Conn hastily toweled himself dry enough that his clothes wouldn’t freeze to his body, then yanked on his underwear and jeans. “Stay here,” he said to Cady, unholstering his gun. Safety off, round in the chamber. “Lock the door behind me.”
Her eyes were huge. “Why?”
“If someone was here, we don’t know that he’s not still here,” Conn said. Cady’s eyes widened. Even he could hear the deadly menace in his voice.
“I probably just forgot it—”
“Do you really think that?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t.”
The one place he knew an intruder wasn’t was the bathroom, so he pushed Cady back into the steamy room, cursing the total lack of safety in this situation. Then he cleared the closets, under the bed, then pushed the button to lock the bedroom door and closed it behind him. Not much protection, but the best he could do.
He searched the rest of the house like he was searching a drug den, methodical, every sense on high alert. On the main floor he looked behind the big tree waiting to be decorated, and downstairs he shifted all of Cady’s boxes from home, peered into spaces you wouldn’t think a human being could cram into, even pulled down the attic ladder to check up there.
They were the only two people in the house.
Gun still in his hand, he walked back to the master suite. “We’re clear, Cady,” he called.
A sharp snick as the bathroom door unlocked, then the bedroom door. She peered around the doorframe. “There’s no one here?”
“No,” he said. “From here on out, you stay in the garage while I clear the house. When did you last have the notebook?”
She was opening and closing the drawers, then the cabinet doors. “In my studio,” she said, gathering her hair into a coil to keep it out of her face as she searched. “I think. I don’t know. Most of the time I take my notebook with me when I go out, but I don’t think I did this time. I just don’t know. Maybe it fell out last night at the airfield? Oh, God. What if someone found it?”
“Hey,” he said, catching her by the wrist. “I don’t remember you having it in the car, so it’s in the house.”
“How can you be so sure?”
The catch in her voice meant she was near tears. “That’s my job, to observe. We’ll find it.”
They didn’t find it. They reached the crazy search point, where they were looking in drawers she’d never opened, in cabinets that held a collection of vases and a turkey pan used once a year. Finally they met up in the kitchen.
“Wait here while I search the yard.”
“For my notebook?” she gave a laugh that was probably supposed to be lighthearted but reached into hysterical territory. “I’d remember if I took it outside.”
“For footprints,” he said.
He snagged the Maglite from his duffle and went out the sliding glass doors to the deck. The beam was bright and powerful, but in the end gave him nothing. The snow had melted, then frozen again, giving him nothing more than a surface to slip on as he walked the perimeter. No new footprints, no conveniently dropped wallet with ID and an incriminating note. Even the possum stayed inside, where it was warm.
He stopped and looked back at the house. Cady was in the kitchen staring at the spot on the counter where her kettle lived, probably waiting for it to boil. The house looked so homey, warm light spilling onto the snow, big comfy chairs snuggled around the fireplace, the tree stretching its branches to the ceiling, all ready to be decorated by Cady’s family.
Maybe he’d be there for that. If he didn’t catch the sick bastard fucking with Cady’s mind, he’d be in the family room, listening to Christmas carols and drinking hot cocoa or mulled wine, watching Cady, her volatile sister, and her tough-love mother decorate a tree. It was a familiar scene, standing on the perimeter watching a family celebrate a holiday or a family event. He’d gotten used to feeling like an outsider. As close as he was to all the McCools, as narrow as the gap was between close friend and member of the family, he couldn’t quite bridge the gap.
There was a holy, profound power to someone pointing at him and saying not, Yeah, sure, you can come and stay for a while but rather You. I want you. You get to stay forever.
There was no point in longing for what wouldn’t happen. Eventually Cady would either go back on the road, or they’d catch this bastard, and she wouldn’t need protection anymore. Either way, once she found out he’d put security cameras on her house without her permission, he was back where he started, where he’d been almost happy for most of his life.
Before he’d seen what he could have, and never knew he wanted.
Resolve shot down his spine. He was going to get some fucking answers for Cady, and for himself. Enough of this hiding-out, stay-out-of-everyone’s-grill bullshit. He was going back to what he knew worked, getting in people’s faces and being a scary motherfucker until somebody talked to him. Because maybe, just maybe, if he did that, he wouldn’t have to tell Cady he’d violated her trust.
He climbed the stairs to the deck and let himself back into the house. Cady was on the phone. “He just came back inside,” she said, and put the phone on the island. “It’s Chris,” she said, muting the conversation. “He’s got details for the album’s promotional tour.”
An idea hit him. Let’s start with Chris. “Do you have the Find My Friends app?”
Puzzled, Cady frowned. “Yes.”
“Are you and Chris friends?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have no idea how to characterize my relationship with Chris,” she said.
Chris was listing off cities. “… Baltimore, not ideal but I think we can pick up a pretty good–sized crowd from D.C., where you’ve got that big fan community, then New Jersey, then Philly, then State College, then Pittsburgh, I know, I know, Pittsburgh, but you have to do it…”
Conn picked up her phone and handed it to her. “Pull up the app.”
“He’s in Brooklyn,” she said. “He said something about going out for sushi and the only place he’ll eat sushi is at this crazy dive down the street from his apartment. He’s had too much bad sushi—”
Conn peered over the top of her head to look at the phone. Chris’s dot sat right in the middle of the block housing Eye Candy.
“He said he was in Brooklyn,” Cady said. “He’s lying to me.”
Relief poured through Conn, profound and exhilarating. “Keep him talking. Get your coat,” he said. “And text Eve and have her meet us at Eye Candy.”
“I’m sorry, Chris,” she said, juggling the phone from ear to ear as she slid her arms into Emily’s coat. “I didn’t get the part in the middle. After Baltimore. Can you go over the part in the middle again?”
Conn held her coat so she could find the arm hole, then took her hand and pulled her down the hallway to the garage. His heart was pounding. Maybe, just maybe, he was about to get really fucking lucky and catch Chris red-handed, with Cady’s notebook and her grandmother’s bracelet, and maybe a voodoo doll he was sticking pins into to make her hair go berserk.
Cady’s hand closed reflexively on the armrest when he shot backward down the driveway. “Wait a minute,” she said to Chris. “You promised me I’d never have to do another show in Poughkeepsie again. You promised. That hotel had cockroaches the size of rats! I can’t even imagine how big the rats were!”
Chris’s voice came placatingly through the phone.
“Good,” Conn said. “Ten minutes. That’s all I need.”
Cady flicked a glance at the speedometer. Conn slowed down. Getting pulled over meant lost time, and possibly some guy deciding to be a hero in front of Cady, which meant publicity drawing attention to a problem that was, for now, a total secret.
“Eve’s on her way.” She checked the phone again, clicking between the Find My Friends app and the call, to make sure she was still muted. “I can’t believe he lied to me. I can’t believe he’s still in town. I trusted him. I’ve trusted him with every part of my career. I can’t believe this is happening.”
Conn didn’t say anything. He knew how hard it was to trust and be let down, again and again. Cady’s face was pale, her eyes wide with shock and fear. “What else is he lying about? Is he really planning to talk to Eric about a different album? The way he presents that will make all the difference. What if he’s going behind my back and telling Eric I’m just being a diva, or that I don’t have the material, or that I can’t come up with it in time?”
“Hey,” Conn said. He put his hand on her thigh. “One thing at a time. Confront him, and see what happens.”
“How can I trust anything that’s happened up to now?” she said. “How do I trust what he’s said to the label, to anyone he’s in contact with about appearances, or the future? This changes everything.”
The tires screeched as they roared into Eye Candy’s parking lot, startling Eve, who was getting out of a zippy-looking Altima. “What’s going on?” she asked, then caught Cady’s eye. “Cady, what’s wrong?”
“I need to get into the bar,” Conn said.
Eve didn’t question him, just unlocked the door. “Take Cady and stay in your car,” he said.
“The hell you say,” Cady said indignantly. Chris’s voice was still coming through her phone, but now that the door was open, Conn could hear him in real time. He was upstairs, in Eve’s office. “
“Who’s living in the apartment?” Conn asked, his hand on his weapon.
“Natalie,” Eve said. “She moved in a couple of months ago. She was rooming with a passive-aggressive train wreck. My last tenant skipped without paying two months’ rent.”
“That bites,” Cady said.
“Matt tracked him down,” Eve replied with a steely glint in her eye.
Conn didn’t doubt it. He held out his hand palm down to urge her to silence, and started across the dance floor. He’d spent plenty of time in this club, both before Dorchester walked in as a bartender, and during the investigation, but never when it was as silent as a predawn stakeout. He moved carefully, crossing the floor at a stealthy pace, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned to see Cady right behind him.
“Jesus fuck,” he growled.
“What? I snuck out all the time as a kid.”
Eve was standing behind the bar, watching this play out.
“That you, sweetie?” Natalie’s voice called out from the office.
“Yeah,” Eve replied. “I need to do inventory.”
“I’ll be down in a few.”
“Take your time,” she called back.
Conn gave her a little nod of thanks, and turned to find Cady tiptoeing up the wrought-iron staircase circling up to the office, eyes down and focused on not missing a step and cracking her knee on the metal risers. Conn used his hands to haul himself up the stairs two at a time. He caught her by the waist just as she reached the landing.
“What the hell are you thinking?” he hissed.
“He’s in there,” she whispered back. “He’s in there and he’s been lying to me, and scaring the ever-loving crap out of me!”
“I know he’s in there,” he said stepping between her and the door, using his body to chivvy her against the railing. “I’m going in first.”
“Stop doing that,” she said, shoving at his shoulders.
In any other situation, he’d move, give ground, be respectful of her personal space, her body. But when they’d seen Chris’s dot in Lancaster, every instinct in his body shut down except one. Protect Cady at all costs. “Be quiet,” he said, low and dangerous, as he reached for his gun.
At the quiet snap of his holster releasing his Glock Cady went utterly still and lifted her hands from his back, respecting, if nothing else, the fact that there was now a loaded gun in play. He took a second to call up the office layout from his previous visits to Eye Candy. Another door on the opposite wall opened into the tiny apartment Eve lived in before moving in with Matt earlier in the fall. Behind Eve’s office door came Chris’s voice like Conn had never heard it, soft, quiet, without his usual hint of arrogance and posturing. It didn’t sound like a guy talking during sex, thank God. It sounded intimate. Kind of sweet. Conn almost hated to interrupt, except Chris was probably a serial killer, using his itinerant profession as a cover for multiple murders around the world, and was now murmuring endearments in Natalie’s ear while he carved her up like a chicken.
He took a single step across the landing and thudded his fist against the door. “Police. Open up!” he called, weight shifting to his left so he could kick the door in if Chris made a run for it.
“Conn?” Natalie said. “Is that you?”
It was really hard to be taken seriously when the individuals knew you by voice. “Open the door, Natalie,” he said.
Silence, then the door flung open to reveal Natalie in 80s punk/goth mode. Black leather everywhere, black Joan Jett hair, and blue eyeliner. She cracked her gum at Conn. “Hello, Shoulders,” she said.
Conn used his shoulders to barge into the office and look around. Chris was sitting on the sofa, one arm stretched along the back, the other on the arm, glaring daggers at Conn. “Nice to see you again, Officer McCormick,” he said blandly. “I assume Cady’s with you?”
Cady pushed past him, into the office, and glared at Chris. “What are you doing here?” she said, exasperated, annoyed, afraid.
“Having a delightful conversation with Natalie,” he said promptly. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to figure out what you’re doing here!” Cady took a deep breath. “You said you were going home.”
“I did. Then I came back.”
“To Lancaster?”
“As you see,” Chris said. “Is that really necessary?” he added, glancing meaningfully at Conn’s weapon.
Conn could handle drunks, drug dealers, thugs, pimps, and prostitutes. While chasing down suspects he’d tripped over cracks in the concrete, racked himself climbing over fences, and on one memorable occasion, knocked himself out cold falling down a flight of stairs in an abandoned warehouse. He’d been kicked, hit, spit on, and sworn at so much he all but sat up and looked around when someone yelled Hey motherfucker in his vicinity. None of it, not a single second in the academy, or his follow-up training, or his real-world experience that prepared him for dealing with Chris Wellendorf.
Lacking the presence of either a threat or a fleeing suspect, Conn holstered his weapon, folded his arms across his chest, and squared up. Chris all but rolled his eyes.
Cady took over. “I’m serious, Chris. You hate this town. You called Lancaster a one-horse shit-kicking ghost town in the middle of fucking nowhere and swore the only time you’d set foot here was when I gave a concert.”
“It’s growing on me,” Chris said. He was talking to Cady but looking at Natalie as he spoke. She gave him a little finger wave. “There’s a great music scene here. The people are nice. Friendly.”
Conn had never heard Chris use that soft, endearing tone of voice; based on the way Cady stared at him like he’d grown a second head, she’d never heard it, either. “You were right,” she said to Conn. “He’s acting really, really weird. Are you on crack? You’ve got to stop being on crack.”
“Not even remotely,” Chris said, smiling like an idiot. He dragged his attention away from Natalie, and focused on Conn. He could see the moment the wheels in Chris’s brain gained some traction. “May I presume from Officer Tall, Dark, and Brooding’s heavily armed presence that you attribute a more nefarious purpose to my vacation in Lancaster?”
His tone of voice was incredulous until his gaze met Conn’s. “Start taking this seriously or we’re going to step outside.”
Everyone stared at him. After a few seconds of really tense silence, Chris got to his feet. “You have my full attention,” he said, uncharacteristically solemn. “What’s going on?”
Cady tugged Conn’s watch cap off her head and jammed it into her pocket. Her hair crackled into a crazy halo. “You’re what’s going on,” she all but shouted. “Conn knew you were hiding something. You lied to me about where you were!”
“Cady, your throat,” Chris said, looking pained.
Natalie looked around, then said, “Excellent point. I’ll make you some hot water with honey. Requests, you two?”
“I’ll take a vodka rocks,” Cady said.
“Cady,” Chris started.
“Shut up. My nerves have been run through a shredder. I want a vodka rocks. Raspberry Absolut, if you have it. Which you two better not give me shit about. And the Cady juice.”
“Queen Maud wants a vodka rocks, she shall have a vodka rocks,” Natalie said soothingly. “Conn?”
“I’m on duty,” Conn said.
“Water,” Natalie said decisively. “Chris?”
“Whiskey. A double. If Cady’s drinking, so am I.”
Natalie sashayed out, closing the door behind her. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here,” Cady said.
“I came back for what I thought was a booty call. It was a spur of the moment thing I didn’t expect to last all week, but did, because life is unpredictable and glorious and I think I’m in love. Why?”
Conn’s brain got stuck on the idea of flying somewhere for sex, and ground to a halt completely at the idea of Chris in love. He wrenched it back to the task at hand. “When did you come back?”
“Early last week.” That matched with Conn’s timeline of when Chris started acting strangely.
“The next day someone broke into Cady’s house,” Conn said. “The attacks on her website are coming from Lancaster. You’re here…”
“You think I’d come back to Lancaster to drive Cady crazy?” Chris said, switching from serious to seriously pissed off in a split second.
Conn didn’t move. “You fit the profile, and you have the most to lose.”
“The most to lose?”
“If Cady goes her own way and doesn’t drop the pop album.”
Chris blinked. “For someone who knew nothing about the music business a couple of weeks ago, you’ve certainly picked up the lingo,” he said. “Yes, there’s a possibility she’ll make less money if she chooses to work on a more personal album, but I’m in this for the long haul. I believe in Cady, in her voice, her vision, the way she connects with her fans. While I’m very happy to make money managing her career, I’m working with you because you’re an artist I believe in, and am honored to work with,” he said, turning to Cady. He wasn’t pleading his case, just stating fact in simple, clear terms. So that’s what Chris sounded like when he was being sincere, not a manipulative smart ass.
“But you’ve been pushing the label’s album so hard,” she said uncertainly.
“Because that’s what I thought you wanted,” he said patiently. “Remember your career plan? When you started having second thoughts, I casually mentioned to Eric that you might want to go a different direction.”
“Oh God. What did he say?”
“What do you think he said? He fucking ripped my fucking head off,” Chris said. “But that’s my job, to take that flack for you so that when you and Eric actually talk, he’s had a chance to settle down.”
Cady looked abashed. “I know you run interference for me,” she started.
Chris overrode her, his voice escalating. “Yes, we probably won’t make as much money if you go with this album. But stranger things have happened, the label’s willing to take a listen, and to me, the money’s just a way of keeping score. Did you really think I was gaslighting you?”
“You were obviously hiding something,” Cady objected.
“I wanted to keep her for myself, just for a while,” Chris said, sharp and defensive. “I spend my professional life, which is my entire life, looking after other people’s careers, interests, futures, happiness. I’m not complaining. Trust me, I’m not complaining, but … I just … I’ve never met anyone like her before. I wanted to keep it for myself for a while.”
Conn had to agree that Natalie was one of a kind. He relaxed his stance, watching Chris. “I’m sorry, Chris,” Cady said.
“A little privacy. That’s all I wanted. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth.” He cut Cady a glance. “You really thought I was gaslighting you,” he said, and this time it wasn’t a question.
“Chris, you’re not exactly Mr. Sensitive, and lately you’ve talked an awful lot about marketing, cross promotion, and measures of success.”
“Doing my job, Cady,” Chris said.
“And I was doing mine,” Conn said. “You want to blame someone for this situation, blame me.”
“I do,” Chris said. He cut Conn a look that was both assessing and speculative in a way that put Conn on high alert. He’d seen that look before, and it was usually followed up with a shrieking phone call to his lieutenant and Conn getting his ass reamed. In this case, he deserved it. In the space of a week he’d managed to wreck years of trust between Cady and Chris. The relationship might never recover. “But let’s put a pin in that for the moment, shall we? I’m not trying to drive Cady insane. Who is?”
Conn opened his mouth to reply, but shut it again when Natalie knocked on the door, then opened it without waiting for a response. “One Raspberry Absolut, one Macallan, and two waters with lemon, because it tastes better and makes it kinda fancy, for the working folk.” She distributed the drinks. Cady perched on the edge of a chair and swallowed a third of her vodka; Chris knocked back the Macallan in one go. Conn sipped his water and made a mental note to buy some lemons. Finally Cady looked from Chris to Conn. “We can talk about it later, Chris.”
He looked at her, obviously startled. “Okay.”
“After all, you’re on vacation. Conn’s got this.”
Chris held out his hand to Natalie, who took it, slid onto his lap, teased his nearly full glass from his hand, and sipped the Macallans.
Conn looked away, almost uncomfortable with the delight in Chris’s eyes.
“We’re out,” she said, and suited actions to words.
She didn’t look at him as they walked through the nightclub and outside to the car. Conn waited until they were back in the Audi before saying, “I was wrong about that.”
“You were half right,” Cady said. “He was lying about where he was. What now?”
Her voice was cooler, distant, lacking the casual intimacy they’d shared on the way over. A sense of foreboding filled Conn’s chest. The cameras would be the ultimate betrayal now. He’d been hoping and praying it was Chris, because the next alternative up for consideration, without telling Cady he’d put surveillance on the house, was door number two: Kenny.
“I need to go see someone,” he said as he pulled out of Eye Candy’s parking lot. He squinted out the window; the sky had clouded over to the kind of gray that looked dismal but held enough light to need sunglasses.
“Okay,” she said. “Who?”
“I can’t tell you.” At her look, he added, “It’s better for you if you don’t know.”
“Is it dangerous?”
Maybe. He hesitated, and in that silence she got her answer. “You figured out who framed you for that assault. And now you’re going to see him.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly.
A few silent minutes later they pulled into an empty space on the street across from the Eastern Precinct. Conn put the car in park, then he took her phone from her hand and added Dorchester to her contacts. “Get in the driver’s seat. If I’m not out in twenty minutes, you leave and call Dorchester. He’ll make sure you’re safe.”
“We’re at the police station,” she said. “Why not just go … oh. No. No way am I letting you go in there by yourself.”
“Cady, if this is as bad as I think it is, you’re being targeted, too. For me. Please. Get in the driver’s seat and keep the car running. If I don’t come out, you call Matt Dorchester and tell him I’m down and you need help.”
“Not Lieutenant Hawthorn?”
Conn shook his head.
“You don’t know if he’s involved.” It wasn’t a question, and based on the way her brows drew down, he was reordering her entire world.
“I want him not to be involved,” Conn said. But the last nagging puzzle piece had fallen into place. Hawthorn’s dad, the former chief of police and current mayor, had trained Kenny.
How long had this been going on? How deep was the corruption? Did it spread from the gang unit to the chief’s office to the mayor’s office?
Cady pulled his watch cap lower on her head and tucked her braid down the back of her jacket. She hurried in front of the Audi and slid behind the wheel. One arm on the frame, the other on the door, Conn hunkered down on his heels.
“Twenty minutes,” he repeated. “If I’m not out by then, you bolt. If you see someone coming toward you, you put it in gear and head for the back roads. Try to lose him in the alleys.”
“That sounds like a good strategy, except this car stands out like a pink elephant.” Cady flexed her hands on the wheel. “I should have bought a tan Accord. Something that blended in.”
“It’s not safe.” Conn looked at the ground, tried to think of another strategy, and came up empty. “It’s the best I can do for you right now.”
“Go.” She leaned over and kissed him, hard and fierce and possessive, then handed him the folder. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
* * *
Conn walked into the precinct he’d been assigned to for the entirety of his career as a Lancaster police officer. The two cops smoking outside the back door nodded in greeting. He walked down the hall past interview rooms and offices. Nothing was different, except there were more presents under the tree. The noise from the bullpen reached his ears, faint but familiar—ringing phones doubling up on each other, uniformed and plainclothes officers coming and going, televisions scrolling their black lines of closed captioned text in all four corners of the squad room.
The gang unit worked out of here because the highest volume of gang violence flowed through this precinct. They had a small conference room to use as a war room, laptops crowded on the oval table, whiteboards covered with assignments, filing cabinets containing older records. Conn walked up to the war room, opened the door, and took half a step inside.
Everyone looked up. He caught Kenny’s eye. “Got a minute?”
Kenny’s face betrayed no hint of knowledge at why Conn would be coming to visit him, other than the standard visit from a cop in trouble to his mentor. Kenny finished issuing orders to two undercover officers about the day’s buy-and-busts, then met Conn at the door. They ended up in the same vacant, slightly more upscale conference room where he’d met with Hawthorn, then Cady and Chris, a couple of weeks earlier.
Was it really only such a short time ago? He was so different. Everything in his world had changed.
“What’s up?” Kenny asked.
Conn tossed the file on the table. The picture of Jordy’s most gruesome bruises and swollen eye slid halfway out of the manila folder. “How did I do?”
“With what?”
“Fastest time? Slowest time? Somewhere in the middle?”
Kenny cracked a grin. “You always did have to know where you stood.”
“I’m fucking serious, Kenny.” Conn thumped his finger on the folder. “You set me up to take the fall for this.”
Conn shook his head. Kenny picked up the folder, shuffled the picture back inside. “It was a little test. Just to see whose bed you got into.”
Beating another human being wasn’t a “little test.” “What, like being jumped into a gang? Except you beat the shit out of someone else, blame me, and then leave me twisting in wind? What the fuck, Kenny?”
“You weren’t supposed to be shuffled off on some private security detail,” Kenny said, waving his hand. “I was going to get in touch with you on shift one night. Explain everything. Then you disappeared.”
Lightning fast, Conn said, “Why didn’t you come out to Maud’s?”
“Who the fuck knows where she lives?” Kenny said indignantly, like Conn purposefully kept Cady’s address a secret from him. “I drove past her mother’s place a couple of times but your car was never there. Tried to burrow into the paperwork trail on her house, and got nowhere, thanks to Caleb fucking Webber. Every year he wins the pool for Most Hated Lawyer. I couldn’t get it out of Eve, because she’d tell Dorchester and then he’d tell Hawthorn. I gave up. I figured you’d either figure it out and come to me, or you’d get desperate and come to me to solve your problem. Which I would have done.”
Conn’s brain, already whirring away at a high gear, shifted into overdrive. It wasn’t Kenny. But if it wasn’t Kenny threatening Cady, that meant he had to watch the recordings from the cameras. The ones he’d installed behind Cady’s back.
“It’s a big risk,” Conn said. “What if the media got hold of that?”
Kenny just arched an eyebrow at Conn. It took him a minute. He was getting better at this thinking-rather-than-reacting thing. “Jordy was in on it. That’s why this is still on the down-low. You paid him to take the beating.”
“Promoted him,” Kenny corrected, smiling. He was watching Conn closely, studying his reactions.
Conn’s stomach heaved, but he maintained his impassive face, folded his arms across his chest. The move made him look bigger than he was, and more belligerent. “I’m listening.”
“A group of us who feel we’ve been comprehensively screwed by the latest bargaining agreements with the city started a side business of our own. Consider us a little family within a family. We’re still doing good work for the city and her fine citizens, but we’re also looking after our own brothers. And sisters,” he added conscientiously. “Gotta be politically correct.”
Something dinged at the back of Conn’s mind, but he let it go. “With Lyle Jenkins gone, you’re taking over the Strykers territory.”
“This started long before Jenkins showed up.” Kenny’s voice was low, even, and made all the hairs stand up on the back of Conn’s neck. “Originally it was just protection money. They got tipped off when raids were happening, where the heat was coming, who needed to get out of town for a while. Enough to keep them one step ahead of us.”
Who was “us” and who was “them”? In Conn’s mind, Kenny stepped over the line the day he took a penny from a drug dealer. “Why me? Why now?”
“I need someone out on the streets.”
Conn thought fast. Needing someone on the streets meant one of the recently promoted sergeants was working for Kenny, too. “Doing what, exactly?”
“Lift up your shirt.” Kenny’s face didn’t change.
“You think I’m wearing a wire?”
“I didn’t last this long without taking some precautions.”
He already knew what Kenny would want. The average raid crime scene contained three things: money, drugs, and illegal weapons. With the exception of the guns, it was easy enough to skim a little off the top before anyone else showed up, and even those could be managed if you got creative. It was the oldest story in the dirty cop’s book. Without changing expressions, Conn lifted his shirt and turned in a circle. Kenny was too old school. Conn could just as easily be recording the conversation on his cell phone. But he hadn’t thought that fast. Getting out his phone now would only tip Kenny off.
“It’s going to vary. Keep an ear on dispatch. You’re already usually first on a scene. You’ll get some warning. Try not to be in the middle of a call when something’s supposed to go down.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“A share. A bigger share as the business grows. We’ve attracted some outside interest from Chicago.”
“Chicago.” That meant the mob or a bigger gang.
Kenny shrugged. Just an average day for the average criminal hiding in plain sight. “Everyone needs a mentor. Or a training officer. You in or out?”
Saying yes would cost him the only job he ever wanted, with the only family he truly believed would last forever. Saying no would put Cady in more danger than she was. “Hell yes, I’m in.”
* * *
He walked into the precinct a cop suspected of an assault and walked out knowing his days as a cop were numbered. If he went to Hawthorn, he’d be fucked. Kenny would make sure every cop knew he was a snitch, which shortened his life expectancy considerably. How long until he stopped getting backup, or until some other East Side banger was framed for his murder?
Cady was white-knuckling the wheel, peering through the windshield at him as he walked across the impound lot, scaled the chain-link fence, and dropped to the ground a few cars down from her position. He opened the driver’s door, barely waiting as she clambered across the console and into the passenger seat. He had the car in first and moving before he shut the door.
“What happened?”
He didn’t know how to respond. His guts were in knots. “Nothing.”
Cady put her hand on his arm. “Conn,” she said quietly. “Tell me.”
They drove back to her house through SoMa, Christmas lights twinkling, bell ringers on the corners, a quartet in Victorian costume singing carols while development volunteers passed out cider and gingerbread. When they were back on the highway, he spoke.
“It wasn’t him messing with you. I thought it might be.”
“You thought a cop was targeting me to put pressure on you?” She spoke carefully, as if trying to make sense of the tangled web of paranoia her life had become.
“It was possible. But it’s not him.”
Which left him only one option: watch the videos.
They pulled into her garage. “Keep the car running and the garage door open until I tell you it’s clear.”
She waited in the car while he checked the house. It was empty, the scent of the Christmas tree lingering in the air. He’d powered up his laptop while he cleared the house. A file was waiting in the cloud storage folder. He blew out a hard breath. What a mess. If he’d looked at this first, he would have known who was threatening Cady. But he’d tried to save his relationship with her, and in the end, cost himself his career with the LPD.
Now he would lose both Cady and the department.
He walked back into the dark garage and opened the passenger door. “I need to show you something.”
She followed him into the living room, shedding her coat, scarf, and his hat, stuffing it in her coat pocket as she walked. “You’re scaring me.”
Conn got out his laptop and opened the lid. The screen flickered to life. He called up the video streaming from the cameras. Cady watched over his shoulder. “That’s my front door.” She pointed at the second view. “That’s my deck. You put cameras on my house.”
“I did.” He’d always owned up to what he’d done, even when it cost him.
“I asked you not to do that.”
“I did it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because it was the surest way to keep you safe.” He found the date in question when her notebook disappeared, scrolled back through the video on the front door, saw light sweep the garage doors in the lower corner of the screen, heard a car door slam. After that, nothing. He switched to the rear angle.
A shape moved out of the shadows on the house’s north side, wearing a dark coat, a cap, dark clothes. Conn registered jeans, boots, and gloves. The light was too dim to make out much more than a pale face, heading purposefully under the deck until reaching the doors into the walkout basement, where Cady’s studio was. A quick glance back toward the woods, then another to the south side, which framed the face perfectly in the moonlight falling on the yard.
Emily.
Cady’s breathing went shallow. Her hand covered her mouth as she watched Emily slide a key into the lock and open the door. Conn sped up the playback, compressing several minutes to just a few seconds, slowing back to real time when Emily appeared again. Cady’s notebook was in her hand.
Of all the people he suspected, Emily’s name wasn’t even on the list, but in hindsight, he saw everything he’d missed. None of the attacks were personal, not because the attacker was a diabolical evil genius intent on destroying Cady’s peace of mind, but because Emily didn’t really want to hurt her. The signs of a stealth attacker weren’t anything more than ease of access, using the key Cady kept in Patty’s house.
Cady’s face looked like every abandoned house he’d ever seen—empty, forlorn, like it was about to collapse from the inside. She stared at the frozen frame of her sister, the person she loved more than anyone else in the world, leaving with her notebook. Emily had reached in to dig a knife into Cady when she was at her most fragile.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She looked at him, her shoulders tense, her jaw set, fury seething in her eyes. “Sorry?” she repeated. “You’re sorry?”
She snatched up the car keys from the coffee table. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” She stopped. Rubbed her forehead with her thumb. The single word was so drenched in meaning and confusion, making him ache inside. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, look at him, just stood in the doorway. He could see her entire body trembling with rage. All she’d wanted was to come home, relax, rejuvenate, find her footing in the world again. Instead, in the space of one afternoon, he’d cost her what she valued most: relationships.
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
“No. Just … no.” She gripped her keys, her knuckles turning white from the strain. “We were wrong. There’s no real threat. Just my sister. It’s not a police thing. It’s a family thing.”
He’d known the hit was coming. The hit always came, but it hurt this time, more than it had ever hurt in his life. He nodded, closed the laptop, and watched her walk out of his life.
Conn stood inside by the big tree he’d cut down, the scent of pine and sap strong in his nostrils, and listened to the silence left in Cady’s absence. He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. He’d done his job. But it had cost him everything. His career.
His chance with Cady.