Chapter 2
Con cupped his hands around his cigarette as he lit it. Then he inhaled deeply and exhaled with his chin pointed upward.
“So… this is our case? Our first case?” Agent Chris Hale asked excitedly.
Con took another drag before finally taking in his partner.
The first thing that struck him was Chris Hale’s immense girth. It seemed impossible that he could have passed the FBI field test. He wasn’t just out of shape, he was a heart attack waiting to happen. And his shitty, boxy suit did nothing to hide his size. Wide face, wideset eyes, wide… everything .
Except for his hair. Chris’ hair was thin and a mousy brown, swept to one side.
Con just stared and would have continued to do so, when he recalled what Marcus had told him.
I don’t want this to be like the last one.
Con shook his head and allowed his eyes to drift to the folder clutched in the man’s fat fingers as if it were the last Big Mac on earth.
Where does Marcus find these guys?
“Guess so,” Con said simply.
“Great. What’s it about?” The man had an annoying way of speaking. The southern drawl was fine, but the intonation was odd. Everything seemed to be a question.
What did you have for breakfast?
Eggs and sausages?
Did you enjoy it?
I liked it?
“No idea,” Con replied earnestly.
He continued to smoke while his partner opened the file and began to read.
When Con was nearly done with his cigarette the man said, “Pirated movies?”
Con wasn’t sure if this was a question or a statement.
It didn’t matter because he didn’t intend to answer either way.
Fuck you, Marcus , Con thought. Fuck you for giving me a potato for a partner.
“Yeah, looks like some big Hollywood studio is claiming that all their movies are being pirated and released online before they get into theaters?”
Again with that upward lilt at the end of the sentence.
Chris rambled and Con turned his mind inward.
Math had never been his strong suit, but since arresting The Sandman, he thought he’d gone through at least ten partners. Most of them lasted less than a year, which Con was oddly proud of.
It wasn’t just that he worked better alone, it was also that he liked to work alone.
Besides, none of the men that Marcus ever gave him were any good.
Not a single one.
They’d either been too talkative, not talkative enough, too serious, not serious enough.
Too young, too old.
There was always something wrong with them.
Goldilocks and the Ten Partners, only there was never one that was just right.
Except for Tate.
Tate Abernathy had been worth his grain of salt, and the man had just been a rookie.
Fucking Tate. He hadn’t got Tate fired, but he’d worn the man down until he’d eventually asked for reassignment.
Con felt his mind wandering back to that day, the day that they got the anonymous tip that led to the apprehension of Matthew Nelson Neil. He remembered wrapping his hands around the man’s throat and squeezing. Squeezing until the veins in his forearms felt as if they were about to burst.
All the while screaming in the man’s broken face, demanding to know where Valerie was.
If it hadn’t been for Tate…
Con shook his head.
Well, if it hadn’t been for Tate, then he needn’t have worried about a partner.
His main, and perhaps only, concern would be a cellmate.
The last he’d heard of the man was that Tate was heading up a unit in Quantico, investigating crimes against children.
Good for him.
Tate deserved the promotion.
Con did not deserve Agent Chris Fucking Hale.
“That’s cool, we get to hobnob with celebs, am I right? Pirated films, huh?”
The inanity of the comment drew Con out of his head.
He looked at Chris, glared at him, and the man beamed. Then Chris pointed at something on the page that was impossibly small for Con to read and said, “You want to—”
But Con was already walking away. He finished his cigarette, flicked the butt onto the sidewalk, and made his way to his car.
“Where you going?”
“Come on, get in,” Con said, sliding behind the wheel. When the fat man loaded himself into the passenger seat, the right side of Con’s Ford Taurus lowered.
Con sighed.
The longest he’d had a partner aside from Tate was a man named Theo Robinski.
Theo lasted sixty-two days.
But this man?
Agent Chris Hale?
Con gave him less than half of that before he quit, went back to whatever cabbage patch he’d been dug up from.
***
Oh, how the mighty have fallen , Con thought as he pulled up to Imperial Productions.
He had gone from chasing down serial killers, keeping people safe, to… what? Making sure that some rich asshole became richer and broke a billion at the box office? That instead of an eight-figure salary, the CEO’s annual income pushed nine digits?
Still, he had to admit that the facade of the Imperial Productions headquarters was impressive. All glass, twelve, maybe thirteen stories high, located smack in the middle of Orange County’s tech sector, with an impeccable logo—the stylized initials IP— which was backlit by red lighting.
“What’s the man’s name?” Con asked as he got out of the car, lighting up another cigarette.
“Who?”
Chris Hale reminded him of an owl, he realized. It wasn’t just the fact that he hooted like one, it was the way he ended his sentences.
Hell, even the man’s face looked like an owl’s, what with those wide eyes and wider cheeks.
Chris ‘Owl’ Hale.
Con didn’t answer.
“Oh, you mean the head honcho, right?”
Con smoked as he walked up to IP’s front doors. It was a blistering hot day, but that was nothing new; every day was blistering hot in Los Angeles during the summer.
It had been hot that day he’d brought down the Sandman, too. So hot that even the flies had been sweating.
“The CEO was the one who called the FBI. His name is Martin Yeo.”
Con reached the doors long before his partner did. It was hot for Con, which meant that it was sweltering for Chris.
The man’s face was covered in a sheen of sweat, and he had a dark line beneath his tits.
“Just be quiet in there,” Con instructed when Chris, huffing, finally caught up.
“Be… quiet?”
Con looked at Chris, once again staring into his eyes. For a split second, and only a split second, he felt bad for the man. He knew nothing about the Owl, didn’t know if he was experienced, if he’d been working out of Virginia or New York or Oregon for that matter before coming to Orange County.
Didn’t know if this was the Owl’s first job or his last job.
And quite frankly, Con didn’t care.
What he did know—what he knew without a shadow of a doubt, was that this job wasn’t for Chris Hale.
“Right,” the man said with a half-cocked smile and a nod. “I won’t say a word.”
And then the man mimed zipping his lips together and throwing away the key because of course, he did.
Forget a month. Chris will be lucky if he makes it through the week.