Chapter 5 A Warm Welcome
A WARM WELCOME
Johnny
The sergeant straightened, her lips parting as though caught in an infinite loop of not quite knowing what to say. Her bright blue eyes darted between them, but she eventually just settled on running her hand through her hair, which was shaved at the nape and longer at the front, grazing her chin.
She glanced towards the report-writing room. “Would you like a minute?” she said quietly, stepping back into the corridor.
Johnny nodded. “Yes—”
“Good morning, sergeant!” Taylor cut him off, stepping forward to grab her fingers in an overly energetic handshake. “Good morning, good morning, and another good morning.”
Johnny pressed his lips together and looked up at the ceiling. Here we fucking go.
Taylor released her and leant against the doorframe with a grin so obnoxiously wide it could have been misconstrued as a threat.
“Why are you smiling like that?” she said, gripping her hand as though Taylor had just popped every one of her knuckles. “Is there something wrong with you?”
Taylor’s grin only grew wider. “Many, many things,” he said before coughing and shaking his head. “I mean, no. I am tip-top. Never better. Hunky-dory.”
Hunky-dory?
Johnny sighed and zipped up his stab vest. “Morning, Sarge,” he said, stepping forward.
The sergeant nodded, her eyes roaming over them both before pausing on Taylor’s bright ginger hair. “Haven’t we met before?”
Johnny’s stomach dropped, and he subtly leant forward to sniff the air between them.
She was remarkably scentless, with only a hint of strawberry and undercurrents of deodorant.
A beta, somewhat on the smaller side, but then again, everyone seemed small compared to him and Taylor.
She was pretty, too, with long, curling eyelashes and full lips.
He was fairly certain neither he nor Taylor had shagged her, but then again, the Falkington/West Newton combined Christmas party two years prior had been fucking wild, and a lot of dicks had gone in a lot of holes that night.
“Ah!” the sergeant said, clapping once and pointing at Taylor. “The alpha murders. I took a statement from you, right? When they said they were sending two over from West Newton on short notice I had no idea it would be you guys.”
Taylor bristled, but the sergeant continued. “Let’s try this again,” she said, taking both of their hands and shaking them simultaneously. “Isla Wilson. I’m your new sergeant.”
“Wilson?” Johnny said, looking her over more closely. “Detective Isla Wilson? I thought you were in CID.”
A flush crept up her neck. “O-oh, yes, I was. This is a promotional post. Gotta put my time in with response, you know?”
Taylor straightened, pressing his shoulder to Johnny’s. “Bit shit, isn’t it? Going for a promotion and this is where they post you?”
Isla’s neck darkened even further, and she looked as though she was about to turn into a spluttering mess.
However, she caught herself and clicked her booted heels together.
“It’s not all bad. The team is… fine. Plus, all the downtime gives me a chance to write policies… and, er… organise… the property store.”
She was doing that incredibly British thing of trying not to sound too put out. That, combined with the Brits’ bizarre need to smile at absolutely everything and be passive-aggressive as shit at the same time had single-handedly been the steepest learning curve for Johnny when he moved to the UK.
His dad had said it was because Britain’s an island, and if you fall out with someone you have nowhere to run, just water and witnesses, so keeping conflict to a minimum was an absolute must.
Taylor raised an eyebrow at Isla. “Sounds thrilling.”
See? Passive-aggressive as shit.
“Speaking of the team,” she said, clicking her fingers and pointing at the door to the report-writing room. “Wendy made cake. Although, we may have already started on it.”
Taylor scratched his chin, giving a thoughtful hum. “Cake, you say?”
They followed Isla into the report-writing room, Taylor’s shark-like smile making a return, so Johnny pinched his arm and whispered, “Normal face, Tay. Normal fucking face.”
Taylor cleared his throat, pressing his lips together as he glanced at him over his shoulder. He swallowed, the bob of his Adam’s apple betraying how nervous he really was.
The report-writing room was fairly standard, with its beech desks, water dispenser and mandatory photograph of the Queen (God rest her soul) tacked wonkily above the photocopier.
There was an ongoing conspiracy theory in the police that Liz was actually an alpha masking as a beta, because no one was that stoic.
The report-writing room really was no different to West Newton’s, just a hell of a lot tidier.
“Welcome!” someone said as they rounded the corner, and Johnny looked up just in time to have a party popper let off right above his head.
Isla sprang forward to brush the colourful strands of crepe paper from his hair before he came face-to-face with a massive hand-painted banner that read ‘WELCOME TO DINGLY HEATH!’
Isla sighed, shaking her head with a smile. “Don’t get too excited. Wendy used the same banner when I started.”
“Don’t say that, Sarge!” said an older beta woman with a mop of shoulder-length grey curls.
Johnny flinched, because the woman was wearing such a thick layer of make-up that she looked simultaneously forty and eighty years old.
It was jarring, like when morticians paint a corpse’s lips on to make them look alive.
The bright pink eye shadow was totally at odds with her old-style uniform, and it was starting to fuck with Johnny’s brain so he looked at her shoulder instead.
“We added glitter this time,” Wendy continued.
“You added glitter,” said a slender man with light brown skin and black hair that flopped over his forehead. He had huge honey coloured eyes and a softness to his face that could have only made him an omega. Pretty, on the taller side, and one hundred percent Taylor’s type.
Isla let out a nervous laugh. “Yes, I know you hate glitter, Amil.”
Johnny ran his tongue over a fang and glanced at Taylor, whose eyes had snapped straight to Amil like a fucking tractor beam.
“Howdy,” Taylor said, popping him a two-finger salute.
Johnny’s fingers twitched, because Taylor was staring, awkwardly so, and Amil responded by crossing his arms and squaring his shoulders. He set his jaw, making his chin jut out.
Johnny liked him already.
Clasping her hands, Isla turned to them. “John-Paul, Taylor, this is Wendy Truelove and Amil Dua. They’re my PCs.”
Amil cleared his throat and drifted towards one of the three computer stations in the room, clearly feeling that he had fulfilled his social obligations and wanting to get back to work.
He didn’t look up from behind the monitor, only inclined his head whilst typing.
“Go on, then,” he said, fingers like lightning over the keyboard. “How badly did you fuck up?”
Johnny’s mouth clicked open, then closed, then opened again. “It was… professional diff—”
“Amil!” Isla gasped, gliding over to him. “No one in this office has fucked up. Major Crime have sent them over to—”
“Oh, come off it, Sarge. Everyone’s here because they’re on HR’s shit-list. I can smell the gun oil on their vests from here, so they either shot the wrong person or—”
“Enough!” Isla said, slapping the top of the monitor.
Amil withered as though suddenly realising he’d overstepped the mark.
“That’s enough, Amil. Jesus Christ.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, waving a hand towards Johnny and Taylor.
“Just… come up to my office. We’ll go through your induction pack and then we’ll get you settled in. ”
She stomped off towards a set of stairs at the other end of the room, muttering a string of swear words under her breath. Johnny and Taylor looked at one another, shrugged and trailed after her.
“We’ll save you some cake!” Wendy called, but Johnny could already hear utensils scraping across plates.
“Sorry about that,” Isla said as they reached the top of the stairs. The upper floor was about as nondescript as the one below, only it had three empty offices one after another. Isla sighed as she pushed open the door to the one at the end.
There was a canvas print of ocean waves, a mini bonsai tree and a desk-sized water fountain next to a box of stomach tablets and lavender capsules.
She threw the tablets into her desk drawer with an awkward smile.
“There’s no inspector here. Only me and the team.” She slumped into a swivel chair behind the desk, gesturing for them to sit in the two opposite.
And… Taylor wasn’t there.
Johnny rubbed his temples, about to head back to look for him when the sound of footsteps bounding up the stairs echoed through the corridor.
“Sorry,” Taylor said, slipping into the room. He was holding three plates of chocolate cake, and he placed one in front of Isla and another in Johnny’s hand.
“What if something big happens?” Taylor continued, clearly having caught the tail end of the conversation. “Say there’s a murder, or… I don’t know. A sex trafficking ring from Poland?”
Isla’s eyebrows pulled together as she shook her head.
“We don’t… we don’t really have crime here.
More social care issues than anything. The higher-ups prefer that we deal with things…
holistically. But I guess if anything big happened, we’d ask Falkington City to come and assist. They cover our weekend shifts, and we help them out if any big public order incident happens. ”
Johnny frowned and stuck the fork into the cake. “Holistically? What does that mean?”
Isla shrank into her seat, snatching up the plate from the desk and holding it in front of her. “Yes, you know… community resolution. Letter of apology, that sort of thing. I mean, most of our residents are elderly, so…”
Taylor licked his lips and placed his empty plate on the table. “Bloody delicious.”
“Do you even have a custody block?” Johnny asked, handing his own plate to Taylor.
Isla nodded. “We do. Two cells, but no Wi-Fi in that part of the building, so booking in would have to be done on paper.”
Johnny sucked his lower lip. “Wow.”
Oh Jesus, now he was doing it.
“A-anyway,” Isla continued, jabbing her fork towards them. “When the bosses said I’d be getting two alphas, they didn’t say I’d be getting two mated alphas. I mean, you’re going to have to be separated for sure, can’t have you getting all growly at the residents.”
Johnny coughed, then spluttered. “We aren’t—what you saw in the cloakroom was—”
Taylor tapped the plate with his fork, giving Johnny an exaggerated pout. “Whaddya mean, baby?” he said, lips twitching. He put the second plate—now also empty—down and rested a hand on Johnny’s shoulder with a mischievous look in his eyes.
Fuck you, Taylor Campbell.
Isla dropped her plate onto the desk with a clatter. “Apologies,” she said, the tips of her ears turning pink again. “I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t have assumed. I couldn’t see a bite on either of you, but then again alphas can get funny about that sort of thing.”
Johnny held up a hand. “Relax, Sarge,” he said, smiling a little. Because he couldn’t deny that the sergeant was kind of cute.
“We’re friends. And the reason we left West Newton was because of professional differences. We won’t cause any trouble for you or the others.” His eyes slid to Taylor. “Right, Tay?”
Taylor nodded, “Best friends.” He pointed at Isla’s plate. “You eating that?”
Isla let out a strained laugh and slid the plate towards him. “Thank you. I really appreciate that. I just… I really need things to go right here, you know? Once I’ve done my time I’m hoping they’ll let me apply for a DS position back in CID.”
Taylor nodded, running his tongue over his teeth. “So, what did you do to piss the bigwigs off?”
Isla didn’t blush that time, instead she set her jaw and her expression turned very, very cold. And as much as they enjoyed testing the boundaries of their supervisors, Johnny realised that they had reached a line they should not cross.
“That’s none of our business,” he said, taking the third empty plate out of Taylor’s hand and placing it on the table.
Isla breathed in a few times, eyes lingering over the multitude of bracelets stacked up Johnny’s arm.
“You won’t be able to keep those on during the shift,” she said, crossing her arms. “Or the nail polish. I don’t know what you were allowed to get away with at West Newton, but I’m afraid we’ve got to respect uniform regs here.”
Johnny’s mouth went dry at the sudden change in her demeanour, and even Taylor sat back.
He wondered momentarily about why Wendy was allowed to wear bright pink fucking eyeshadow but they weren’t allowed to wear bracelets and nail polish, but…
lines had definitely been crossed in the last thirty seconds and he wasn’t prepared to cross them again.
“Right,” he said, scratching his arm before sliding them all off.
Isla nodded. “Thank you.” Some of the colour returned to her cheeks. “I think I’ll pair you each with one of the others to begin with. Just until you get to know the area and understand how we operate. Plus, we don’t have enough cars for everyone to be single crewed.”
Taylor’s leg started bouncing under the table, anxiety flickering across the bond. Johnny squeezed it tightly.
“John-Paul, I’m putting you with Wendy. Taylor, you’ll be working with Amil.”
Something unpleasant coiled in Johnny’s belly, something that made his wolf bristle, something similar to dread.
It was making Taylor’s leg bounce even harder, and Johnny should have just pushed that feeling deeper into his pit of unspoken things, taken a breath and let it go.
But he didn’t, and before he could stop himself, he said, “I can work with Amil, if… you…”
The other two looked at him, his words falling away into the silent room.
Taylor tilted his head and gave him a look that said ‘Seriously?’
“Why’s that?” Isla asked.
Taylor raised his eyebrows.
Oh shit. He really could not think of a legitimate reason why Taylor should not work with the omega.
He might be a hound dog, but he wasn’t a creep.
If anything he was the fucking creep for feeling jealous at the thought of Amil’s scent clinging to Taylor—to his clothes, to his hair, to his skin, to his—to him.
“Nothing,” Johnny said, shaking his head and pressing a finger between his eyes. “Forget I said anything.”
His wolf was not happy, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at Taylor, so when Isla pressed a hand to the desk and cleared her throat, the relief washed over him like a goddamn wave.
“Alright. Taylor is with Amil; John-Paul, you’re with Wendy. Finish kitting up and I’ll see you downstairs.”