Dennis Lee was going to have to do some housecleaning.
That was going to have to start with the mayor. The man had finally rolled over from irritant to problem. Dennis Lee knew how to deal with problems.
Timing was everything.
So was having people on your team who you could trust. He was starting to doubt that. Officer Eugent wasn’t as forthcoming as he should be. With Jenny’s betrayal, Dennis Lee was seeing ghosts of mistrust everywhere.
And he just didn’t give a damn any longer.
“You aren’t hiding things from me?” Dennis Lee stood. He wasn’t an imposing man, and he knew it. He’d gotten where he was using his street smarts, not his fists. Collin Eugent had a good half-dozen inches and forty pounds on him. Not to mention the forty years difference between them. “Tell me the truth.”
“Of course not.” Eugent’s eyes met his, dark and inscrutable. “Daniel McKellen is on a rampage. He’s brought in MacNamara. They…are watching everyone who was on the clock when Officer Royce was killed. I’ve never seen McKellen like this. The man usually doesn’t rage. That’s not the case now.”
“Of course, they would be. A dead TSP officer means bad press. It’s Marshall’s strategy.”
That damned Elliot Marshall was just as much a problem as the mayor was proving to be. As were Marshall and McKellen’s lackies, getting into business they had no place in. Dennis Lee was composing quite a list. Someday…someday, he would strike, like a rattler.
“I’m trying to keep my head down.”
“You do that. And keep me posted.”
The younger man nodded. Dennis Lee motioned him out the door. Dennis Lee never turned his back to anyone. He wasn’t a fool.
Despite what he’d done for Collin through the years—paying his tuition to college, recommendation letters to the TSP academy, paying his tuition to Finley Creek Preparatory even though a kid from South Boethe Street had no business there—the boy would stab him in the back if it furthered Collin’s plans.
His ambition was one of the things that had always intrigued Dennis Lee about him. And how useful it made him. Hell, Dennis Lee had practically cultivated that trait in the boy.
Dennis Lee didn’t fully trust anyone, especially someone who would shoot a colleague on another man’s orders. Or do half the things Dennis Lee had already asked of him.
Cold. Calculating.
A ruthless killer in TSP green. As his eyes met the boy’s, the emptiness there chilled him.
Collin Eugent was a monster. And Dennis Lee had created him. Maybe that was what he deserved, for all the hell he’d caused in his lifetime? Maybe that was why Jenny had betrayed him as she had.
Dennis Lee didn’t know any more.
For some reason, Jenny had been the one domino that he couldn’t bear to topple and now…now she had the power to send everything crashing down.
Dennis Lee didn’t know what to do now.
Housekeeping.
He’d start with housekeeping. The mayor. The mayor was the easiest domino now.