Page 154 of Fearless

“Sensitive?” Mercy grinned. “Sergeant Fielding, are you gonna ask me out?”

The guy underling lifted his brows.

The girl hid a tiny smile behind the clipboard she held.

Fielding didn’t so much as twitch. “You haven’t been around for a while. I thought you’d moved on to some other chapter.”

Mercy shrugged. “For a few years.” The grin again. “Did you miss me?”

“No, but I’m betting Kenneth’s teenage daughter did.”

Mercy felt his face freeze over. His expression didn’t change, but it hardened into a plastic mask. “Well, Ghost has got his girl Ava, but she’s not a teenager.” Another shrug, for effect.

“Not anymore, but she was when you first became sexually involved with her. The age of consent in Tennessee is eighteen, Felix. She was seventeen when you skipped town; that’s statutory rape.”

“Statute of limitations on that ran out three years ago.Ifit even happened. So don’t get hard yet,monami.”

“I can’t prosecute, no, but I don’t think anyone in Knoxville would like to know that a rapist was back in town.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Mercy grinned again, but there was nothing pleasant about it this time. “You came all the way down here to ask about some imaginary thing I did five years ago? In case you forgot, one of our guys wasmurderedlast week. Maybe you should be asking about that.”

“Just trying to establish a timeline,” Fielding said. “Five years ago, Ava Teague gets hospitalized, and you leave town. Last week, you come back into town, and five hours later, Andre’s dead.”

Mercy laughed. “Oh, so I must have done it. Me, the teen-raper and brother-stabber. Is that it?”

Both uniforms were getting uncomfortable. The girl had edged back a step.

Fielding shrugged. “Fourteen years ago, you came into town, and an all-out gang war erupted. Trouble seems to follow you around, Lécuyer. If someone says ‘murder,’ I’d be stupid not to come sniffing after you.”

“Or maybe I follow the trouble.” Mercy winked at him. “When you feel like arresting me and dragging me down to the precinct, I’ll be happy to cooperate. Until then, I’ve got shit to do.”

He half-expected to feel Taser prongs at his back, but he made it back inside the garage, to the bike he’d been working on before. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that Fielding had Walsh in his crosshairs, the blank-faced Englishman staring at him with a total lack of interest. Served the asshole right; he’d have better luck questioning a fence post.

“Prick,” Aidan said, from somewhere behind him.

“Yeah,” Mercy agreed.

A prick with more information than any of them had ever offered up.

Ghost looked up at the knock at the central office door. Without Maggie around fulltime, the place was quickly going to shit. He’d be the first to admit that he sometimes took his wife’s business contributions for granted; he didn’t really learn that until she took a day or two off and his tidy world began to fray at the edges.

He hated fraying.

Jace stood in the threshold, still bloodshot and unkempt like he had been the morning after the party. Was the stupid little shit perpetually hungover?

“What?”

“Fielding’s talked to everyone. He wants to see you now, and he’s being a pain in the ass about it.”

Ghost sighed. “Send him in.”

Jace ducked out and was replaced by Fielding’s woefully bland, professionally-frowning countenance. He stepped over the threshold like he was stepping over a dirty puddle in a bad part of town, nose wrinkled for effect.

Ghost sat back in his chair and folded his arms. It didn’t matter how many pins the guy added to his uniform, how many titles he acquired within the department, to Ghost, he’d always be the awkward, plain kid who’d been crushed to learn that Maggie Lowe was running off and getting married before he’d ever worked up the courage to make a play for her himself. “You’re a sick fuck,” he’d told Ghost once, when he was still just a rookie beat cop. “She was just a kid, and you ruined her.” “I guess you never heard that ‘kid’ swear,” Ghost had returned.

Not one of their better conversations.

“Sergeant,” Ghost said. “I can give you five minutes, then I’ve got to get back to this balance sheet.”

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