The Grifter
Chapter 3

Shawn pulled in a low, deep breath. Counted his raging heartbeats until they slowed a little. Did a lightning-fast assessment of both the facts and his situation.

Yep. Still fvcked over a barrel.

He slid a look at Frankie, which—surprise—did nothing to calm him. Her dark brown hair was shorter now, cropped just below her collar in the back with longer, tousled pieces framing her heart-shaped face. Even set in a frown, her mouth was still as lush as he remembered, and it didn’t matter that her body language was speaking nine different dialects of don’t f**k with me. Something deep within him very much wanted to take the challenge.

How she had gotten even more fierce and even more beautiful was seriously beyond him. But it was a mystery he’d have to unravel later, because right now, he had a way bigger mountain to climb.

This was no longer a case where Frankie would be on the periphery, safe behind the cover of a surveillance van or a building across the street. They were going undercover together, side by side in the thick of things, and that meant that despite his Kevlar-reinforced desire not to, he needed to tell Sinclair about their history.

Of course, the guy wasn’t entirely in the dark about the situation. Yes, Shawn had been on patrol at the Twelfth Precinct then, and he hadn’t met Sinclair—who had just passed the sergeant’s exam at the time—until three months after Frankie had left. Sinclair knew the basics, as in, yes, Shawn had responded to a call, yes, his partner at the time had been gravely injured. Yes, Shawn had shot and killed the perpetrator, and yes, he’d cooperated fully with the investigation and the check-ins with the department shrink to get the green light to go back to work.

Yes, he’d needed a change of scenery to keep his head clear, and four days after the desk sergeant at the Twelfth had told him Sam Sinclair was recruiting for an elite Intelligence Unit over at the Thirty-Third, Shawn had landed the job. They’d talked about The Incident—it was all right there in Shawn’s file, anyway. But Sinclair had been far more focused on Shawn than Frankie. He’d seen her name once, eight years ago. He’d had no reason to go back into Shawn’s file after that, and no reason to look that far back into Frankie’s record when her sergeant had called with this case. Of course he didn’t remember her.

Shawn remembered enough for a hundred people combined.

He looked at Frankie, who stood a handful of paces away with her arms knotted across the front of her dark gray button-down blouse. “Give me a minute,” he said, kicking himself into motion before she could let loose with the protest that had been forming in her expression. Shawn followed the path Sinclair had taken down the hallway toward his office, coming to a stop outside the half-open door.

“Sarge? Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Well, that depends,” Sinclair said, examining him closely enough to make Shawn’s oh-shit meter kick into high gear. “If you’re here for a friendly chat, I’m going to point out that we’ve got a hell of a case in front of us and you should probably get to it. But if you’re here to tell me what the hell is going on between you and Detective Rossi, then by all means. Save me the energy of having to call you into my office.”

Annnnd there was Shawn’s cue to shut the door.

He stood in front of Sinclair’s desk and made sure his feelings were nowhere near his face. Because he’d never use ten words when four would do, he said, “Frankie is my ex-partner.”

Sinclair’s gray-blond brows shot upward. “Your ex-partner from the Twelfth, who was stabbed?”

Shawn nodded, and even though he was far from gabby—especially when it came to shit like this—he wanted to get this out. “I know I should have been more upfront with you last night, when you called to tell me about the case.”

“You mean you shouldn’t have lied to me?” Sinclair asked, encrusting the words with frost.

F**k, Shawn deserved that. “I shouldn’t have misled you,” he semi-corrected. “But I meant what I said. I really don’t know her. Not anymore. We haven’t spoken since she left Remington eight years ago. She might as well be a stranger now.”

“A stranger you have a complicated history with,” Sinclair flipped back. “And I just put the two of you in the field together on a very dangerous case.”

His frown made it wildly clear what he now thought of the idea, and Shawn slapped a lid over the emotions threatening to rise in his chest. “I’m good for the job, and I’m not dumb enough to say that unless I mean it.”

Frankie had already almost died on his watch once. No, he didn’t want to work that closely with her, but they had a rare opportunity to fall in with this Beck guy and get him off the street. Plus, as much as Shawn disliked it, Frankie had been right. She wasn’t a rookie, and having her in the field, with her extensive knowledge of their target, was smart. If she were any other cop, he wouldn’t be balking at partnering up.

He needed to treat her the same way he treated everyone else. No fear. No second-guesses.

Absolutely no emotions.

“I’m not questioning your intelligence,” Sinclair said, and man, his stare felt more like X-ray vision. “But Rossi was your partner for two years. You two have a lot of history.”

Oh, Sinclair didn’t know the half of it. But Shawn and Frankie had never disclosed their relationship to anyone at the RPD back then. He’d wanted to at the time, but he wasn’t about to let loose with it now, when it no longer mattered.

So he said, “I’ve got more history with everyone else in this unit, and we work together just fine.”

Sinclair snorted. “You know better than to sprinkle sugar on bullshit and try to pass it off as candy. Rossi was your partner and she nearly died right in front of you. I’m asking you, point blank, Maxwell. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

So, so many ways to unbox that question. But Shawn needed to lock this down, once and for all. “Am I a good cop?”

A puff of shocked laughter came out of Sinclair’s mouth. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

“And have I ever been unreliable?” Shawn continued.

“No. You haven’t.”

“Well, I don’t plan to start now, and if Frankie’s determination to work this case is anything to go by, neither does she. The truth is, we need to get Beck off the streets before he starts a heroin ring in our backyard. Frankie’s record in Atlanta must speak for itself, otherwise you’d have shit-canned the idea of shared jurisdiction before she even got past the city limits. She’s a good cop, I’m a good cop”—he inserted a shrug for NBD emphasis—“and we have a bad guy to catch. The past is in the past.”

“It’s a hell of a past,” Sinclair said, but no. No. Shawn could not let any of that back in.

“It’s behind us.”

Sinclair sat back in his desk chair, his gaze like a polygraph. Finally, he said, “Fine. But I need full disclosure from you both from here on in. If anything changes about being able to work together—”

“It won’t,” Shawn said with finality he felt from bones to balls. “I promise.”

He’d make goddamn sure of it.

Frankie was still standingwith her arms crossed over her chest and one h*p leaning against his desk when Shawn got back to the main work area.

“Trying to get rid of me so soon?” she asked, arching one chestnut-colored brow. Christ, this was going to take every last ounce of his composure.

“I’m not trying to get rid of you.”

Shawn took a quick visual inventory of the room, noting that Capelli was on the other side of the office, Isabella and Hollister were both on their cell phones, and Garza and Hale must’ve taken off to do their meet-up with vice in person.

Still, he dropped his voice low enough to ensure that only Frankie heard it. “I told Sinclair.”

Her forehead creased, but it only took a second for her pretty brown eyes to go perfectly round. “Shawn—”

“You don’t have to worry,” he said, suppressing the jab of guilt blooming in his gut. He could feel bad for cutting her off later. Right now, he just wanted to get to work. “Everything is fine.”

“Fine?” Frankie laced the word with a healthy dose of doubt.

Yeah, he wasn’t standing down. “Fine. As in, he knows we used to be partners.”

“So, he knows why we stopped being partners,” she said slowly, and Shawn lifted his chin, just once.

“It’s in my file, and I’m sure if he decided to dig far enough in yours, he’d replace it there, too.”

One corner of Frankie’s mouth lifted, although he wouldn’t call the action a smile. “You went with what’s in the file, then.”

Translation: you didn’t tell him we used to trade sheet-ripping o*****s or that you’d asked me to move in with you just before things went tits up.“I did.”

“Mmm.” She loosened her arms, but only enough to slide one hand to the h*p of her slim black pants. “And he was okay with the fact that we used to—”

“He wasn’t thrilled,” Shawn interrupted, because a) he didn’t want to hear how she’d finish that sentence, and b) there was no smoothing over the fact that Sinclair had been pissed. “I assured him it won’t be a problem. You and I are both professionals. It’s fine.”

“It’s fine,” Frankie echoed, half question, half are-you-kidding-me-with-your-broody-a*s-denial. She stood still for a second, and oh, he knew that look. The one that said she was measuring the situation, trying to decide if she wanted to argue.

To his surprise, she didn’t. “Guess we should get to work, then.”

Shawn nodded. Work. Work was good. Work, he could throw himself into. “The team’s going to need a while to get up to speed and put an op together. You mentioned a case file?”

“I sent it over last night,” Frankie said, dragging the spare chair they kept between his desk and Hale’s closer to his workspace. “It’s pretty extensive. What we went over just now are really only the highlights.”

“Okay.” Shawn keyed his way past the login screen on his desktop, metering his movements and his breath. He’d need a solid foundation of knowledge before he and Frankie could build a strategy. “Then let’s not waste any more time.”

He’d give her this—her work ethic was equal parts discipline and solid f*****g rock. Frankie didn’t slow, let alone tire, for the next three hours as they moved through the details in the case file, point by point. Shawn was happy to let his brain take over, absorbing the information methodically, with one hundred percent calm and focus…

Right up until Frankie touched him, and his d**k let him know, in no uncertain terms, that it was righteously indignant to let his brain get all the action.

“…I’m pretty sure it’s in the arrest report, right…whoa, what’s the matter?”

And now she was less than a foot away and looking smack at him. Great.

“Nothing.”

To be fair, it really was nothing. Her thumb had brushed his wrist for all of a nanosecond when she’d leaned in and grabbed the mouse to maneuver to a different screen in the case file, the contact so slight and harmless that if it had happened between him and literally anyone else, he wouldn’t have noticed. But something about the warm slide of her skin, even in that hint of a moment, had turned Shawn’s nerve endings into a thousand live wires, and hell if it wasn’t all the more reason to keep a giant f*****g wall between them.

Not that Frankie wouldn’t take a pickax to it. “Really? Because you definitely looked like something was wrong.”

He blanked his expression and forced his heart rate to fall in line. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Not to be outdone by either his brain or his d**k, Shawn’s stomach let loose with a loud rumble, and awesome. Full body betrayal. Next up, maybe he’d start to sweat uncontrollably, just for shits and grins.

Frankie’s lips twitched with amusement. “Hungry?” she asked.

“A little,” he said, because he knew getting away with a “no” wasn’t going to happen. Plus, it would move them away from the topic, so all the better. “It’s lunchtime.”

Her eyes grazed the clock on the wall before widening. “Oh, wow. I guess we got pretty caught up in all of this. Do you want to go grab something to eat? Please tell me Big Lou still parks his food truck over on Hanover Street during the lunch hour. I have legit dreams about those chili dogs. I’m not even kidding.”

For a sliver of a second, Shawn wanted to laugh, the response like some sort of involuntary, muscle-memory reaction to her joy. But he smothered it, quick. “No. I mean, yeah, Big Lou is still there.” She really wasn’t exaggerating about how good the chili dogs were, either. Worth the heartburn and the workouts needed to balance them out. “And if you want to head over there, be my guest. But I’m going to just grab something solo.”

“It’s just a trip to a food truck for lunch, Shawn,” Frankie said, her voice quiet enough not to carry, but pointed enough to let her irritation show, loud and clear. “Not an invitation to be besties and bare your innermost feelings.”

“It’s just better if we’re not friends,” he said, putting enough starch to the words to create the distance he needed. “We should stick to work only.”

Frankie’s stare smoldered for just a beat before flashing over. “Can I have a word with you privately, please?”

Shawn knew her well enough to understand that if he said no—and he was motherfvcking tempted, because being alone with her was not conducive to creating distance—she’d say what she needed to say, regardless. Unfolding himself from his desk chair, he gestured to the small and thankfully empty break room in the back corner of the office space. She followed him over the threshold, turning to pull the door shut behind her before swinging around to hit him with a full-tilt frown.

“Look, I need to know if you can handle this, because I really need to catch Beck, and I can’t do it unless you’re one hundred percent on board with us working together.”

“If I couldn’t handle it, I’d have said something,” Shawn said, keeping his voice so even, you could check that shit with a level. “I just want to stick to the case, that’s all.”

Frankie’s frown refused to budge. “You know it’s not that simple. If we’re going to work together, we need to be able to communicate.”

“We’re communicating just fine,” he pointed out, but the sudden burst of emotion in her eyes spilled over to her mouth in an instant.

“I get that shutting people out is your thing, Shawn. You’re an iceberg. Whatever. But this case is a hell of a lot bigger than me or you, and I need to be sure—really sure—that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to nail this son of a bitch. Even if that means deep-down partnering with me.”

His curiosity flared over the pinch her words had sent through him, his mouth forming words before his better judgment could lock them down. “And I get that you’re a dog with a bone, and you never back down, even when you should, but why do you have such a hard-on for catching this guy?”

Frankie’s pause was microscopic before she glossed over it with a shrug. “Other than the fact that he’s a sociopathic menace who’s dealing drugs to half the city?”

“Yeah,” Shawn pressed. “Other than that.”

She lifted a brow, probably in an effort to out-brazen him. But he waited her out, until finally, she said, “I thought you don’t want to be friends.”

“And I thought you wanted to communicate.”

Her chin snapped up. “You’re splitting hairs.”

“I’m keeping work separate from everything else,” Shawn countered, low and steady. “We don’t need to be friends in order to work well together, but you’re right. We do need to understand each other. If we’re going to go undercover—if we’re going to have a chance in hell of catching Beck—I need to know everything you know about this case, and right now, you’re holding something back.”

Frankie exhaled slowly. “Fine. In the interest of communicating, a couple of years ago, I met a woman at an NA meeting. Val,” she added. The mention of Frankie’s addiction wanted to prick at Shawn—he’d had a ringside seat for it, after all—but he shook it off in favor of listening.

“She was fresh out of rehab for heroin, and, God, she was so raw. Sober, but still pissed off at the world. She reminded me so much of myself at that stage. She fought me a little bit, but eventually, I took her under my wing. I wasn’t her sponsor,” Frankie said, reading the question Shawn had thought but not voiced. “But we were friends. She came around, eventually—got a job in a dentist’s office, assisting the office manager. Went to meetings every week. She even taught herself to cook from a bunch of YouTube videos. Said it was so she didn’t starve, but I could tell she really enjoyed it.” Frankie’s smile flickered, then went out. “One day, about five months ago, her sponsor called me and asked if I’d talked to her. He hadn’t heard from her in over a week, and she’d no-showed on meeting him for coffee that morning.”

Dread plucked at Shawn’s gut. “Not like her, I take it.”

“No. Recovering addicts tend to be creatures of habit. Change was definitely not Val’s jam. Anyway”—Frankie paused for a breath, but it didn’t stop her voice from softening as she continued—“it turns out, her mom had passed away unexpectedly. They’d been close, especially in her recovery. Her mom had been her rock, really. The grief must have caught Val by surprise, or maybe it was just so big, she didn’t know how to process it. I don’t know. What I do know is that I found her, unresponsive and not breathing, on her bathroom floor. But by the time I got there, it was too late.”

Shit. Shit. “Let me guess. You traced the product back to Beck.”

Frankie nodded, her dark hair sliding forward to frame her face. “Val’s old dealer was easy enough to replace once we pulled her cell phone records. Of course, he had a new supplier. He said Val had sworn it would be just this once. But the heroin was laced with fentanyl, because that’s how Beck gets his kicks. Why get people high when you can get them super-high? The ones who live always come back for more, and the ones who don’t are expendable. The fact that the dealer had no clue probably made it that much more fun for Beck.”

“But the dealer still wouldn’t flip on him,” Shawn guessed out loud, and Frankie let go of a jagged laugh.

“Do you know what he told me when I suggested it? He said every time someone ODs on Beck’s product, he just laughs and says, ‘Plenty more junkies where they came from.’ Then he laces another random batch and gets on with his day. It’s a little tough to get someone to flip on a guy who has no qualms about killing people. Or, you know, a soul. Plus, the dealer only got a nickel for the distro. He’ll probably do less than three years if he behaves. Kind of an easy choice.”

Shawn looked at Frankie. Saw every emotion on her face. And said the only thing he could.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “But more than that, I’m angry. It’s easy to see addicts as lost causes. We do it to ourselves, right? We’re the ones who keep using. No one else to blame.”

She shrugged, her spine turning to steel as her armor fell back into place. “And, yeah, Val was an adult. When I was choking down every painkiller I could get my damn hands on, I was an adult, too. I chose to take drugs, and I’m accountable for that. Val was accountable. But she was human, too. She hit a rough patch and she did something she thought would take away her pain. She made a mistake. She didn’t deserve to die for it, you know?”

Christ, did he ever. Although, in his case, Frankie had nearly died for his fvckup, and, yeah, they needed to stop having this conversation. Like, five minutes ago. “So, that’s why you want to go after Beck so badly. You feel like he’s responsible for her death.”

He’d give her this. She didn’t bullshit him. “It’s a big part of it, yeah.”

“Are you sure revenge is a good idea?”

“I prefer to call it justice,” Frankie said, her eyes flashing. “I’m not trying to slip in and off him in his sleep. I want to nail him, fair and square. This whole case has been sanctioned from the jump, and let’s be honest. Beck deserves to go down for this.”

Annnnd welcome to the point that Shawn couldn’t argue. Beck was dangerous. Callous. Probably a sociopath. And they really did need to get him off the streets for good.

Frankie stayed quiet for a minute that turned into two, and Shawn nearly went for the okay-great-good-talk wrap up. But then, she left-fielded him with, “I’ve been completely sober for seven and a half years.”

“Okay.” He lifted the second syllable into a question, and, God, she didn’t bat so much as a single lash.

“I’m a really good cop, Shawn. I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but it’s the truth.”

His heartbeat thudded in his ears. Steady. You have to stay steady. “I don’t suppose your boss—or mine—would sign off on you being here if you weren’t.”

A hint of a smile played on her mouth, and yeah, that didn’t help his composure one f*****g bit. “There are lots of things you can hide from your superiors, and you know it.”

The words sailed directly into Shawn’s sternum. Or, hell, maybe they’d been stuck there this whole time. “It wasn’t my idea not to disclose our relationship back then.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she said. “But I’ve learned a lot about honesty since the last time I saw you. I want Beck, yes. But I also want you to trust me. I’m sober. I’m on the level. And I really want to make this case.”

Instinct, deep and sewn-in, knee-jerked his brain into forming the words I do trust you. But, damn it, a dozen different emotions went with it, each one equally dangerous, and he could not—could not—let any of them surface.

He needed that wall, and he needed it fast.

“I’m glad you’re sober, and I want to make this case, too. It’s all the more reason we should stick to it. I’ll meet you back here in an hour. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we call it a day.”

And before his idiot feelings could convince himself to do anything to the contrary, Shawn turned and walked out of the room.