Page 7 of Play the Game

“Is my girlfriend okay?” I asked. I wasn’t really concerned for her safety, but it seemed like the first logical question a non-spy would ask.

“You need to worry more about yourself,” he said. “I’m Detective Ramirez, and I’m here to read you your rights and inform you of the charges against you.”

I smiled. This had to be a joke. “What charges? We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time when that belligerent bully—”

“John, aka that belligerent bully, happens to be a friend of mine. He says you attacked him twice in one day, and I believe him.”

Oh, shit.

I mentally reviewed what we knew about “John,” whom we’d identified as Joseph Burgess when we’d run a deep background. He had three known aliases and fuck knows how many unknowns, but he did business in Chicago using the name John Saltzer. He was mobbed up to his eyeballs, which meant Detective Ramirez was either a spectacularly poor judge of character or was as dirty as a coal factory in hell.

“I’m sure John doesn’t want any trouble,” I gambled.

Ramirez snarled at me. “He wants you locked up for assault, battery, and all-around assholery.”

“He assaulted me, so you need to file charges against him, too.”

“Telling me how to do my job?”

I knew I should shut the hell up, but this guy was such a classic corrupt cop, I couldn’t do it. “Maybe someone should.”

Ramirez scowled, but he didn’t seem particularly ruffled. “The first two things on that list are your official charges. That last one’s just between us. Good news for you is your girlfriend will probably be released by morning.”

I wasn’t worried about Tamela’s health and welfare, because she could more than hold her own. But the thought of her being locked in a holding cell for the next several hours because of my dumbass plan boosted my heart rate for the first time all night. The signal from my biometrics watch would ping on Bond’s end any minute. Except, she didn’t know she should be monitoring our biometrics because none of the agents under her care were out on an operation. Not a sanctioned one, anyway.

“Bad news is,” Ramirez continued, “you’ll be with us a bit longer. Judge won’t be in to arraign you until Monday.”

The actual good news was my fake identity, if they managed to force it out of me—I’d purposely left my counterfeit license at home—would hold up to any scrutiny the Chicago PD could muster. The really bad news was that spending the weekend in lockup wouldn’t go unnoticed by the powers that be at HEAT.

I was used to running right up to boundary lines and sometimes, okay often, toeing over them and getting away with it. But TJ was already salty about my stunt this afternoon, even if it had yielded our best hope of getting behind the Carbonados firewall at their clandestine facility. Screwing up so badly again in less than twelve hours and dragging down Alpha Team’s resident good girl with me might piss him off enough to follow through on his omnipresent threat to sideline me for a couple of operations.

“I haven’t had my phone call,” I said. It was the only ace I had up my sleeve.

He narrowed his eyes and stared at me. “You have a defense attorney who will answer in the middle of the night, or do you want to leave a voicemail for the public defender’s office?”

“Neither.” I looked away from him. “A friend who will answer and can help.”

At least, I hoped he would and that he could help. He was a new friend, but I’d helped him out when he’d been trying to win Dr. Bond’s heart, not that he needed more than a little advice. And if he wasn’t inclined to get out of bed at two in the morning on my account, he would probably do it for Bond.

“Hope you know this friend’s number by heart.” Ramirez pulled out his cell phone.

That gave me a bad feeling, like he didn’t want a record of my outgoing call on a precinct phone. It would take me all of two seconds to track down the record from his line, but since he didn’t know who or what I was, he didn’t realize that. I wasn’t inclined to enlighten him.

“I do,” I said, and rattled off the number, which of course, I’d memorized because you never know when you need to reach someone like him.

Ramirez scowled at me and made no move to dial.

“Do you need me to repeat it?” I asked, hoping I’d spoken too fast and not that he’d recognized the number.

“This some kind of joke?” he asked.

Okay, so he might have recognized the number.

“Sounds like a cop’s number,” he said.

I nodded. No use in denying it. “Detective Evan Prescott. He’s new to the force.”

Ramirez snorted, still scowling. Then again, that might be his natural expression, given I hadn’t seen any other on his face. “Private security before he came here, Philadelphia PD before that, some army hero before that. Figures you’d be friends with that arrogant asshole.”

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