Archer
Minka walks into Lori’s two steps ahead of me, faux-enthused for the wedding preparations she hardly tolerates, and into a bevy of noise and excitement.
Women pecking and giggling, fabrics flying, and a little girl standing on a table amongst it all, with hearts in her eyes and Disney birds flapping over her shoulders.
“Aubree Grace!” Eli Emeri, Aubree’s older, gay brother, waves his hands in her face and burns her with an unimpressed scowl.
“Look at this luggage under your eyes! You should not have been working in the middle of the dang night. It’s your wedding week, but it seems you’d rather visit the dead than get an appropriate amount of sleep. ”
“Oop.” Minka turns again, guilt smeared all over her face. “That’s my cue to leave.”
I grab her and spin her back. “Pay the piper, Chief. You had the authority to send her home, but didn’t…”
“She was already awake! She’d already gotten dressed. Sending her home after that would’ve been disrespectful.”
“And you!” Eli turns on my bride, pointing a threatening finger this way.
“You, Chief Mayet! You should know better. I understand you’re toxic workaholics, and you, especially, have no patience for the trivialities of a wedding, but my sister will do this just once in her life. I expect her to do it right.”
Minka laughs, slapping my hands away and freeing herself from my grip. “Just once, you say?”
“Oh, look! Here’s your dress!” Aubree tosses a massive pile of purple fabric over Mia’s head and into Minka’s face, then she scoops Mia off the table and sends her running through the horde. “Go help Auntie Minka with her dress, Moo. She’s not very good at this stuff, so she needs you.”
“I’ll help you, Auntie Minka!”
“Looks like I’ve delivered the goods, so I’ll—”
Minka turns with a ferociousness that brings me up short, her hand slamming around my wrist and her short nails digging into my flesh.
“Do. Not. Leave. Me. Here.” She burns me with dark brown eyes, the skin around her lips turning white under the pressure of her gritted teeth.
“You made vows that covered this stuff.”
“My vows mentioned sickness and health. And something about loving you forever.” I peel her fingers back, one by one, then I cast my eyes over the crowd and lock onto a quietly amused Fletch, whose focus remains on an oblivious Seraphina’s backside, draped in a low cut, almost backless dress with criss-crossy straps and a cute little bow painting a target for any man who may be thinking about her in such a way.
Not me. But my partner…
“Fletch?” I swing Mia onto my hip, tickling her neck and aiming her flying feet away from my seething wife. “We’ve gotta head out. Ya know, active homicide case and all that.”
“There’s gonna be another active homicide case here if you don’t put that little girl down and lock in for an afternoon of dress fittings, Detective.”
“Oh my gosh, Minnnka. I love you, too.” I thrust Mia into her arms and jump back, like she’s a bomb and I’ve just successfully detangled myself from its hairy clutches.
Clear.
“I’ll stay in contact, and I’ll tell Officer Clay you asked after him.
Cato’s on Steve duty, and Mia…” I look to the sweet, honeycomb-eyed kid who, not so long ago, was just a toddler.
Now she’s a big girl who goes to big school.
“You’re on Minka duty, Moo. You make sure she stays here and tries on the pretty dress, and if you’re smart, you might consider taking her somewhere after this and feeding her.
She’s always in a better mood when she’s got something in her belly. ”
“We could get hotdogs on a stick, Auntie Minka!” Mia twists and cups Minka’s face in her palms. “It’s been way too hot to eat them lately, but I fink if we go to a fancy restaurant that has fancy air conditioning, then maybe it’ll be cold inside. Then we can eat and not be hot.”
“Well—”
“Or maybe we could go to the mall! The mall is pretty cold inside, dontcha fink?”
“The mall?”
I laugh—Minka? The mall? Never—then I cross the room and pass Fifi as she tangles herself up in front of the mirror, attempting to see herself, front and back. Stopping in front of my partner, I snap my fingers. “You’re staring. Move.”
“I’m staring because the view is pleasing.
” He walks, but his eyes remain rooted, his head rotating to keep his pleasing view exactly how he likes it.
“We don’t have to rush out, anyway. I called Clay just before we got here.
He said Molly’s stable, but she ain’t waking up for a while.
” He crashes into a mannequin, knocking the boobalicious model askew and reaching out with fast, frenzied movements to catch her before she falls.
The fact he grabs her by the tit is hardly his fault… ish.
“Really, Charlie?” Fifi glares through pointed, willow-green eyes. “With your daughter in the room?”
“No! I…” He sets the mannequin back in place and whips his hands free of her curves. “I didn’t mean to— I didn’t—”
“Let’s go.” I grab his shoulder holster and use it like a leash, walking him straight past his daughter and through the heavy glass doors.
From a pleasant chill to heat that smacks me in the face with the ferocity of a three-hundred-pound WWE wrestler.
“Fuck me.” I release him and shield my eyes before the sun melts my skin clean off.
“Global warming is real, right? This isn’t normal summer heat. This is the shit they warned us about.”
“Dunno.” He drags a ball cap from his back pocket and unfolds the bill, before slapping the damn thing onto his head. “I was significantly more comfortable in there, Arch. Where the air was cool and the view was hot. My daughter was happy, and—”
“And my wife was ready to tear my asshole out with a rusty fishing hook. We had to leave, or risk her turning her wrath on us.” I take out my phone, ready to call a ride, but at the bright yellow beacon flashing in my peripherals, I stride to the edge of the sidewalk and wave another taxi down.
“This thing better have air conditioning, or I’ll riot. ”
“A cab?” Skeptical, he follows. “Since when do we ride yellow?”
“Since my wife was too hot to walk the extra two blocks to the station, so she flagged a taxi down instead.” I pull the back door open and slide in, only to find the exact same driver we arrived with. “Well, this is fun.”
“Air is still on, boss.” He brings us away from the curb the moment Fletch is in, cruising along in time with the rest of the traffic. “Heading to the hospital?”
“You listen to your passengers’ conversations often?”
He smirks, settling back in his chair so the fabric touches Fletch’s knees. “Every single time. Your wife is a sassy one, but I heard you call her chief, so I figured to keep my mouth shut and mind my Ps and Qs. She a cop or something?”
“No.” Grunting, Fletch twists his leg, saving his kneecaps from dislocation every time the driver adjusts in his seat. “She’s a medical examiner who acts like a cop. She’s always up in the detectives’ business, bossing them around and inserting herself in their investigations.”
The older guy whistles, shaking his head and bringing us around a corner.
“Sounds like you got your hands full. And those detectives probably try to run the other way every time they see her arrive on the scene, huh? Bossy women are cute at home. But on the job…?” He clicks his tongue, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “You a medical examiner, too?”
“No. I’m one of the detectives she bosses around every day.” I flash a smile and look at a giggling Fletch, hiding beneath the bill of his cap. “You set her up for that, asshole. I’m gonna tell her what you said about her.”
Fletch and I walk the halls of Copeland City Hospital, cold air on my hot skin eliciting goosebumps that prickle beneath my shirt and spread all the way to my toes.
The stark contrast to the outside world is stunning, shocking my body into an almost visceral reaction that takes my breath away.
“Jesus.” I rub my arms like a total pussy, shivering while I wait for my system to adapt. “It’s freezing in here.”
“We know where the biggest drain on the city power grid is coming from, huh?” He digs his hands into his pockets—he’s cold too, but too proud to say so—and walks the halls of the ICU like he knows his way with his eyes closed.
Sadly, he does. Because his wife died on this floor mere months ago.
“Miss Penny seemed short of breath just coming down the stairs of my apartment building earlier.” He glances across with a set of honeycomb eyes matching the ones he passed down to his daughter.
“I’m glad she’s with the girls, because even if Minka, Aubs, and Sera are at each other’s throats the whole damn time, they’re still young enough to not expire from the fucking heat the way Penny might. ”
“You expecting your nanny to drop dead?”
He chuckles. “I’m really hoping she doesn’t.
If this weather doesn’t back off soon, we might have a hospital swelling with heatstroke victims.” He leads us around a corner, lifting his chin as we pass a pair of uniformed officers, then nodding as Clay clocks us at the very opposite end of the hall.
Still fifty feet to go, but I can already tell the young officer’s coloring hasn’t improved much since last night. “He’s wasting away, don’t you think?”
“Physically?” I study the guy again, his hundred and eighty pounds, and his thick chest, the kind that proves he spends at least a few days a week under a weight rack. “I mean, he looks fed. A little shaky, maybe, but I wouldn’t put him out to pasture yet.”