The Intelligence Unit Series
The Guardian Chapter 10

There were very few times when Garza wished to be wrong. Right now, sitting in the middle of the Crooked Angel bar and grill and nursing the same beer he'd been picking at for over an hour, definitely headlined the shortlist. But it had taken the last four days for him to painstakingly go over all the footage from both the street cams near Delia's office building and the security feeds from the three businesses on the same block as Sweetie Pies, then comb every inch of the records he could pull on both Peyton and Kent without a warrant, and all of it had given him precious little to go on. His week had brightened up midway through, when patrol had finally located Delia's laptop, but crashed just as quickly when they discovered that it had, in fact, sustained some pretty significant water damage. Despite Capelli's technological voodoo, the thing was still in the painstaking process of restoration, proving Garza's claim that real investigations didn't work at a Dateline pace. Also, he was a great big f*****g jackass. So, there was that.

Pulling in a deep breath, he scanned the Friday-night crowd around him (you could take the cop out of the precinct, blah blah blah). But instead of the chatter of his fellow detectives and first responders or the low din of typical bar noise, the soundtrack in his head had a distinctly different sound. One that had been playing for the better part of four days.

When my normal somehow becomes your normal, it'snot normal, okay? I'm not holding anything back. I'm scared.

On second thought, maybe jackass wasn't strong enough.

To be fair, he was a cop. Nailing guys like Nicky Bianchi wasn't just what he did. It was who hewas. He hadn't meant to focus so hard on making a case against the guy that he'd lost sight of the fact that Delia had been assaulted. Hurt. Scared. But his intentions didn't change the fact that he had missed her fear, and the vulnerability that had mixed with the irritation in those huge green eyes of hers had been bugging him for days.

He'd heard the words she'd said, but he hadn't listened to her. He hadn't seen what he should've. He hadn't been a good cop.

He needed to fix it. Not that he had the first clue how.

This was going to s**k, and not a little, but he needed backup.

"Hale." Looking across the Intelligence Unit's usual table by one of the bar's huge, street-facing windows, Garza's focus lasered into place. "You're a woman-"

She laughed before he could continue. "God, it's no wonder you made detective. You, my friend, are observationally brilliant."

"Funny," Garza said in the most humor-free way possible. He damn near swallowed what he'd been about to ask her, but Capelli's live-in girlfriend, Shae McCullough, leaned in from her spot next to Hale.

"Call me crazy," Shae said, probably knowing everyone at the table would do exactly that, even if they'd been unprompted. Side effect of being an adrenaline junkie/badass firefighter, and all. "But it sounded like maybe, just maybe, Garza, here, was about to ask for some female-driven advice."

"Really?" This from Tara Kingston, who, in addition to being Remington's sharpest A.D.A., was also tight with everyone in the unit, and f**k, how was her hearing that good from halfway down the table? "Like, love-life advice?"

Hale barked out a laugh at the same time Garza barked out a solid no, and it was official. Garza hated this. "You know what, never mind."

As (bad) luck would have it, the bar manager, Kennedy Matthews-Gamble, had chosen this exact moment to come over with a tray full of refills.

"No, no, no!" Handing the tray off to Maxwell-who was all too eager to abandon Garza in favor of handing the drinks out, the a*****e-Kennedy smoothed a hand over the slight hint of a baby bump starting to show beneath her T-shirt. "Don't clam up now! I've run a bar for ages. I give great advice."

"Plus, she's nosy AF," Hale added gleefully, and Kennedy rolled her eyes.

"You're lucky you have a black belt, you little ninja."

Hale waggled her blond brows. "Actually, I have two. But no way am I getting distracted from"-she waved a hand toward Garza, her eyes bright with curiosity-"all this broody goodness by talking about the differences between Tae Kwon Do and Jiu Jitsu. Okay, G. Shoot."

While Garza knew these women too well to know he had any choice in the matter, he had to proceed with care. Spilling pertinent details about an active investigation with people who weren't need-to-know, like Kennedy and Shae, would earn him an a*s-chewing from Sinclair that he'd rather avoid.

"It's possible that I wasn't as...considerate as I could've been with someone who came to me with a problem, recently." "I'm gonna take a flyer and guess this someone is female, which is why you're asking for our advice?" Shae asked. "She is," Garza confirmed. "My little sister's best friend, Delia. She was mugged the other day, and-"

"He treated her like a cop," Hale said.

Garza frowned. "I am a cop. But the mugging was a big deal to her, emotionally, and I was focused on other things."

Tara tilted her head as she did the simple math on the facts. "Ah, I see. You did what you do"-she paused to mimic an exaggerated frown, but come on. He wasn't that bad. Was he?-"going strictly business on her, and you completely missed the fact that she was pretty scared." "I didn't mean to," he qualified, although, shit, he knew it didn't matter in the long run. "But, yeah. I guess I didn't pay attention to how she was feeling as well as I should have."

"So, now you want to make amends," Shae said, and Kennedy's dark brows lifted in surprise.

"She must be pretty special if you're this unzipped over it."

"I'm not unzipped," Garza argued. "And Delia isn't...she's my little sister's best friend. My relationship with her isn't like that. At all. No."

Okay, so maybe he'd had an inappropriate thought (or ten) about the sexy little sound Delia had made when he'd told her to call him if she needed him, and he really didn't want to get started on his d**k's reaction to the glint in her eyes when she'd gotten all pokey with his sternum and told him off. But for Chrissake, she was Camila's best friend, and now she was involved in an active investigation on top of it. He was never going to act on those thoughts, and he sure as hell wasn't torqued up for any other reason than wanting to apologize for professional purposes.

"Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much," said Shae, and Tara matched her friend's grin.

"In court, we call that a self-incriminating statement, Detective Garza."

"In this bar, we just call it bullshit." Kennedy's tone blended with her good-natured smile to remove any sting the words would've carried.

"Anyway," Garza said, because he knew better than to try to argue. "I kind of f****d up because I didn't listen to her when I should have, and I'm just not sure how to, you know. Fix it. Professionally."

Shae was, not shockingly, the first one to dive in. "Look, I may be a bad person to speak to this, since I kind of snack on danger between breakfast and lunch. But I do know what it's like to not be listened to."

"Or underestimated," Tara added, and Kennedy and Hale both nodded.

"Or doubted," Kennedy said.

"And while it's a crummy feeling," Shae continued, "it's pretty clear you get that you screwed up by not picking up on her feelings when you should have."

Kennedy chimed in. "I know this might seem a little obvious, but maybe you could start by trying a good, old-fashioned apology."

Ha. The only thing Garza sucked at more than feeling non-police-related emotions was expressing them with words. Anyway, apologies had never worked for him in the past. Lord knew he'd made hundreds of them before throwing in the towel. "What if I screw that up?" "Make sure you don't," Hale said, making Garza snort.

"No pressure."

"But you're good under pressure," Tara pointed out. Garza couldn't argue that, and anyway, thanks to a case they'd worked last month, where Tara had been put directly in harm's way, she'd call him out if he did. "Just be honest and tell her what you told us. You won't screw that up."

He opened his mouth to tell her that not only could he screw up by voicing the truth, but the chances were high that he very much would. But then Hale and Tara and Shae were all nodding, and realization smacked him upside the head.

He may be shit at things like emotions and apologies, but if he wanted to fix the gaffe he'd made with Delia, he was going to have to s**k it up and figure it out.

***

Forty-five minutes later,Garza was fairly certain he'd lost his damn mind. But even though his plan had no less than six potential pitfalls, it was the best he'd been able to come up with under the circumstances, and at the heart of things, his friends had been right. He owed Delia an apology. He just hoped he didn't botch it so badly that she kneed him in the nads.

"Here goes nothing." Balancing the red and white box he'd brought with him on the palm of one hand, he used the other to press the button on the intercom marked 4A.

As soon as the buzzer sounded off, Garza's pulse thwacked. Showing up like this was a mistake. Yeah, they knew each other, but that didn't mean Delia wouldn't think his behavior was mildly stalkery, despite his good intentions. Or she could be out, or-worse yet- home, but not alone. Spending her Friday night with someone. Naked.

An emotion he couldn't quite name snuck up and slapped him. But before he could explore it, Delia's voice filtered out the speaker.

"Can I help you?"

Ah, f**k it. "Hi, Delia. It's Detective Garza. Uh, Matteo." Christ, why was this so hard? "Sorry to just show up like this, but can I come up for a second?"

The deafening silence that followed lasted a beat, then another, then another, before Garza couldn't stand it any longer. "Are you there?"

"Yes," came the immediate response. "I was just doing a mental calculation of how long it will take you to come upstairs versus how much time I'd need to tidy up my place, and...well, since you want to come up tonight, I'm assuming, maybe you could just ignore the clutter?"

The response was so painfully and perfectly honest that the tension in Garza's shoulders unraveled. "If it makes you feel better, I can take the stairs to buy you an extra minute or two."

"Deal."

True to his word, and also, because a little incline cardio never hurt a guy who might have to chase a runner as an occupational hazard, he made his way to the stairwell, then up the four flights to Delia's floor. The building was nice, stairwells brightly lit, security cameras at the end of each hallway, and he placed two sharp, no-nonsense knocks on her door. Knocks that said, "This is professional. Strictly business. Nothing to see here."

Then Delia answered the door wearing a sweatshirt that fell halfway off one shoulder and a pair of microscopic cutoffs, her blond hair wild around her face, and screw "nothing to see here."

Garza could look at her for a month and not get enough.

"Hi," she said, although it came out as far more of a question than a greeting, and Garza wrestled his Neanderthal brain-which very much wanted to know what Delia had on under those cutoffs, please and thank you-back down to reality.

"Hey," he said. Focus on your purpose and not her panties, you dumbass! "I hope I'm not bothering you."

Delia shook her head. "No, I was just doing the crossword puzzle in today's paper. Crazy Friday night, I know." She paused, but only long enough for a self-deprecating laugh. "Is everything okay with the case?"

"Yeah, I..." Looking down the hallway in both directions, he dropped his voice. "Thought maybe we could talk privately for a minute?"

"Oh! Of course. Sorry." Delia stepped back, gesturing him into her apartment, then closing the door behind him. "They don't really talk about protocol on Dateline."

He made a mental note to give her a rundown of the basics, if for no other reason than to lessen the chances she'd say that word ever again. "It's okay. Anyway, I didn't come here to talk about the case directly." "You didn't?"

"No." Garza took a deep breath, and to hell with it. "I came here to apologize to you. And, uh, bring you this."

He held out the box, which Delia seemed to just now notice. "You...what?"

"I'm here to apologize, Delia. You were right. My normal isn't the same as most people's, and I lost sight of that when I was interviewing you. Both times, actually." His pulse ratcheted higher at the memory of her on that hospital gurney. "I should've realized you were shaken up and not pushed so hard. But I'm not, you know, so great with other people. Or feelings. Or words."

Delia surprised him with a laugh. "Well, that makes two of us. For what it's worth, though, you're not that terrible with words."

"You didn't seem to be thinking that when you told me off on Monday," he said dubiously.

Another laugh, and Christ, she was going to wreck him. "You came down here on a Friday night to apologize to me in person, and you just admitted how hard it was to do. Yeah, you could've been more empathetic the other day, but now that I get how dangerous this Bianchi guy is, I understand why you pushed. To be fair, I pushed back, so we can call it even. I accept your apology."

Wait... "You do?"

"You seem surprised," Delia said, and an irony-laced laugh huffed past his lips.

"I'm not really used to my apologies being accepted so easily." Chloe used to make him atone for days, and that was just when he'd had to put in OT on a case.

Damn it. Garza opened his mouth to backtrack, but Delia simply shrugged.

"You're dedicated to your job. Believe me, I get that. Plus, you brought me a present." She lifted the box, and he allowed a hint of a smile to slip out.

"I caught the Mexican bakery on Logan Street right before they closed."

Delia popped the lid on the box up far enough to see what was inside, then gasped. "You brought me a tres leches cake?"

"I may have acted like an a*s the other day, but I am a detective. Remembering things is kind of what I do, and you did say it's your favorite."

"It is my favorite," she admitted. "But it's your favorite, too. Do you want to come in and help me put a hurt to this thing?"

Of all the things he'd expected her to say, that wasn't even in the top thousand. "Oh, I, uh. You don't have to invite me in. In fact, I should probably get out of your hair." "Do you want to leave?"

The question was so wide open and honest that Garza couldn't answer with anything but the truth. "No."

Her smile landed in all sorts of places it shouldn't, but f**k, it felt too good for Garza to care.

"Great. Just remember, you promised to ignore the clutter," Delia said, turning to lead the way into her apartment.

And even though Garza knew he shouldn't, he followed her anyway.