Tessa sighed. “You know what they’ll say.” A pause. “Give it another hour or so. You can approach them if they’re still out then. I hear the real degenerates don’t come out until after ten, anyway.”

Micah frowned. Real degenerates. Yay.

“Easy for you to say. You aren’t the one freezing your balls off.”

“Well, then maybe you should be wearing a warmer coat.”

Micah jumped. Stuck between internally cussing out himself or Tessa for not noticing someone approaching (though judging by the muffled cackling in his earpiece, she had noticed), Micah whipped around to face the person who’d managed to sneak up on him.

Though he’d known who it was as soon as he’d heard that smooth baritone.

“I- sorry. You scared me.”

“I guess that makes us even then.”

Micah blinked at the man’s – at Damon’s – flat tone. He sounded entirely unimpressed. “Um… what?” (He really needed to work on his eloquence when confronted with a pretty face. After all, not all criminals were as ugly as their crimes.)

“Don’t you think that you scared me – when you disappeared the other day?” Damon elaborated. A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Honestly, I didn’t know whether to be impressed or concerned that you could fit through such a small window.”

Micah frowned. “I thought you’d be relieved to have me off your hands,” he fibbed. “Or, I don’t know, maybe mad that I tricked you.”

Damon crossed his arms in front of his chest. He was wearing a fitted suit – just like the first time Micah had seen him – and he couldn’t help but notice how the fabric strained against his bulging biceps.

(Micah may have to take back that assertion about his dick being unable to react to anything in this cold. Damon, it seemed, was the exception to every rule in the universe.)

“Oh no, I was mad,” Damon assured. “Mainly at myself for not seeing it coming. Mostly, though, I was just worried. And confused. Is my company really so abhorrent that you’d rather turn into an icicle out here than sit inside a nice, warm restaurant with me and enjoy a meal?”

Wow. Damon was really good at this guilt-tripping thing. So good, Micah actually found himself feeling bad – and apologizing – despite the fact that the man had strong-armed him into El Taco Rosa in the first place. “Sorry,” he muttered, eyes flittering to the ground as he toed a crack in the sidewalk with one of his dirty Converse. “It’s just… I had places to be.”

“Places like this?” Damon sounded about as impressed as Micah’s captain had when he and Tessa had returned to the precinct hours early on Saturday, having to report that the location they’d spent all day scouting out had been compromised.

And just like that, Micah didn’t feel bad anymore. “What’s it to you?” he demanded hotly, eyes flying back to the man’s ridiculously handsome face. He was forced to tug his bomber jacket more tightly around himself when an impressive gust of wind breezed by, but his temper wasn’t cooled in the least as he added irately, “You know what I do for a living.”