Bang (9 page)

“You can see him in a little while,” she says evenly. “First I need you to tell me who the other boy was. The one who ran.”

“Some friend of Rabbit's, I have no idea.” Janine huffs an angry breath. “He came over last night and they were fighting like a couple of assholes, so I went upstairs to try to sleep. Then I woke up and you all were in my fucking house.”

Mari grits her teeth. “Janine,” she says, trying to be patient. “I need you to help me out here. You don't know his name, where he lives, anything that might help me find him?”

Janine scowls. “I said—”

“Officer de la Espada.” There's Jack in the doorway, his face an angry mask. “Can I speak to you outside?”

Dammit. Mari already knows what he's going to say, but it's still a punch to the gut as he confirms it. “Interview's done,” he tells her tightly, looking as though he'd very much like to put his hand through a wall. “Piper and the rook are on their way down to take over.”

“She didn't know anything anyway,” Mari tells him, before realizing that's entirely the wrong thing to say. “The other kid does, though,” she adds in a rush. And really, it shouldn't matter whether it's them taking the statement or someone else. The way Jackson's acting, you'd think they had no leads at all. “He's buddies with the shooter.”

Jackson doesn't even glance at her. “The other kid, huh? As in the one who was half-dead when we brought him in?”

Mari swallows. “Yeah. That kid.” She couldn't feel any guiltier if she let the shooter go free out the window her damn self. By the time they meet up with Piper and her baby rook by the outer doors, she's sweating underneath her uniform.

“We'll do a run at the girl again,” Piper is saying. “Double-check she ain't lying. You guys should go in and have someone take de la Espada's statement officially.” She looks up at them. “I have a feeling this is gonna be a big one.” Fitzgerald is taking frantic notes. Mari thinks someone ought to tell her it looks unprofessional.

“Cop shooting,” Piper adds, shaking her head. “Damn, this boy is going to be sorry when we find him.”

Mari turns toward Jackson as they walk away. Her tongue feels glued to the roof of her mouth. She opens it to say
I'm sorry
, or maybe,
I trust Piper
, but what comes out is, “You want to grab lunch before or after the statement?”

Jackson shrugs.

“Now?” she asks. It's 10:45.

Jackson shrugs again.

The walk out to the cruiser is silent. Mari would rather kill herself than ask another question, so she throws the car into gear and heads for the deli they normally stop at after hospital calls, this hole-in-the-wall with grocery basics and rotting fruit but really good turkey pastrami. The bagel from breakfast sloshes in her stomach. She thought they were getting over the shooting and now here it is, popping up again like a disastrous jack-in-the-box.
You're the one who let him go out the window
, she thinks.
Not everything is my fault.

She orders for them both, big sloppy sandwiches she already knows she won't be eating a bite of, throwing in two of the wilted brownies wrapped in plastic by the cash register as a last-ditch apology. She's reaching for her wallet when Jackson nudges her aside.

“Can be your boyfriend here, can't I?” he asks roughly. “Or are we doing our jobs now too?”

Immediately Mari is so relieved she thinks she could sit down right on the dirty linoleum. When she looks at him he's got those reddish eyebrows faintly raised. “You could,” she agrees. Then, just above a whisper, because he's giving her this and she wants to give him something better, or maybe because she wants to show him she's sorry for messing up, “Or you could take me back to your house for half an hour, be my boyfriend there instead.”

So, yeah. They never actually get around to the sandwiches.

Jack's condo is on the second floor of a trim, neat triple-decker, parquet floors and a breakfast bar with three stools lined up alongside it, off-white walls hung with a bunch of architectural prints of Worcester showing the city's layout a hundred years ago. There's a small deck off the kitchen with a grill, plus a table for two. He used to steal Mari's mom's recipe for steak marinade to impress all his white, blonde girlfriends.

“Couch?” Jack asks, biting at the back of her neck above the starchy collar of her uniform. Mari feels her nipples harden, pushing up against three thick layers of cotton. She feels like one of those white girlfriends right now, like she's stepped into someone else's shoes by accident. For years she wondered if he wasn't making a move because he didn't want to date brown.

She swallows. His mouth feels just a little mean, nipping kisses like a punishment. “Bed,” she says with difficulty.

They set their radios on his dresser—fuck, they're going to have to scramble if it turns out there's a call—and face each other on the carpet. It feels serious between them all of a sudden, solemn and grave.

“Piper will get a statement,” Mari says. She's desperate for him to agree with her, or at least nod, but Jackson just looks at her. His gaze is bedrock-steady.

“If we wanna do this, we gotta hurry,” he says, stepping into her space.

His voice almost sounds like fucking her is something he could take or leave. “Okay,” Mari agrees, speaking against a suddenly dry mouth. “Yeah. Sure.” He's so tall, standing close to her like this. He got his hair re-buzzed this week, sharp cheekbones standing out. He hasn't regained a single pound of the weight he lost. It makes him look permanently hungry, ropy limbs like a teenager.

“Okay,” Jackson echoes. Then he kisses her and oh, that's still strange, having Jackson's tongue in her mouth and hearing the sounds he makes, so intimate it's almost embarrassing. The back of Mari's neck heats up. He's a good kisser, confident, the palms of his hands warm warm warm.

“Take off your clothes,” Jackson says quietly. His hands are on her back and ass, squeezing in a way that makes Mari really self-conscious of the places she squishes where there's extra flesh to grab.

She breathes. It's intimidating having him watch her undress herself, fumbling as she works the buttons on her stiff blue uniform shirt. She's got a white tank on underneath, plus one of the sports bras she always wears to work. It's so tight it leaves angry red grooves in the skin underneath her breasts, but when she glances up at Jackson he's just staring, lips slightly parted, the faint quickening of his chest as he breathes.

“Keep going,” he instructs.

Mari does. She shimmies out of her pants, then shakes her head slightly. “One day we ought to do this when I'm not wearing granny underwear,” she mutters in embarrassment, reaching down to hook a pair of stretched-out cotton panties off her ankle.

“Mari,” Jack tells her, eyes on the dark triangle of hair between her legs—eyes on her everywhere, her thick thighs and the generous roll of her belly, the hips that were never remotely girlish even when she was actually a girl. “Shut up and get on the bed.”

Mari gets, heart thrumming with anticipation. Jack's still wearing all of his clothes.

“Are you gonna…?” she trails off, waving a hand at his uniform. He unclipped his radio but his duty belt is still buckled in place, badge and gun holstered.

Jackson seems to be considering it. Then he shakes his head. “Nah,” he says, undoing the belt and letting it drop to the floor with a thunk. “Don't think so.” He unzips his fly and pulls his cock out without even unbuttoning, the tip already shiny. It looks lewd and obvious against his dark blue pants.

Mari swallows. The instinct to spread her legs hits right in the bottom of her belly. “Jack,” she murmurs, shifting. “I'm gonna mess up your—”

But Jack nods. “I know,” he says, hooking both hands underneath her knees and yanking her hips to the edge of the bed. When he leans over his nameplate is right in her face,
Officer Ford
in stitched white thread. “Gonna have you all over my zipper.”

“Oh my God,” Mari murmurs involuntarily. She squeezes her eyes shut, then opens them again to find Jack's gaze locked on hers. There's the faintest hint of a smirk on his face. It looks not unlike he's putting the theory of a crime together, all the evidence clicking slowly into place.

“You like that?” he asks, sliding one rough palm up her thigh, then flipping his hand and sliding two fingers as deep inside her as he can get them, no preamble. “Yeah you do,” he answers when Mari keens. He sounds smug, but also clinical, as if he's talking to a suspect.

“I do,” Mari admits once she can speak again. She grinds herself down against his hand. She wants him to add another finger, wants him to stretch her out or turn her over or something, wants this feeling to never ever stop.

“Good,” Jack says, pulling his fingers out again, digging around in the nightstand until he comes up with a condom. “Knees up,” he says, ripping it open. “Let me see you.” Then, tapping her thigh hard enough that Mari doesn't know if it actually qualifies as a tap at all, “More.”

“Fuck.” Mari whimpers and obeys, knees to her chest so he can see every private centimeter of her body as he rolls the condom down over his cock. “Please.”

Jack grins at that, familiar and totally new both at once. It's the first friendly expression Mari's seen on his face since she lay down. “You're kind of dirty, huh?” he asks, lining himself up but not sinking in, not yet. “I like that.”

There's already a burn in the backs of her thighs from holding them up. Mari cups both her knees then slides her hands underneath, yanking up as her legs start to slip out of position. “You do, huh?” she asks, then catches sight of Jackson's expression. “What?”

He shakes his head. His mouth is open just a bit, bottom lip gone cherry-red and shiny. White-boy mouth. White-boy eyelashes, orange and pale. “Good listening, Officer,” he murmurs roughly, nodding at her legs.

Mari blushes. Then he sinks in an inch and she winds up gulping and biting her tongue all at once. “Hurry,” she murmurs, readjusting her grip. She feels overstimulated, like Sonya at the petting zoo last year, flitting from animal to animal in a frenzy then puking up blue slushie beside the goat pen. “They know we're coming back in.”

Jack puts his hands on her hands and pushes up up up. “Yeah,” he says distractedly, pushing in the rest of the way. Then, “Oh fuck, I can't last.”

Oh God, it is so good like that, the press of his hands on her body and the low delicious burn as he bottoms out inside. Mari digs her heels into his ass when he starts to move. It's a full click rougher than he's been with her any of the other times they've done this, fast, his hands trapping hers so she's helpless underneath him. She feels like one raw humming nerve. It's not a flattering angle, probably, her body accordioned up like this, every roll of flesh accentuated and her breasts flattened out against her chest. Mari doesn't spend a ton of time obsessing about her body—she carried a child, she passes her department fitness test just fine—but the flip side of Jack taking charge is this sharp edge of vulnerability, the tired old worry that she's big where she ought to be little and the other way around.

Jack—yeah. Jack does not appear to see it that way.

“Fuck, you're hot,” he mutters now, mouth glancing off hers in an artless half-kiss, like he's after the contact more than anything else. Mari tugs her hands free so she can yank at his hair. She's not gentle about it either, biting at his salty neck hard enough that he hisses. He slams her wrists back down against the bed.

Mari pants, giddy with something close to delight. “Is that how it is?” she asks. Her arms are stinging from the angle.

Jackson nods. His pants are scraping against the inside of her thighs with each thrust, the polyester thick and abrading. “It is,” he confirms. Then he closes his eyes. “Fuck, Mari, hurry up and come.” His voice is strangled.

Mari shivers. “Make me.”

Jackson looks at her. Then he reaches up with one forearm and puts all his weight against her bent knees, practically folding her in half. “Is this it?” His thrusts click up another gear, the teeth of his zipper biting into Mari's flesh. One of them catches and she yelps, but that feels good too, all rolled into everything. “Is that how you like it?”

And—fuck.

That is.

Mari comes with a helpless yowl, muffling it against Jackson's uniform shirt—how shatteringly, colossally good it feels but something else too, the full-body impact of it like getting in a car wreck, totally out of control. He loses it himself barely a second later. That “hurry up” wasn't entirely for her benefit, then, Mari realizes. He needed her to come because he was about to, because they're both getting off on whatever this is. She's never wanted it this way before, not ever. She's not sure what it means that she wants it this way with Jack.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters as he's coming back to himself, hips slowing and his grip on her wrists easing up. “Shit, Mari.”

Mari laughs. “Hi,” she says, the hot sting of the blood rushing back into her arms. She feels sore and sated, but also uneasy, like she hid a bad report card under her bed before going out to play. She isn't sure if this means she's off the hook or not.

Either way, she feels way more naked than she did a second ago, so she shoves gently at his shoulders until he moves. “We've gotten better at that part, huh?”

Jackson's eyebrows twitch. It's the first time either one of them has mentioned it, what an abject failure they were the first time, the weight of all that expectation drowning them like cinder blocks tied to their work boots. “Yeah, well,” he says evenly. “I'm a slow learner.”

“I am,” Mari corrects him, and she means it about more than just the sex.