his one good eye and wished there was some way he could staunch the blood dripping from his nose. “What’re you talking about?”

“’Cause he went pretty bananas when he found out. I guess Curtis Miller and him used to be tight back in the day. So word came that you killed the guy—he lost his shit.”

“Well, Miller shot my rookie through a wall and wasn’t stopping. I had to do something or what kind of cop would I be?” Crosby asked bitterly.

“Was the rookie okay?”

Crosby sighed and leaned his head against the mirror. “He’ll be in the hospital for a while, but his vest stopped the slugs. But that didn’t stop Miller from shooting.”

Junior nodded. “See, nobody told my dad that. Wait, if my dad didn’t do that to you, who did?”

Crosby grunted. “Three guesses.”

“McEnany?” To his credit, Junior sounded very, very disgusted. “Man, that guy. Comes in here and talks to my dad like he’s dirt. My dad was born here. He’s been with the Sons since he was a baby. He shoulda been a cop like his old man, but fuckin’ Equal Opportunity wouldn’t let him be a cop ’cause he’s white—”

Crosby squinted at him through the blood on his face. “What are you even talking about? Three-quarters of my division is white, and that’s definitely not what the people we patrol look like. If your dad didn’t get in, there had to be another reason.”

Junior gaped at him, because this was obviously something that had not occurred to him. “I just… he’s said—”

Crosby sighed and splashed water on his face, wincing when it hit his cuts. He had to get out of there. He’d text Iliana later that he made it to the train.

“Junior, you’re not a bad kid. You make enough at the warehouse—maybe save some money and get a flop with some guys who don’t spend all day doing meth and playing video games and then pound you when you get back from work.” Crosby had seen him sporting black eyes, fat lips, and limping in a suspicious, painful way that had nothing to do with his legs and everything to do with strained muscles in his glutes. God, poor kid. He stayed away from the meth most of the time, probably because he didn’t want to get caught unawares, but there was no doubt about it. Sometimes hedidget caught.

“They’re my friends,” Junior whispered, looking away.