Before he could start the next pot of coffee and get on it, his cell phone rang.  Damn it, his gut hitched, thinking it might be Pink. It was Simon.

“Hey, what’s up,” Flynn answered glumly.  Then he literally shook himself. He needed to get over it and focus.

“What, no ‘good morning’?  No, how was your weekend? No, are you a dad yet?”

“Sorry, man, I’m a little preoccupied. Are you a dad yet?”

“No, asshole, Kat’s not due for another three months.”

“Then why’d you say—” Flynn shook his head.  “Never mind.”

Simon laughed. “How’d it go with the little drug-slipping stripper?”

Flynn clenched his jaw.  “I called her out, she apologized, I let her go.”

“Really?” Simon asked, surprised.  “That’s it?”

Flynn was a by-the-book guy. He should have arrested her; had he, he wouldn’t be moping around like a lovelorn sap and she’d be safe in jail.

“The way you were tripping all over your hard-on for her, I thought you might’ve dipped your toe into that pond of bodaciousness.”  Simon laughed, enjoying his ribbing.  “I’ll let the boys know she’s available, then.  They were howling like dogs for her after you absconded with her.”

Flynn’s jaw nearly cracked from the pressure of his anger.  “She’s not available.” Yeah, he just said that.

“Anybody I know?” Simon asked, humor hanging on each word.  Simon was one of the most intelligent investigators Flynn had ever worked with.  His case closure percentage was somewhere in the ninetieth percentile.  Flynn might be lying to himself, but Simon wasn’t buying it.

“No,” Flynn bit off.

“Well, son, you need to let her and her boyfriend know that she’s in with unfriendlies. After I texted you yesterday, I did some digging. Boris Sorlov is an alias and he’s not who he purports to be.  Dude is bad news.  Even if Wild Style didn’t pique your interest, she needs to get out of there or she’s going to end up as some Russian crime czar’s play toy.  Sorlov has been moving girls out of  Surf’s Up for years.”

“I’ve been working it on my end all night. Evidently there’s a task force in place.”

“Hit up Justin, he’s the SFPD liaison and working it hard.  He can bring you up to speed.”

“Thanks, man,” Flynn said.

“Any time, and Ryker?”

“Yeah?”

“As an expert on the opposite sex, and a trained observer, I think I can say with some accuracy that your little stripper wasn’t like the rest of them.  Not even close. Hell, she tried drugging you.”  He laughed.  “If she copped to it and you didn’t arrest her, I’m thinking she was put up to it.”

“She was. By the club manager.  She did it to get information on her sister, who disappeared from the club a few months ago.”

There was a lengthy pause on Simon’s end.  Finally he said, “You have a problem with the 'she’s a stripper’ part?”

“You were there, she took her top off in front of all the guys,” Flynn bit out.

Simon laughed again.  “It’s just skin man, you need to—”

“I don’t need anyone who’s seen her tits to tell me that it doesn’t matter.”

“What is it with you feds and your egos?”

Flynn snapped. “So if Kat did a lap dance for me and rubbed her tits in my face, you’d be able to overlook that?”

There was a long pause before Simon said, very slowly, “I’d get over it because she mattered to me. She’d deserve that from the man who loved her.”

“I just met Pink, I don’t love her!”  He didn’t love anyone.

“I’m not saying you do, what I’m saying is that if she matters, at all, she deserves to be valued for who she is, not what she does.  That said, if that had been Kat, I’d knock your teeth out if you ever mentioned the lap dance or her tits to me, her, or anyone we mutually associated with.”

“So you’d live with the elephant in the room?”

“There’s only an elephant in the room, brother, if you put it there.”

Could have knocked Flynn over with a feather.  Simon West was the most possessive, protective man Flynn had met.  If anyone looked at his wife wrong, Simon took care of business. How could a man like that accept his wife’s tits being on blast?

“It’s not relevant.  There’s nothing between us.”

“If you say so.  But just in case there is, give Justin a call, and he’ll bring you up to speed on Sorlov.”  Simon hung up.

Flynn stood staring at the phone.  His friend’s words echoed in his head.

There’s only an elephant in the room, brother, if you put it there.

There wasn’t an elephant in the room, there was the lusty vision of Pink’s breasts and her air-humping his coworkers in the room!

Flynn jammed the phone into his back jeans pocket and rummaged through his bottom desk drawer, taking out the spare shaving kit and clean button-down shirt and tie still in the package from the dry cleaners. He kept the items on hand for when he pulled an all-nighter.

As he made his way to the men’s room, the support staff and agents began to arrive.  None of them seemed surprised to see him. Indeed, he’d spent many a night here. He gave his SAC, Rod Mills, a nod in the hallway as he pushed the men’s room door open.

Twenty minutes later, clean-shaven, teeth brushed, hair combed, and wearing a fresh shirt and tie, Flynn strode from the restroom as Mills marched toward him.

Boss man didn’t look happy.

“Ryker, tell me what the hell happened at La Costanera last night.”

Flynn stopped in his tracks.  That was the restaurant where he’d taken Pink. The same restaurant where he punched the guy who’d bothered Pink. Someone must have caught his plate.  Even though it was registered classified, the locals had the database to track him down.

“I punched an asshole’s lights out.”

“You broke that asshole’s nose.”

“He deserved it.”

His SAC raged on, “That asshole happens to be Allen Stiles, CEO of Leye, a little tech company in Silicon Valley that grossed a half a billion dollars last year! He wants a personal apology or he’s going over my head to get it.”

Damn if Flynn would apologize to that ass--hat. “He’ll get an apology from me after he apologizes to—Pin—my girl.”  The minute the words “my girl” came out of his mouth, Flynn’s stomach did a hard roll. WTF? 

“Come again?” Mills asked.

Flynn clarified. “He disrespected my—date. He was belligerent, and used words likely to evoke an immediate and violent response. Here in California, I think it’s section four-fifteen of the Penal Code.”

“And that caused you to break his nose?”

“All I did was use necessary force to overcome his resistance to stopping what he was doing.”

Mills smirked. “Are you serious? I suppose you started yelling, stop resisting, stop resisting, too.”

Straight-faced, Flynn answered. “No, sir, my necessary force ended the entire unpleasant encounter. I’m guessing the CEO of Leye doesn’t want his face splashed all over the front page of the Chronicle for drunk and disorderly. In fact, I’m sure his stockholders don’t.”

Mills shook his head and said, “I’m not doubting you, Ryker, but I’m going to need the whole story from the beginning. My office.”

Izzy woke up puffy-eyed and exhausted.  She’d spent the night getting drunk with Charlie as she wistfully and tearfully recanted the best twenty-four hours of her life, leaving out the part where she tried to drug Flynn and the my-real-last-name-is-Chastain part.

“Oh, sweets, I don’t know if I should go beat him up or give him a hug,” Charlie had said, hugging her close in his bed last night.  After they’d put on their PJs, popped popcorn, uncorked a few bottles of wine he had stashed, then snuggled together under the sheets like two besties, Izzy spilled her guts.

It was cathartic, and long overdue. Charlie already knew she was a love child, but he didn’t know names or that she had a half sister. Withholding her sister’s last name, Izzy came clean about why she was working at Surf’s Up. Telling someone who cared about her that she had stripped for a room full of lusty cops—then brought one home and essentially had a one-night stand with him—without being judged for it, made her feel like the huge black cloud that had followed her for years had been blown away.  It was still there, hovering on the horizon, perhaps it always would be, but for now, the sun shined through it.