I watched Wilson make his way through the crush of people. Treats was wall-to-wall packed for the morning rush. If I hadn’t already known, coming to work with Sadie for the last week would’ve told me how tough she was. But seeing her in action day after day had sealed it.
The woman didn’t stand still.
If she wasn’t at the counter helping make drinks and ring people up she was in the back baking. I now understood why it had been so important for her to fix the broken oven. She had three in total, and all three were in use all day. If she wasn’t filling the cases, she was filling orders—birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, job promotions. If there was something to celebrate Sadie could bake a cake for it.
She didn’t dally, she barely sat down, and when she did it was in her office to pay bills or print out invoices. It was exhausting watching her. I was also afraid she was pushing herself to the breaking point. She had one full-time employee and two part-time. She needed to hire one more part-time employee and take a day off before she burned out. Which was something I’d been meaning to talk to her about but hadn’t had the time in the last week.
Working in the back of a bakery had proven difficult. Ninety-nine percent of the cases Takeback was involved in were classified. Sadie’s internet connection was not secure, which meant I couldn’t check my email or download case files.
“We got a break,” Wilson said as he sat across from me.
Fucking finally.
“Cali case, the break-in, or Mallard?”
Asher and Cole were in California soaking up the sun waiting for Asher’s application to be approved. Cole had reported he was bored as fuck and hated the sand—too many memories of his time in the Middle East and Asia. I felt that down to my soul, I had zero interest in visiting the beach. I much preferred dirt over sand. Freshwater lakes over the ocean.
“Break-in and Mallard. Met with Butch. As you know, he had to cancel last week. He confirmed Grinder broke in that first night. Came back to the clubhouse with the money. But his story is, he went by his sister’s, you were there, and you gave it back to him not wanting trouble.”
I felt the muscles in my neck contract and my fists clenched.
“I’m tired of that asshole running his mouth, talking shit.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one. Butch said that Grinder’s not well-liked among the members. Talks like a tough guy, never backs up his shit talk, and kisses Zeus’s ass. And if you can believe this shit, some don’t like Grinder taking freebies and fucking the girls up. Butch isn’t sure if he’ll be patched in. But they’re expanding and that might work in Grinder’s favor. Even if the majority don’t want him, he’s still a body to handle business. The second break-in wasn’t Grinder. He left that morning on a run to Montana and didn’t get back until the next day.”
Not surprising. The second night wasn’t about Grinder being pissed at his sister. It reeked of desperation.
“Good to have that confirmed but we already figured that. Brasco get the prints back?”
“Sadie’s, yours, and the neighbor Joey’s.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Three people, one of them Sadie, one a married neighbor who was only there to help move furniture. The other me. There should’ve been more. But she’d been too busy stressing out and hadn’t had time to have friends over.
I was wrong. I knew how I felt about that. I was just trying to shove the anger down and stay on topic.
“DNA came back. No match in any database.”
Fuck!
“Good news is we have it,” Wilson finished.
“We have it, but we don’t have him. No prints on the letter. The cameras from the bank were a bust since they don’t keep backups over six months. Mallard electronically transferred the money to his account and promptly moved it to crypto. He didn’t have to leave Sadie’s office to fuck her over and steal her money.”
“I got nothing to say to that, because you’re right. The only thing we can do is be patient. Rhode’s still searching for open cases that fit, you are, too. You talked to Sadie’s employees and they gave you the same vague description. No one at the bank remembers him. The address on his application was bogus. His school records and previous employers and references were fake.”
Previous employers.
“I didn’t ask Sadie if she checked his references.”
“Shit,” Wilson grunted. “Just saw the report that both the detective and Gayle called the numbers, and they were dead ends. Didn’t think to ask her.”
My gaze went across the room. She was slammed busy with a line ten deep.
“I’ll ask her after the rush.”
Wilson nodded and his brows pulled together. I couldn’t read the shift in his mood. Could be he was pissed we’d overlooked something so basic, or it could be he was worried about something else.
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“Butch had more to share. Zeus’s attitude change.”
Fuck.
“And?” I prompted.
“He’s working someone in the sheriff’s department. It was a setup. New, young deputy out on his night off with some buddies. Zeus sent in one of his girls, and I mean girl. She’s fifteen but looks twenty-one. I’ve seen pictures of this girl and no joke, I wouldn’t have guessed she was fifteen and she was in a bar being served. This deputy is twenty-three; taking home a twenty-one-year-old would be the norm for him. Went to her place, Zeus had the room wired with cameras. Caught the whole thing. Butch relayed that there was nothing kinky, straight-up ordinary sex. The problem is, sex is anything but ordinary when it’s an adult with a fifteen-year-old. Now Zeus has this deputy by the balls. He goes up the chain, explains what happened, he’s going down for statutory rape. He keeps it quiet, he’s Zeus’s bitch. So far, the deputy’s kept it quiet and Zeus is feeling cocky, working to set up a few more cops.”
Sick fuck.
“He needs to go down.”
“DEA’s working on it. But Butch has a problem. Someone fucked up and ran with some intel that Butch reported and now Butch is on the hook. That’s why he had to cancel last week. The intel he reported only Zeus’s lieutenants knew about, and Butch is one of the four people. Now Zeus is questioning all of them wanting to know how the feds knew about a warehouse that was only a month old. And it was the first time drugs were stored there.”
Holy shit, that was a huge fuck-up. Butch didn’t just have a problem, he would be fucked—the kind that meant he stopped breathing if anyone found out he was undercover.
Wilson wasn’t done. “From now on, all of us are carrying burners. Butch has those numbers programmed in his phone. No one is to answer them, for any reason. If he runs into an issue and he can get a text out he will. He won’t text that he needs help or a location. It will be a number. Any number to any of our phones.”
That was smart.
“Is there a reason he’d text one of us and not the DEA?”
“Butch isn’t feeling love for the DEA right now. No one wants this shit done more than him. But in their impatience, someone’s getting sloppy. And it’s not the DEA who’s gonna pay, it’s Butch. And we’re local and he trusts we’ll have his back.”
Damn right, we will.
“Are you gonna tell Brasco and River you know about the deputy?”
“Haven’t decided yet. Some lines have to be respected. This might be one of them. Though something’s not sitting right. Butch said this deputy is scared shitless and hasn’t talked. Brasco said there were rumors. One and one’s not equaling two. And I’m not sure how I feel about helping a man out of a jam when he took a fifteen-year-old to bed.”
I couldn’t stop my wince. Wilson had a valid point. We helped put sex offenders behind bars. We didn’t exonerate them.
“Fucks me to say this, brother. Actually makes my stomach churn, but if the girl looks like you says she does, was in a bar, and this deputy’s on the up-and-up, no prior run-ins with minors, no fucked-up kiddy fetish, seems to me both the girl and the deputy are victims.”
Wilson sat in silent contemplation for a few moments. Before he stopped contemplating and scowled.
“I want this motherfucker put to ground.”
Now we’re talking.
“I do, too.”
“He’s getting the young ones plastic surgery. Has some hack surgeon in Montana giving these girls implants.”
And it just keeps getting more and more disgusting.
“What’s Butch’s take? He ready to jump ship? We can step in and start dismantling the Horsemen at any time.”
“He’s not ready yet. But I think he’s getting close. We have dirt, but not enough. I think it’s time we start digging deeper.”
“Agreed.”
“When Asher and Cole get back from California we’ll hit it.”
What my boss left out was that he was down three men. Asher and Cole and me.
“Appreciate you being cool about Sadie’s situation.”
“There’s nothing more important than taking care of your woman.”
The way Wilson said that made me wonder if he had personal experience with taking care of a woman. He was a closed book. We all knew about his military service, his stint at Homeland, and the work he’d done with the Marshal Service, but his personal life was off the table.
“You ever been married?”
Complete closedown.
“For fifteen years.”
Wilson had been married for fifteen fucking years and he never mentioned it?
“Why’d you get divorced?”
“Didn’t. She’s dead.”
Totally devoid of emotion. And if I didn’t know the man better, I’d think he didn’t give two shits his wife was dead. But I knew Wilson; he hid it, but out of all of us on the team, he felt the deepest. I saw it with every rescue we’d participated in. Each one cut him, leaving him with a new scar. His wife of fifteen years dying would mark him in ways I couldn’t imagine.
“Damn, brother, I’m sorry. Truly fucking sorry. How long ago?”
“Nothing to be sorry for. Took me a long time to understand why she did what she did. I find no peace in her suicide, but I sure hope to fuck she has.”
It was not understanding I saw in his eyes, it was guilt, and not a small amount of it.
“Wilson—”
“Don’t, Reese. I know you got good intentions but don’t feed me a line of bullshit. It’s been twelve years. I feel the way I feel and that’s not gonna change. So do me a favor and drop it, yeah?”
Hell, yeah, it was guilt I saw. And what he was saying was he blamed himself and always would.
“I’ll drop it for now only because we’re in a crowded bakery. But if you think I’m gonna sit around and pretend I don’t know you’re blaming yourself and suffering then you don’t know me. You’re always on the rest of us not to internalize what we do, what we see. And there you are internalizing big shit you need to talk about. That shit’s not on, brother, and you know it.”
“It’s not the same,” he argued.
“Bullshit. It might not be about the job. But it’s about family. It’s about the team. It’s about our leader suffering in silence and him keeping the rest of us in the dark when we’ve all laid our shit on you.”
There was a loud crash. Wilson was up and I wasn’t far behind, both of our hands automatically going for our weapons.
“Sorry! Sorry!” a haggard-looking woman with a toddler shouted over the noise. “I’ll clean it up.”
I glanced down and saw the broken plates and pastries mixed with coffee.
“No worries,” Sadie said, coming out from around the counter. “Go find a table. I’ll clean this up.”
Wilson was already on the move to help. I needed a moment to calm my racing heart and clear my head.
This shit needed to end.
A week ago, she gave me a gift—her trust.
She’d openly given it in front of Wilson and Brasco. That night when we got home, and every night since then, I’d done my best to show her exactly how I felt about that gift. And I knew she read my message loud and clear. Irrevocably proving showing is more important than telling.