Chapter 22
Chapter 22
“ W ell, lookie who we have here. The Rangers’ most famous loverboy.”
Sully tipped his hat to the speaker, his friend, Oliver Bebout who liked to give him a hard time. Who was he kidding? They all liked to give him a hard time, not that he didn’t give as good as he got. But ever since that blasted article about Poppy came out, the one with his picture attached, his coworkers had been having a field day making fun of his newfound (and profoundly unwanted) fame.
“Can I have your autograph?” Oliver continued, handing Sully his pen.
“I have another suggestion for this,” Sully said, turning the pen around and holding it like a weapon.
“You kiss your pretty girlfriend with that mouth?” Bebout continued.
Sully had spent the first week after the article came out trying to explain that Poppy wasn’t his girlfriend. When that became too complicated, mostly because no one listened anyway, he gave up. So they thought Poppy and he were actually together. What was the harm?
“No, I kissed your Mama,” Sully said, and everyone snickered. Being one of the younger members of the team, Bebout’s mother actually was a nice looking woman and often wound up the topic of conversation, much to his aggravation.
“Shut up about my Mama,” Bebout replied, predictably annoyed. He pounded the top of Sully’s hat, making it flip up in the back. Sully took it off and laid it on the table beside him, shaking out his head to try and fluff up the mashed pieces of hair. It was time for the meeting to start and the other Rangers in the room did the same until the table was crowded with hats and pens and laptops.
The lieutenant sat, and the meeting began. “First up, Cortez family.”
“Man, I’m so sick of the Cortez family,” Lopez groused. For once Sully agreed with him. They’d been hitting the family hard lately, trailing them day and night, waiting and hoping for them to trip up. “I see more of him than I do my wife. Shut it, Garcia,” he added, jutting his finger at Garcia, who held up his hands in supplication. Predictably, Harris laughed.
“There was a new development,” the lieutenant said, and everyone leaned forward in interest. Anything new had the potential to be explosive. Cortez was a man who always followed the same pattern. He was extremely careful with every aspect of his life. The lieutenant who, for once, seemed to be enjoying the drama, didn’t hasten to explain.
“Is he waiting for one of us to ask him what it is?” Garcia whispered in a loud aside. Harris giggled like a thirteen year old girl.
“Cortez had a date,” the lieutenant said, leaning back and clasping his hands behind his head.
Lopez let fly an expletive. “Co-sign on that,” Garcia said, sounding void of humor for once. In all the time they’d been tailing Cortez, they’d never seen him with a woman outside his wife. With enough motivation, mistresses could be flipped. It had been another frustration in a series of frustrations that Diego Cortez didn’t have one.
“Can we flip her?” Sully asked the question everyone thought.
“Dunno. Let’s look at what we’ve got,” the lieutenant said. He nodded to his assistant. The lights went off, and everyone turned their attention to the opposite end of the room, waiting for the pictures of Cortez and the new mystery woman to begin.