I should have spotted the tiny .22-caliber from a mile away, but all I could see was Reeve on her knees in front of me with all of that dark hair of hers tangled in my hands as she turned me inside out with a creative twirl of her tongue and the perfect scrape of her teeth. She knew how to work me over and take such good care of me at the same time. I was trying to keep her alive, trying to keep myself alive, and maybe, just maybe, get both of us out of this situation without broken hearts.
She wasn’t helping. I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me. She cared. I didn’t think a girl that made the kind of choices she did, who had to look out for herself above all others to survive, could be that empathetic, but it bled out of her and got all over me. She cared a lot. About me. And I wasn’t sure what to do with that. I was the one always worrying about everyone, about everything. I had never had someone else in my life that was concerned for me and for my well-being. It made my resolve to stay away from her even weaker than it already was, and goddamn, did I want to see what else she could do with that clever mouth of hers.
I jerked my head up when my office door suddenly opened and an older man dressed in khaki pants and a white polo shirt waltzed in and made himself comfy in the chair across from my desk. He had steely-gray hair and a flinty face that reminded me of Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. All he needed was a ratty poncho and a cigar.
I closed the case folder I was going over and leaned back in my chair. I didn’t know who the guy was but everything about his posture and the way he made himself comfortable as I assessed him screamed “cop.” We tended to be able to spot our own no matter what branch or badge we might carry.
“Can I help you?”
The stranger crossed his ankle on his knee and started tapping his fingers on his leg. “I sure as hell hope so, son, otherwise we’re all going to be neck-deep in a bloodbath.”
His voice had a quiet drawl, not exactly a southern or even a Texan twang, but there was some country to it, so I put him from somewhere around Virginia or the Carolinas. I lifted an eyebrow at him and waited for him to formally introduce himself. He watched me silently for a long minute before a weathered grin cracked his face.
“Deputy Chief Marshal Otis Packard. I heard through the grapevine you have one of my witnesses in protective custody with no intention of turning her back over to us.”
I snorted. “The situation is a lot more complicated than that.”
He nodded and narrowed his eyes. “Tell me about it. Out of the four witnesses that we either placed or had plans to move while we were waiting for the Novak case to go before a judge, she’s the only one left breathing. Hartman went down first, Ernie Diaz, the club owner, went missing last week, and Benny Truman didn’t even make it out of the joint. Hartman was buried so deep in a shithole town in West Texas there was no way anyone should’ve been able to find him and Ernie was so scared of retribution that he quit talking to anyone without credentials, so we know he had to have been popped by someone on the inside.”
I made a noise low in my throat. “You knew someone was offing the witnesses from your case and you just left her out there unprotected?”
“She took off when we were starting to put it all together. She was quicker than we were. We were planning to go in and get her right after the info on Hartman came in, only she was gone, and so was the marshal in charge of her case.”
“You had a fox guarding your henhouse from the get-go.”
The other cop considered me thoughtfully for a second and then nodded solemnly. “It looks that way.”
“You’re looking at Roark for the rest of the murders, right?” ”
His jaw started to tick furiously. “We put it together. Too late. Conner has a stellar reputation in our division. He was a marine, and when he got out of the service he worked for Border Patrol. He was always our go-to guy until all this stuff broke loose with Novak. We didn’t realize the correlation until it was too late. A few years ago he started taking a real interest in what was going on here in the Point, started asking to be assigned to cases that were here. When you got the feds involved to take down Novak, he was the first one that wanted in on the action.”
No one wanted to get involved with the Point. We were a lost cause down here in the gutter. All the warning bells that had been jangling that Roark’s motivations were more involved than showing Race and Nassir he didn’t appreciate them taking over Novak’s business started to ring loud and clear in my ears. “Don’t you have to be an American citizen to be in the marshals? Roark’s Irish.”
“His mom is Irish. Conner has dual citizenship.”
“What about his dad? What’s the story there?” I knew from firsthand experience with my brother just how important the influence of a father could be. It might be a good place to start digging.
“Not sure. He always said his old man was a soldier from Colorado that had a brief fling with his mom. The guy got Conner every summer, but who knows if it’s the truth or not. Turns out Conner is an exceptional liar. Now that we’ve done some digging, it looks like while he was a member of Border Patrol after he left the military he was helping Novak and several of his associates move guns and drugs across the border. Conner’s been dirty a really long time and I feel like a fool for personally assigning him to this case.”
I frowned and asked him if he could give me the man in Colorado’s name. The older man scribbled a quick note on a loose piece of paper on my desk and shoved it toward me. “Why would a decorated agent suddenly start helping a known criminal move illegal stuff across the border? Money? Did Novak threaten him?”
The older man shook his head. “I don’t know. We need to find Conner to ask him that.”
I wasn’t patient enough for that. I was missing something key, something that would possibly give me the upper hand in dealing with Roark and help me find him. I needed to figure out what it was.
“He burned down the Pit. He beat the crap out of one of the working girls that’s been around these parts a long time. On top of murder, he’s taking revenge on the people of the Point by hitting them where it hurts the most. Reeve figured out that he was involved with Hartman’s murder, and ran.”
“Why did she run to you? The evidence seems to point to her and Conner being awfully chummy. Just one more rule that bastard broke.”