Up to MacDermot? She got to make the decision whether they’d be partners? And yet she hadn’t?

Crush didn’t know whether to be disgusted or hurt. Just two more years until he hit his twenty years ... would he make it? He didn’t know anymore. A month ago, he would have thought he’d make it to his thirty years before even thinking about retirement. At least. But now. Sitting here?

“Hey!”

Crush looked up. MacDermot stood across from him. Smiling. Holding coffee. Having worked with MacDermot in the past, he didn’t remember her being much of a cheery person before noon. Someone got laid this morning.

“Here.” She placed a large Starbucks coffee on his desk. “Your hair looks good. Now ... you busy?”

He looked around to emphasize he was just sitting here, then looked back at MacDermot. He didn’t say anything. The beauty of MacDermot? Apparently he didn’t have to say anything.

“Then come on.” She walked off and Crush sighed, picked up his coffee, and followed.

Cella put on her practice clothes and headed out to the rink. If any of the rookies showed up for the coaching she’d offered, she figured she could work with them for a couple of hours, then get in her own practice before heading out to meet her mom in Midtown for her first meeting with Blayne and her whole gang of wedding trouble. Getting Cella’s mom hadn’t been as hard as Cella had feared once she told Barb it was the fiancée of the very wealthy Novikov who needed her help, then her mom was all over it. Still, with the involvement of a grizzly sow and an O’Neill She-lion, Cella felt she should at least go for the initial meeting. But, first, practice.

But when Cella walked out onto the ice, she stopped, her mouth dropping open a little. She’d expected the rookies, and even then only one or two. Most of the guys had day jobs, getting their extra training in when they showed up for practice during the week. But all the rookies were there, and the second string. About twelve guys in all.

Reed skated over to her. “There might be more tomorrow.”

“More?”

He shrugged. “I only told a couple of guys, but the information spread pretty fast. Sorry.”

“No, no. It’s okay. I’m just surprised.”

“You shouldn’t be.” Skating backward, he winked at her. “Well, tell us what to do, Coach.”

Figuring she could still meet her mom, but that her own training would have to wait, Cella motioned the rest of the guys over.

“Let’s go. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Dez MacDermot knocked on the door again.

Okay, so maybe working regularly with Lou Crushek wasn’t the best idea for her. Gentry had been pushing it since Dez’s last two partners had transferred back to their old units. According to the first one, Jerry the fox, the reason he’d left was, “MacDermot isfuckin’ crazy. I wouldn’t work with her again if you put a gun to my head.” Seemed a little bit of an extreme reaction to one bad incident involving a rocket launcher. Everybody got out alive, didn’t they? So what, exactly, was the problem? And she’d always felt she’d work best with the canines, yet they didn’t follow orders the way well-trained dogs did.

Then there was Joanie the cheetah, whom Dez left alone with Cella and Dee-Ann in an interrogation room while she went to get a soda. Gone from the room ten minutes, tops. But by the time she got back, Cella had the cheetah pinned to the floor, basically throttling her with those always-bruised fists, while Dee-Ann was going through Joanie’s purse for no other reason than, “Just curious what a cat keeps in a purse.”

Needless to say, Joanie ran back to her old precinct.

So Gentry had once again brought up Crushek. “He’s a bear. You’ve worked with him before. He’s a bear. Smith and Malone can’t just pin him to the ground, nor does he carry a purse because he’s a bear... .”

And it had sounded very reasonable to Dez. Hey. She was flexible. After living with a man who sported a mane and a constant sense of entitlement, Dez felt certain she’d do great with a bear. Based on what she’d seen on Animal Planet documentaries, they were real easy to get along with as long as you didn’t leave food lying around and didn’t startle any females with cubs.

Now, however, Dez was starting to think she’d been wrong about all that. Or, at the very least, she shouldn’t have assumed that grizzlies and polars were just different-colored versions of each other. Because, man, was Crushek a cranky asshole!

“Are we just going to keep standing here and knocking?” he suddenly demanded, making Dez grit her teeth. It was the trick she’d learned in the Marines so that she didn’t pull her gun on people who irritated the shit out of her. “We have a warrant,” he needlessly reminded her.

“Yes,” she replied, trying not hiss like Cella sometimes did. “But maybe you haven’t realized where we are—”

“You mean Staten Island?”

“Yes,” she said again. “A street in Staten Island populated completely by bears.”

“Is that why you brought me? Figure I could make things easier for you with the bears?”

“That is not why I brought you along, but can you just let me handle it?”

“Whatever.”

Deciding to get away from him, Dez said, “You stay here. I’ll go around the back.”

“Fine.”

Dez waited until she’d pulled open the back gate before rolling her eyes to the sky. Who knew one flippin’ bear could be so damn difficult? God, how did Conway manage to put up with Crushek for so long?