The Panic Pure

I’m wrapping up The Panic Pure and I’ve been going back through and rereading some stuff. Which means I get to see my characters from a bit of a distance. Here’s my thoughts on Marshal:

Marshal is almost sickeningly romantic, and I like that he realizes it. He has these sweeping thoughts and a stylized image of Danny, but he’s just a guy when he talks out loud. He thinks all kinds of sappy stuff. Writing him feels a bit like letting go.

I’m a closet romantic. Meeting me in real life, you’d be shocked by how nougaty my inner core is. My personal idea of romance is pizza and a movie, though I guess somewhere in me I dream of white lace and flowers.

Because otherwise, I have no idea where Marshal came from.

He’s a terrible FBI agent, by the way. A beautiful lover of Danny, but I don’t think he could solve his way out of a paper bag.

Read The Panic Pure at Kimichee.

Here’s Marshal and Joanna being paperwork ninja:

EXCERPT:

Marshal could feel Joanna burning a hole in the side of his head with her eyes and more than anything he wanted to yell at her to cut it out. Instead, he gave her a steady glance and calmly asked, “What?”

She smirked. “So, word on the street is that a guy in a suit dropped off that fancy lunch for you. Dare I ask who the sender was?”

Marshal shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He double-dipped a gyoza half in sauce and popped it in his mouth.

“That’s a very fancy box that your lunch came in,” she fished, raising her eyebrows.

“Why don’t you just eat your sandwich and apple and let me enjoy my meal?” he asked.

“Because I’m super curious about how you managed to get your hands on such gourmet goods,” she said, while obligingly picking up her sandwich half–he saw that it was peanut butter and grape jelly, which only made him appreciate his food more.

“Hey, is it my fault that you have an elementary school lunch? I wasn’t the one that packed it for you this morning,” he said.

Joanna made a face, though her eyes danced. “We both know that I have about zero cooking skills. Peanut butter and jelly is just my speed, you know, unless I want to take up vending machine bingeing again. And we really don’t want to go there.”

“What you need to do is find yourself a man that knows how to cook,” he said.

“Like you did?”

Marshal couldn’t help looking around to make sure no one else was close enough to hear. Sure, the Bureau was supposed to be all about non-discrimination, but he’d lived long enough to realize that most policies were entirely dependent on the people you worked with.

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said. She took a sip of her coffee. “Even if I yelled it from the rooftops I’m pretty sure that no one here would honestly give a damn.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he said. “And shouldn’t you be drinking a juice box with your kid lunch? Coffee seems way too grown up for you.”

She snorted. “If I could have my drink of choice here at work, this coffee would have a couple of shots of Irish love in it. Especially since I’ve still gotta go through all of these reports.” She lifted a stack of files a couple of inches before dropping them with a grimace. “Why can’t we be out on the streets catching the bad guys?”

“Because we’re paperwork ninja,” he said. It was one of the sad facts of his career that he had never been shot at, threatened by anyone other than Joanna, or been able to violently take down a bad guy. For the most part, he went to work in the morning and made it home at the same time every night. “We live the life that other agents’ wives only dream of. Too bad neither one of us has any kids or anything because we’d be able to spend plenty of time with them.”

Joanna chuckled. “But at least one of us has a warm body to go home to, right?”

“Yes, I keep my body temperature to a toasty ninety-eight degrees,” he dead-panned, then ducked the pen she threw at his head. “Watch it, you could have put my eye out.”

“At least then you’d have a story of danger to tell your sweetie. It might get you some freaky death-risk smoochies.”

“Are you two discussing job related topics again?” a cool voice interrupted.

Marshal jumped a little, then turned to see that Agent Barry Landau had somehow managed to come right up to his shoulder. “Whoa, I didn’t see you there.”

“Duh,” Landau said, rolling his eyes. “You and Starkweather were too busy gossiping like girls. Shouldn’t you be working?”

“It’s our lunch break,” Joanna said, not-quite glaring at him.

Landau scoffed. “Is that all you do, come in and eat lunch and talk all day? ‘Cause you know, the rest of us are out there actually getting the job done.”

“You know what, I’m pretty sure that we’ve cleared more cases than you ever will,” Marshal said.

“Yeah, by doing all the desk work that no one else wants. You spend all day reading reports and filing paperwork. I’m pretty sure the Bureau could replace you two with a couple of secretaries,” Landau said. “Two pretty ladies instead of you two… might be nice.”

“Why don’t you crawl back under your rock or something?” Joanna growled menacingly. Marshal didn’t like how she was squishing the remnants of her sandwich in her fist.

Landau laughed. “Smooth comeback, Starkweather.” He walked off, back toward the corner where his cronies hung out.

“That guy is a real dick,” Joanna said, glaring after him.

Marshal looked at her, his eyebrows feeling like they were touching his hairline. “That’s really all you’ve got to say about him?”

She shook her head, the corner of her mouth twisting. “That’s all I can say about him at work. I’ll write up a list of his attributes and email it to you later. Off the clock.”

“You’re a real piece of work, Starkweather, you know that?” he laughed.

“Finish your food, Newman,” she said.

It was their personal joke. They had called each other by their first names from the very first moment they’d met. It was as though they had been born to be partners, there was just this instant sense of camaraderie and comfort.

/EXCERPT