The Rookie (The Intelligence Unit #1) - Kimberly Kincaid Page 0,2

on with a trowel just to mess with her—he was her partner, after all, which made him practically duty-bound to give her at least a little crap on occasion, rookie or not—the part about her being the best, he meant. Dade had served the Remington Police Department for fifteen years. She’d passed up numerous well-earned promotions to stay right where she was, preferring to “keep one eye on the street and the other one on rookies”—something she reminded him of at least daily.

Not that Xander minded. He was here to be a good cop, and that meant learning from the sharpest and most streetwise. If it also meant crazy hours (it did) and work hard enough to make most grown people weep (yep again), then so be it.

He was all too happy to keep his head down, his ears open, and his boots on the straight and narrow.

It was the least he could do to atone for the sins of his past.

“Mmm.” Dade slid some PhD-level side-eye across the front seat of their cruiser before softening into a smile. “I am pretty damn good. And you’re pretty damn lucky the guy running your sister’s kitchen makes the best Cuban sandwich in the city.”

“You’re not going to get any arguments out of me on that one,” Xander agreed. Kennedy managed one of Remington’s most popular bar and grills, and she never hesitated to have a grab-and-go meal ready for him and Dade when they were on patrol. She hadn’t been thrilled about his decision to become a cop—ever since they’d been reunited two years ago, she’d done some serious leveling up in the protective older sister department. Considering the dangerous circumstances that had brought them back together after five years of near radio silence, he couldn’t exactly blame her. But Xander had been adamant.

He’d been a party to that danger, and a lot of really good cops had helped him out of a shit situation. Becoming a really good cop in return so he could help people, too? Made sense, no matter how dangerous it might get.

Before Xander could unearth the Tex-Mex turkey sandwich Kennedy had put in the bag for him—that homemade Chipotle mayo was a work of freaking art—the radio on the cruiser’s dashboard crackled to life.

“Thirteen sixty-two, this is Main.”

Dade’s dark brows lifted toward her hairline in a non-verbal “not-it” as she held up her sandwich, which was already missing a sizeable bite.

Xander shook his head and scooped up the radio with a chuckle. “Main, this is thirteen sixty-two. Go ahead.”

“Be advised, a nine-one-one caller is reporting a ten thirty-nine at twelve Broadmoor Street,” came the report, and shit. Assault calls were some of the worst. “Victim is non-responsive, unclear if suspect is still on-scene. EMS has been dispatched to the location and advised to wait for police assistance, over.”

Xander flashed Dade a look, but she was already nodding. Between her ridiculous driving skills and the fact that Xander knew North Point’s streets as well as he knew the goddamned alphabet—maybe better—they could be on-scene in five minutes. Plus, someone was in trouble. End of shift or not, they needed to take this. “Main, this is thirteen sixty-two. We are responding to twelve Broadmoor Street, over.”

“It’s a damn sin to let this sandwich get cold,” Dade muttered, hastily wrapping up her dinner and handing it back to Xander as she reached for her seatbelt. While most people would find her gripe a bit callous, given that someone had just been assaulted to the point of non-response, Xander knew better. Defense mechanisms were as much a part of keeping cops safe as good training and body armor. Dade focusing on her sandwich meant she wasn’t focused on her adrenaline.

And that helped Xander not focus on his. “I could always drive if you want to eat on the way there,” he offered sweetly, tugging his own seatbelt into place as Dade kicked the cruiser into gear and pulled away from the side street where they’d stopped to eat. He’d learned pretty damned fast that her sarcasm was the main ingredient in the defenses that kept her safe, just as his laid-back demeanor was his. It was a weird partnering that shouldn’t work, and yet…

“Stop being cute,” she warned.

A smile touched his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I mean it, Matthews.”

“Copy that,” he said, his smile refusing to budge. The banter calmed him in its odd way, leaving him clear-headed enough to scan the quickly passing streets. The city wore its usual Friday night