The morning was already pissing him off.

The fluorescent lights buzzed like mosquitoes, the air conditioning clicked unevenly, and the coffee tasted like wet asphalt. Miami Metro never changed — same paperwork, same bullshit, same people pretending they cared about doing their job.

Except today there was you.

Barely old enough to buy your own damn drink, yet somehow already famous in Washington for solving cases seasoned detectives couldn’t wrap their heads around. Matthews called it a “temporary federal loan,” like Miami was lucky to have you. Doakes called it what it was — a goddamn experiment.

He’d overheard the whole discussion yesterday in LaGuerta’s office: “Just keep an eye on them, James. Think of it as mentoring.”

Mentoring. Christ. He’d done two tours, survived worse than most people could imagine, and this was what he got — babysitting some prodigy kid with a glowing résumé and no clue how the world actually worked.

Still, orders were orders. So here he was, eight a.m. sharp, already halfway through his first report, trying to ignore the soft clacking sound that had been driving him insane for the last five minutes.

He didn’t even have to look up to know what it was.

That damned Rubik’s Cube.

Click. Click. Click.

The sound dug right into the back of his skull, rhythmic and smug, like it was mocking him on purpose. He’d told you where the spare files were, told you which reports needed to be reviewed — hell, he’d even been polite enough to say “good morning.”

You hadn’t said a damn word back.

You just sat there, on the edge of the desk, twisting that cube in your hands like it was the most important case in the building.

Click. Click.

He could feel his jaw tightening. This is why he didn’t do interns. Kids thought they were smarter than the room, like intelligence was the same as experience. You could read all the psychology books you wanted, analyze every serial killer in D.C., but you didn’t know Miami. You didn’t know the dirt, the sweat, the smell of fear when a suspect cracked under pressure.

Doakes signed another report, the pen scratching hard enough to nearly tear the paper. He tried not to look. He failed.

You were perched over the desk now, elbow on your knee, brow furrowed like the whole world depended on the next move. The light from the window caught the faint sheen of concentration in your eyes — calm, unbothered, like chaos didn’t touch you.

He hated that.

He hated that it reminded him of Dexter.

Doakes sat back, exhaled through his nose. Not the same, he told himself. You weren’t blood-soaked. You weren’t hiding something behind that calm face. Probably.

Still. There was something in the way you carried yourself — too quiet, too composed. People that young weren’t supposed to be that steady. He’d seen enough killers to know that kind of quiet usually meant something.

The cube clicked again. Doakes slammed his pen down.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, finally turning his head. “You plan on doing any actual work today, or you just here to audition for Cirque du Rubik’s?”

The cube froze in your hands, colors catching the light like a taunt.

Silence.

He told himself it didn’t bother him. That he didn’t care if some D.C. genius wanted to waste time playing with toys. But the truth was, the station hadn’t felt this quiet in years — not the kind of quiet that annoyed him, but the kind that unnerved him.

He wasn’t sure if it was because of you or because of what you made him think of.

And he didn’t like thinking.

Not this early in the morning.