Page 18 of The Diamond in the Rough

Hart just rolled his eyes. “If he didn’t already know, it wouldn’t take long before he was gonna find out anyway.”

Both Parikh’s dark eyebrows went up. “Oh?”

Hart crossed both arms over his chest. “You think these fuckheads are just gonna sit back and let A-Branch take them down without you going all stripey on their asses?”

“One can hope,” came the wry response.

I didn’t know if it would be rude to comment on his shifter nature, and Ward had taught me that if I didn’t know, it was probably better for me to keep those sorts of remarks or comments to myself. So I did.

“Agent Parikh?” I asked, instead.

He looked over at me. “I call you Rayn, so you should do the same. Not Rayn, obviously,” he corrected, quickly, cheeks darkening. Hart snickered. “Rajesh.” He held out a hand. He had his cuffs folded back and wore no watch or jewelry on his right hand, so it was safe enough for me to accept the gesture without risking ending up in his thoughts.

I swallowed, and took his hand. It was warm, his palm smooth, his fingers a little calloused. I liked the feeling of his hand against mine, but I let go when his grip loosened. “Rajesh,” I repeated, and it was almost as though I could taste his name on my tongue, although I couldn’t have told you what it tasted like.

“Raj,” he said, his cheeks even darker. “Nobody except my mother calls me Rajesh.”

“I could—” Hart began.

Parikh—Raj interrupted the elf with a raised middle finger. “Shut up unless you want me usingyourlegal name, Keebler.”

I knew Hart’s first name was Valentine because I was in charge of Beyond the Veil’s payroll and had been when Hart worked for us. I also knew that only Taavi was allowed to use it on pain of possible death. I wouldn’t dare.

Hart held up both hands in surrender with a grimace. “Fine. Ugh.”

“Raj?” I asked, coming back to the original question I’d wanted to ask him. The syllable felt funny in my mouth.

I liked the fact that Raj had asked me to use his first name. I liked the idea that he might think of me as a peer rather than just a tool to use and otherwise ignore.

I was used to being ignored, even by the people who genuinely seemed to like me. Ward always made a point of recognizing and including me, but sometimes even Hart,Mason, and Beck seemed to see past me, although usually I got at least ahello, and sometimes Hart brought me hot chocolate with espresso.

But the clients who came through, whether they were there for Beyond the Veil or the Lost Legacy Foundation, mostly ignored me entirely, even if they had to talk to me to check in or make an appointment or ask for a pen. It was an odd experience, knowing that someone was talking to you, but wouldn’t be able to even describe you to someone else in an hour.

Raj looked over at me, and I couldn’t quite read his expression. “Yes?”

“Can you tell me where someone would have to stand in order to cause that?” I pointed at a particularly large spray of blood.

“Why the fuck do you want to knowthat?” Hart uncrossed his arms, looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

I looked between them. “I want to increase the likelihood that I might be able to find something the killer… touched,” I explained. “Maybe I can tell you something more… useful that way.”

“Any chance you’ll let me call Mays?” Hart asked Raj.

“No,” came Raj’s response. “You can’t call in an RPD tech.”

Hart sighed. “You know he’s better than any of ours.”

“And yet the Federal government pays their salaries, not his,” came the response. “So you have to deal with the fact that they are incrementally less skilled than your favorite CSI.”

“Fine.” Hart sounded a little annoyed. “Can we call in some other fucker who knows about blood spatter, then?”

Raj let out a low huff. “Will I do?” he asked, and even I could detect the sarcasm in the question.

Hart’s eyebrow arched. “You know blood spatter? Why the fuck didn’t I know that?”

“You never asked,” came the response. He paced over to the spot in question, then turned to look at me. “Okay, Rayn. This particular pattern”—He pointed at the spattery streak on the wall.—“Would have been caused by a backswing.” He swung a pretend weapon of some sort in a kind of lazy arc. “Blood on the weapon from the victim would have been thrown backwards—probably more than once, given the thickness of the spatter.”

I walked over to where he was standing, and he took a step away, letting me stand where he’d been. I looked around me, at the end of the couch, at a small side table with a round clean spot in the middle that suggested there had been something there, like a vase or jug. I looked for anywhere the killer might have touched on the way over, anywhere they might have gone from this spot, what they could see…