Federal Discipline Read online

  “I’m kidding, Jamie.”

  Whenever he said her first name, she felt a little shiver of delight. He said it so… affectionately, almost. She knew she was probably imagining that. They barely knew one another, in spite of the fact he’d taken the liberty to become quite familiar with her bottom.

  The memory of being spanked by the hands that were at that moment holding a cup of coffee and a memo respectively, came flooding back. It wasn’t just Jamie’s mind that flooded either, there was a certain wetness in her panties, an involuntary response to the recollection of being held by strong hands and lectured by that rolling brogue.

  Jack’s phone rang. She watched him as he answered it, not so much listening to what he was saying as watching the way his lips moved. He had a nice mouth, a strong, kissable mouth with lips that probably tasted…

  “Jamie!”

  She came back to reality quickly as those lips barked her name. “Yeah?”

  “Quit day dreaming. The local PD are in a standoff with someone who could be connected with this case. He’s showing signs of psychosis and extreme violence. We need to get down there.”

  Finally. Some real excitement. Jamie bounced out of her chair with a quick, “Yes, sir!”

  Her enthusiasm was not greeted with any measure of excitement on Jack’s part. “This isn’t going to be fun, agent. We’re going to go grab you a vest from inventory and you’re going to stay well out of the way. Situations like this one have a tendency to deteriorate sharply when you least expect it.”

  Jamie nodded whilst he was talking. She’d heard it all before in the academy. She didn’t care. She just wanted something to happen. And it was happening.

  Down in the armory, it took Jack a while to be satisfied with her vest. He insisted that she try three different ones on, making sure that it fit properly and that she could move in it.

  “You’re small,” he frowned at her, sticking his hand in between the back of the vest and her back. There was a good amount of space there, which he clearly wasn’t happy with. The shoulders of the heavy garment were wide too, hanging off her own shoulders not unlike a football player’s shoulder pads.

  “Will I need a separate vest for my ovaries?” She shot the question at him in response to his observation. She didn’t feel small, she felt normal sized. Not everyone could be a hulking mesomorph like Jack.

  “You’re going to need an ice pack for your backside if you don’t stop mouthing off,” he growled. “That will have to do. You look like you’re wearing your daddy’s vest, but there’s nothing that can be done about that in the meantime. We’ll special order one in for you.”

  Jamie didn’t feel like she was wearing her daddy’s vest. Sure it was a little on the large side, but she could bear up under the weight just fine. Biting her tongue, she didn’t make any further smartass responses. There was work to be done. She could antagonize Jack Harley later.

  They drove out to a fairly dilapidated area of the city, a place where the government had once decided to take a crack at social engineering by building large social housing units. The experiment had failed in the 60’s and was still failing in a fairly spectacular way.

  It wasn’t hard to pinpoint the source of the trouble. Jack drove up a block where squad cars were keeping vigil in low, sleek black metal form. One of the cruisers had blue and red lights flashing warning to those around. It acted like a beacon to Jack and Jamie as they crawled up nearby and pulled to a stop.

  “We have a thirty-five year old male by the name of Lee Brampton,” Jack briefed her. “He’s killed one person and barricaded himself in an apartment, seems to be under the influence of an amphetamine.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “There’s a steak knife sticking out of his chest. Officers are reporting that he put it there himself.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Right, we’re going to get out of the car now. Stay behind me, stay behind the officers, and stay alert, all right?”

  Jamie nodded and followed Jack’s lead as he got out of the car and crossed under the cordon. She trailed him, noticing that the vest was indeed too large. When she crouched it banged simultaneously under her chin and against her upper thighs.

  The city block had not been entirely evacuated, there were a few stragglers here and there, keeping an enthusiastic eye out over proceedings. Four squad cars had the building front contained. The rear seemed to be under control as well. The subject himself was in easy evidence, hanging out of a fourth story window with the aforementioned knife sticking out of his ample chest. It had ruined what appeared to be a terrible tattoo of a dragon that was also a tiger, all set against the background of a flaming pentagram. The man was covered in such symbols, some tattooed, some scarred into the flesh of his arms, as if carved there by his own hand. As they drew nearer, he was screaming incoherently and lurching forward into empty space with all the abandon of a fledgling.

  Jamie thought he might be about to jump, but instead he decided to retreat back inside the building for a short moment before emerging with a collection of everyday objects which he turned into missiles. Vases. Cutlery. Cups. Plates. A television. All were hurled out of the window to shrieks of abuse.

  In amongst the general chaos, Jamie spotted something down low, something behind the shattered shards of cheap glass. It was painted on the wall in a silver sparkle paint that looked very out of place on the worn brick. Lines rose to a sharp point overarched by a shining round. It looked like… another pentagram?

  She creeped forward a little. Then a little more. Then a large, heavy hand descended on the back of her neck and pinched hard.

  Dragged backwards, mewling like a kitten the whole time, Jamie found herself looking up into her partner’s granite gaze.

  “Stay. Out. Of. The. Line. Of. Fire,” Jack ground out between gritted teeth. “Can you do that, Black?”

  “Oh. Shoot. Yes.” Jamie hadn’t realized she was in the line of fire.

  Jack gave her a look of what she thought was probably disgust and went back to the officer in charge of the scene, leaving her crouching behind a car and feeling completely foolish. Way to dispel notions of book smartness to the detriment of common sense. Dammit. What a stupid mistake.

  She couldn’t dwell on it for too long. Having run out of things to throw, the suspect uttered a blood-curdling cry and threw himself out of the window. By some miracle, the fall did not kill him. He somersaulted through the air, landed atop a parked SUV and continued yelling, before rolling off, onto his feet and running at the cops.

  Jamie closed her eyes, knowing what was coming next. Her fingers were in her ears when the shots rang out. She didn’t open her eyes until a good minute later, long after the shots had ceased. By that stage there were number cards on the street and a photographer was taking pictures of the freshly deceased.

  What shocked Jamie was the complete lack of shock from, well, from anybody. Down the street, people were already playing dice. One of the cops was having a cigarette. Another had found half a sandwich and was working on shoving that into his face. A man was dead, and it truly wasn’t possible for anyone present to care less.

  “Dead end,” Harley said, reaching down to pull her to her feet. His hand closed around her collar and she felt herself being drawn up to her feet. “You good?”

  “Yeah,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “I’m good.”

  “Go sit in the car.”

  She obeyed the order without question, moving in something of a haze. The sound of shots was still ringing in her ears. That had gone badly. Very badly. One moment the suspect had been yelling and screaming and flailing around. Nasty and obnoxious, but alive. The next moment, he was so much meat on the road.

  “Get a grip, Jamie,” she lectured herself. This was exactly what Harley had been warning her about. And here she was, hands trembling, heart racing, trying to process what had just happened.

  The driver’s side door opened too soon for Jamie’s liking. Harl
ey slid in beside her, gave her one of those keen looks and started the car. They drove in silence for a couple of minutes, the world passing by indifferently as Jamie sat and stared at her lap.

  “You all right, agent?”

  “Mmm.”

  “That’s one lead down,” he said. “Unfortunately. The scene guys will do their job and we’ll see what they turn up.”

  “Uh huh.” Jamie tried to sound detached. Neutral. She thought about anything besides what she’d just seen. She wondered if she’d filed her tax return correctly, if her bathtub needed to be caulked. She thought about buying a new pair of even more sensible shoes.

  “Hey,” Jack said, reaching across to squeeze her shoulder. “It’s okay to be a little shaken up. That was rough.”

  “I’m not shaken up,” she lied. “I’m just thinking about the case.”

  Jack pulled the car over. She didn’t know why. She didn’t ask.

  “You’re in the deep end here, Black,” Jack said sympathetically. “This is nasty.”

  “You warned me,” she shrugged, looking out the window. She noticed they were stopped by a shoe store. Leather boots on sale, 50% off. Were they comfortable? Sensible?

  “Look at me.”

  She slowly and reluctantly turned her head. He gave her a concerned, piercing look, his gaze going right through to her soul.

  “It’s not too late to back out,” he said. “Today was bad. You watched a man die.”

  “I didn’t. I heard him die,” she said. “I hid behind a car and I closed my eyes and I plugged my ears and I pretended like it wasn’t happening. Happy?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not happy. I’m sorry. You were in no way ready for that. Today is your first day – and it’s been a heck of a day.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. “It has.” Her gaze drifted back to the shoe store. Nice long brown leather boots. Jamie wondered how hard they’d be to get on.

  “You want to get some ice cream?”

  “What?” She turned back to him. “Ice cream?”

  “Sure,” he winked.

  Jamie was too numb to object, or to really understand if he was being kind or if he was subtly mocking her. She nodded, focusing on keeping her emotions in check as they drove a few blocks to an Icy Joes.

  “Chocolate?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes, thank you.”

  He was gone for a few minutes and then he returned with a single scoop in a cone. He handed it to her. She thanked him, noticing that he had chosen a raspberry cone for himself.

  “Do you always go out for snacks after someone dies?” Melted chocolate slowly traced down the edge of the cone as she looked at him. He was eating his ice cream as if nothing was bothering him. As if some poor soul hadn’t just been violently freed from the chains of existence via hot lead injection.

  “I thought it might make you feel a little better.”

  She lapped at the ice cream thoughtfully. It tasted good, rich, creamy, full of flavor. To her surprise, she did feel a little better. She felt comforted. She felt… looked after. Glancing across at Agent Harley, she wondered why he was suddenly being so nice.

  “Are you going to recommend for my transfer now?”

  “That back there, that was a baptism of a kind,” he replied. “You can leave if you like. The door is always open, but I’m not going to send you through it.”

  Not a baptism, Jamie thought. A test. A test she appeared to have passed. She started to feel a little proud. And then she felt guilty for feeling pride at the cost of a man’s life.

  “What are the odds Lee Brampton was the one responsible for all these murders?”

  “Fifty-fifty, I suppose,” Harley said. “Either he was, or he wasn’t.”

  True enough, Jamie supposed. Not precisely precise, but somewhat accurate.

  “Tell me something,” he said, crunching into the cone. “What made you want to work violent cases?”

  “I’m an orphan,” Jamie said, deciding to tell him the truth. She didn’t like to talk about her past much, but Harley seemed trustworthy. He also seemed like the sort of person who would keep the information to himself. “I lost both my parents to a mob hit when I was eight years old.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t remember much,” Jamie said. “But I remember the agent who worked on the case. She saved me. She saved me and she made sure that the people responsible spent the rest of their lives behind bars. I wanted to be like her when I grew up. I wanted to stop the bad guys.” Jamie nibbled at the cone and thought back to the woman with the kind brown eyes. “Whenever I missed my parents, whenever I thought about going off the rails, I thought about what I wanted to do. I thought about all the people out there doing terrible things and not getting caught. And I worked harder, and I graduated college and I got accepted by the academy and I was so excited because I knew I was going to make a difference. I was going to be one of the good guys. But right now… I don’t feel like a good guy. I feel like I just hid and let someone commit suicide by cop.”

  “Sometimes what we do is black and white,” Jack said. “And sometimes everything is just black. Some days everybody loses. But there are good days too. There are days where you know that because you showed up and did your job, the world is a little bit safer. Those are the days you hold on to.”

  Jamie nodded. He was probably right. It sounded right. It didn’t make her feelings go away, but it did at least put them in a context where she could feel a little bit better about them.

  “We’re going to finish our ice cream,” he said. “And then we’re going to go back to the office, review the files and make sure we’re ready to take away everything we can from the scene report. Oh, and we’re going to get you fitted with a vest that doesn’t make you look like one of those ninja turtles. That sound good to you, Black?”

  “Yes sir,” Jamie agreed.

  He smiled at her. She smiled back.

  Chapter Four

  Jack was impressed. He’d expected hysterics from the pale young woman with the wispy gold hair. She didn’t look tough. She looked like any other woman her age, well presented and vaguely fragile. Jack didn’t consider himself a misogynist. He knew women could be tough. But the vulnerability in Jamie’s eyes concerned him. She was a woman on a mission, there to fight past daemons. But there were daemons everywhere, and even if she did manage to lay one set to rest, they would still cluster around her on every side.

  It wasn’t his habit to be so protective or concerned about fellow officers. Rookies needed extra attention though. They were prone to breaking at the worst possible moments. To Jamie’s credit, she’d held it together pretty well during the shooting. There could still be trouble coming down the line, though. The worst reactions never happened in the heat of the moment. They happened hours, days, weeks later, when the immediate stress had dissipated and the full reality of what happened had settled in.

  The fact she’d shared her early trauma gave him mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was as good a reason as any to join the agency. On the other, it suggested possible instability. The psychometric testing would probably have picked it up if she was seriously unbalanced, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a crack in her psyche, something that could be burst wide open with repeated exposure to violent acts.

  Stability. That was what she needed. Stability and order. Same as any other rookie.

  But as much as Jack tried to convince himself Jamie was like any other rookie, he knew it wasn’t true. She wasn’t like any other rookie; she was a rookie that made his palm itch and his heart beat faster in his chest. She was a rookie with a tight bottom housed in simple black slacks that did nothing to hide its rounded curve. Her attitude made him want to grab her, pull her over his knee and smack her bottom until she dropped the hard-nosed act – and maybe her panties too.

  He waved as Jamie left the office after her first, incredibly grueling day. A part of him wondered if she would show up the next.

  *****

  Jami
e did show up the next day, bright and early with a smile on her face and sporting no signs of the trauma the day before. She was a tough little thing.

  “What are we doing today, boss?” She beamed and perched on the edge of his desk in a way she probably shouldn’t because it made the curve of her rear all the more tantalizing. She was in a very nice pair of fitted slacks that were simultaneously professional and, well, almost sinful with the way they cupped her bottom. The matching blazer she wore did nothing to hide the proud rounds, which filled out the rear of those pants in a way that would have, no doubt, made the designer proud.

  Dragging his gaze away from Jamie’s bottom, Jack glanced back at the piece of paper in his hand. “Today, rookie, we’re going to interview the widow of the man who died yesterday.”

  “He was married?”

  The question was redundant, but Jack could forgive her for it, as the man who had hurled himself into a hail of bullets didn’t precisely seem like marriage material. “Evidently.”

  They left the office and headed out to a lawyer’s office where the widow had consented to be interviewed. It was in the financial center of town, where the streets were swept clean religiously and panhandlers were moved on before they had a chance to settle. A lot of people felt more comfortable there, amongst the carefully manicured trees in oversize pots and the shining windows that reflected you back at yourself in the glazed smiles of mannequins, but Jack didn’t much care for the place. Everyone and everything was facade this side of the city. Perfect white smiles hid horrors beyond normal imagination. This was the part of town where a sociopath could destroy hundreds of lives with little more than a smooth pitch and a well-bound investment prospectus.

  Jamie had little to say, which was different for her. He was used to her mouthy approach to almost everything. But she, too, was looking about with an expression that could only be described as vaguely suspicious. Without speaking a word, Jack knew they shared certain feelings about their surroundings. It made him feel closer to Jamie, even though she was the sort of woman who could have fit in immediately if she simply changed her businesslike slacks for a short skirt, and her sensible shoes for high heels.