“Both of you get out,” Connor concluded with a wave of his hand.

Ulmer came short of yanking the door from its hinges on his way out. He stormed off to the left, deeper into the bullpen to where his desk was, presumably to get the Gorman file.

Larkin stepped out of the office and looked toward his desk by the stairs. Doyle leaned his backside against the furniture, his long legs stretched out, big hands resting along the siding, looking comfortable—like he belonged. Larkin didn’t like unnecessary ornamentation, which left his workspace as sparce as a military barrack, but this current embellishment was….

Keep that locked up.

Doyle offered a thumbs-up that somehow translated into a question.

Larkin nodded.

And Doyle’s face lit up like sunshine on pristine snow. Blinding, but so beautiful, you didn’t want to look away until an afterimage was burned into the back of your skull.

“Andrew Gorman.”

Larkin turned toward Ulmer’s voice in time to catch the accordion folder thrown at him. That extra second to snatch the file and secure it against his chest had allowed Ulmer to penetrate Larkin’s personal space and back him against the wall, out of view from Connor’s open door. “Get away from me,” Larkin said.

“If you ever try that shit again,” Ulmer began, his voice an almost animalistic growl but low enough to not be overheard, “running to Connor, whining about how I run my investigations, demanding control of my caseload—”

“Get away from me right now,” Larkin said again.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll break your nose and you can spend the next month explaining how you walked into a doorframe, no big deal.”

Ulmer slammed the meaty side of his fist against the wall beside Larkin’s head, hard enough that the reverb was like the boom of thunder.

—the squish of mud underfoot and the devil about to steal the yellow of his summer flowers, the orange of his campfire, the red of his love—

—disgusting words he knew existed in an unjust world, but still, it shouldn’t happen to him, it wouldn’t happen to him, it couldn’t happen to him, and then the crack of the baseball bat—

Boom. Squish. Crack.

Larkin reacted on instinct to protect himself, to protect his face, his head, and raised the file with the intention of whacking Ulmer across the face. But then Doyle was there, yanking the accordion file from his grasp. He put a hand on Larkin’s chest, pushed in between the two, and used the folder like a shield to force Ulmer back.

“Hey, man,” Doyle said to Ulmer, his voice steady, the smoke tangible—a buoy to anchor Larkin in the now. “I think you need to cool off for a few minutes.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Ulmer spat.

“Ira Doyle. I’m working the Gorman case with Larkin.”

“Oh yeah? Are you just like him? A fucking know-it-all faggot?”