Danil’s Mate(2)

Danil strode into the precinct, straightening his tie and putting all thoughts of potato pie out of his mind. He had a job to do. And he never did anything half assed.

He came up to the front desk so that Freddie could tell him which room his client was in. He checked the folder in his hand. Harry Rourke. No priors. Good. This shouldn’t take too long at all.

“But on the other hand, if you think about it, the first wasn’t a warning. It was more of a passing of information from one person to another. So this isn’t technically a second warning. It’s a first,” said a woman in a silky, flirtatious voice.

Danil glanced up to see who the smooth talker was. His eyes landed on quite possibly the most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen. She leaned up against the front desk in a pair of tight, cuffed jeans and a black leather jacket. Her curves were soft and generous. Her foxy face was sharp in the features and highlighted by a short, stylish cap of dark, glossy hair. She slanted her eyes up through a fringe of dark lashes at Officer Rickford, a personal friend of Danil’s.

Rickford was looking a little pink around the ears, Danil noted. And he could see why. This woman was a stone cold ten and she wasn’t pumping any sort of brakes.

Danil smirked as she reached up and gently readjusted Rickford’s tie, brushed something imaginary off his shoulder.

“So, seeing as I’m new in town and didn’t know the rules, I think everyone would understand if instead of any more police action, I just took this warning very seriously, and promised never to do it again.” She pouted perfect, plump lips and put a very sorry look on her face.

“Be that as it may, Ms. Katsaros,” Rickford said, turning even pinker and clearing his throat. “This is the second time in as many days that you’ve been brought into the station for trespassing on federally protected land.”

“I was lost!” she insisted. “Is that a crime?”

“Yes, actually. It is,” Danil said in his slight Slavic accent, deciding to throw Rickford a bone here. The man was a little out of his depth. Danil leaned across the two of them to hand his file to Freddie at the front desk. Freddie took it and flipped it open, started processing it right away.

Danil leaned back, ignoring the quick tightening of his gut when he realized that this woman smelled like citrus. Light and clean and female.

Frustration flickered momentarily across the woman’s face at Danil’s intrusion before she smoothed her exceptional features back into a flirtatious smile. “Well, in that case, I genuinely accept the warning, Officer Rickford. I’ve taken it right to heart. And you won’t have to worry about me for another second. I swear.”

“Is this your client, Dan?” Rickford asked Danil hopefully. The officer already knew he was sunk. He needed reinforcements.

Danil put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the woman from head to toe. He was lazy in his perusal of her, fully enjoying the opportunity. When his eyes landed on her exquisite face, he noted that she had one eyebrow raised sardonically.

“Well, she doesn’t look like a Harry Rourke,” Danil said.

“Dora Katsaros,” the woman introduced herself drily. “I’m new in town. Though some of us don’t seem to think that matters.” She flicked her eyes toward Rickford, who sweated and scratched at the back of his neck.

“Now, Ms. Katsaros, you know it isn’t anything personal,” Rickford muttered, practically scuffing the toe of his boot on the ground.

“Your defendant’s in room B, Dan,” Freddie said, looking up from his computer and handing the file back across the group to Danil.

“Thanks, Freddie,” Danil said, taking the folder. He nodded solemnly, just the hint of a smirk on his face. “Ms. Katsaros.” He winked at Rickford. “Officer Rickford, good luck,” he muttered under his breath.

And then he was closing the door of the interrogation room behind him, and his entire world was Harry Rourke.

Thirty minutes later, Danil dashed out of the precinct, his world zooming out into a wide lens again. He’d always possessed incredible focus. Even as a young boy in Belarus, running the streets with his brothers. He’d see men playing dice on the corner and stop stock still. Immovable, until he’d learned the rules, the theory, the strategy.

Rules were how he lived his life. He trusted them, understood them. It was how he’d gotten his family American citizenship so quickly when they’d come to America. Even though he was the youngest of the four boys in his family, he’d been the one to learn English first. To seek out an immigration lawyer. To help his brothers find work. He knew the system could chew you up and spit you out if you didn’t understand it. So he’d pledged to understand it. From the moment he set foot on American soil. And now, here he was, a decade later. A public defender, using his knowledge of the system to defend the innocent. And occasionally the guilty.