The Cardigans (Criminal Intentions, Season One #1)

by Cole McCade

Malcolm let his apartment door close and vaulted the stairs two at a time to the streets that waited, every night, to deliver another cold corpse in a body bag. Another cold corpse, and a case that might never be solved if he didn’t find a break within the first forty-eight. He carried too many of those cases inside him. Too many dead ends, too many losses. Not that a win could bring the dead back to life. Malcolm didn’t have that power, and he’d given up on saving lives long ago. By the time he got to them now, it was already too late.

Khalaji carried himself like an old and battle-torn wolf, grave and fierce and solemn, the last one left of his pack and yet determined to defend his territory to the death, even when he could barely stand.

Seong-Jae narrowed his eyes, teeth clenching. “I was not analyzing you.” “Don’t lie to me. This partnership won’t work well if you do.” “This is not a partnership.” “No. It’s really not, is it?”

Right now, though, if anyone needed to get himself under control it was Malcolm. He didn’t like who he became when his temper took over. He’d worked hard to suppress that person, cage him, temper him into someone better, older, wiser, more restrained, more patient. Usually it was easy to keep himself on a leash. Less than one day with Yoon, and that leash was on the verge of snapping.

Seong-Jae considered letting it go, then thought better of it. “You do not know what to make of me, do you?” “I’m not worried about what to make of you. We don’t have to like each other. We just have to work together. And don’t—” Khalaji snapped one hand up. “Don’t say ‘as you say.’” “As you say,” Seong-Jae answered.

“Isn’t that how it always is, though?” Khalaji countered softly. “We only define others by the value they have to us, and once they no longer provide that value, we let them go.” Seong-Jae searched Khalaji’s face, but Khalaji wasn’t looking at him. Khalaji was seeing things elsewhere, elsewhen—and Seong-Jae wondered who had let Khalaji go, once they no longer saw any value in him.

“That was a dick move. And won’t make you any friends around here, pulling rank.” “I have no idea what you mean,” Yoon replied blandly. “Yes, you do.” Yoon’s mouth twitched at the corners. “Perhaps.” Malcolm chuckled. “Thanks. I didn’t have time to waste placating him.” “So you admit that sometimes my methods are effective.” “I admit nothing.”

“Do you have no intention of resisting the assignment, then?” Did he? He didn’t want a partner. That hadn’t changed. Seong-Jae didn’t seem overly enthused about the prospect, either. They’d managed not to kill each other on one case, but this moment of cathartic camaraderie wouldn’t last. Tomorrow Seong-Jae would still be the same uptight, icy bastard, challenging Malcolm at every turn for his particular regulatory flexibility, as mocking in his silences as he was in his blandly sardonic responses. But goddamn, they were lightning in a bottle when they put their heads together. He shrugged, quirking his brows. “I might think about keeping you.”

Malcolm swallowed thickly, his voice struggling out of his throat like gravel. “Anything?” he growled. Seong-Jae tilted his head in the other direction, then released Malcolm’s tie and straightened. “I felt nothing.” Malcolm let his hands fall. “Yeah,” he said numbly—yet he could hardly hear his own voice for the pounding of his own heart. “Me too.” Still Seong-Jae lingered—standing so close that if Malcolm breathed too deep their chests would touch, and then it would be heartbeat to heartbeat, straining against the cages of bone and blood and sinew to reach each other.