Free Night Sins by Tami Hoag

up.”
    “How diplomatically put.”
    “I don't get paid for diplomacy,” she said, knowing damn well that she did. “I get paid to consult, advise, and investigate. I advise that
you
investigate, Chief, instead of dragging your butt around, pretending nothing's happened.”
    “I didn't ask for your consultation or your advice,
Ms.
O'Malley.” Mitch didn't like this situation. He didn't like the possibilities and what they could mean to Deer Lake. And at the moment he was nursing a strong dislike for Megan O'Malley just because she was there and witnessing everything and poking at his authority and his ego. “You know, old Leo wasn't much to look at, but he knew his place. He wouldn't stick his nose into this until I asked him to.”
    “Then he would have been dragging his butt, too,” Megan said, refusing to back down. If she backed away from him now, God knew she would probably end up sitting around the squad room monitoring the coffeepot. It wasn't just a question of turf, it was a matter of establishing herself in the pecking order. “If you don't call in uniforms to question the neighbors, I'll question them myself as soon as I've had a look around.”
    The muscles in his jaw flexed. His nostrils flared, emitting twin jet streams of steam. Megan held her place, gloved hands jammed on her hips, the muscles in the back of her neck knotting from looking up at him. She had ceased to feel her smaller toes as the cold leeched up through the thin soles of her boots.
    Mitch ground his teeth as that fist tightened a little more in his belly and a voice whispered in the back of his mind.
What if she's right? What if you're wrong, Holt? What if you blow this?
The self-doubt made him furious, and he readily transferred that fury to the woman before him.
    “I'll call for two more units. Noga can start looking around out here,” he said tightly. “You can come with me, Agent O'Malley. I don't want you running unchecked in my town, spooking everyone into a panic.”
    “I'm not yours to keep on a leash, Chief.”
    His lips curled in a smile that was feral and nasty. “No, but it's a great fantasy.”
    He stalked off down the sidewalk and up the steps, denying her the chance for rebuttal. She hurried after him, cursing the slippery footing with every breath she didn't use to curse Mitch Holt.
    “Maybe we ought to set some ground rules here,” she said, coming up alongside him. “Decide when you'll be enlightened versus when you'll be an asshole. Is that a matter of convenience or a territorial thing, or what? I'd like to know now, because if this is going to degrade into a fence-pissing contest, I'm going to have to learn how to lift my leg.”
    He shot her a glare. “They didn't teach you that at the FBI academy?”
    “No. They taught me how to subdue aggressive males by ramming their balls up to their tonsils.”
    “You must be a fun date.”
    “You'll never know.”
    He pulled open one of the doors that led into the ice arena and held it. Megan deliberately stepped to the side and opened another for herself.
    “I don't expect special treatment,” she said, stepping into the foyer. “I expect equal treatment.”
    “Fine.” Mitch pulled his gloves off and stuffed them into his coat pockets. “You try to go over my head and I will be as equally pissed off with you as I would be with anyone else. Make me mad enough and I'll punch you out.”
    “That's assault.”
    “Call a cop,” he tossed over his shoulder as he jerked open a door into the arena and strode through it.
    Megan cast a glance toward heaven. “I asked for this, didn't I?”
             
    O lie Swain had done most of the grunt work at the Gordie Knutson Memorial Arena for the better part of five years. He worked from three till eleven six days a week, keeping the locker rooms in order, sweeping trash from the seating areas, resurfacing the ice with the Zamboni machine, and doing whatever odd jobs needed doing. His real name was not Olie,