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  “Dante, I’m not some fucking block head okay. She works a lot. Bar and salon. Works like she’d clearing shit loads of debt.”

  “Again, that’s still normal man. People have debts.”

  “That bar was packed though and I knew Paul was making good money back in the day. Good money to pay staff and give his kids a good life.”

  I did the calc once and figured Paul was making a good twenty g’s a month.

  Lyssa working in both the salon and the bar, what the fuck kind of debt must she have to be working so hard? Looked like she worked all day too, salon then followed by the bar. I was trained to take notice. I did it naturally and something was suspicious as fuck here.

  “Why didn’t you just ask her?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, I was treading softly. I demanded she come back to Chicago with me and basically stepped back into her life. Didn’t want to go asking about anything more personal like debts. Actually, I hinted at it and she thought that meant I wanted to take Matthew away from her.” I was so mad at her at the time that I just allowing her to be scared that I’d do just that. But like I had said I never would. There was no way in hell that I would do something like that especially to her.

  Dante sighed. “Okay, I’ll get the secret squad on it. Want me to do that?”

  The secret squad, that could definitely work. I wouldn’t have the awkward task of asking her or Paul. They could just look up shit and I’d take it from there.

  “Yes. That would great.”

  “Cool. With that done you can keep your focus.”

  I nodded, realizing with what Dante had said I really could focus. I pulled out the piece of paper Paul gave me with the details of the support groups.

  I would have preferred to check out the police station, but I’d learned over the last few weeks to allow Gibbs to do his job. If Gibbs said we should go this route, much as I had my own ways of doing stuff, I’d do it his way.

  “Fucking support group. It’s a good thing for the community, but I don’t know what to expect.” I grimaced.

  “I don’t know what to expect either.” Dante frowned. “It just seems like checking something out to tick it off a list.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  The plan was to go there and ask the organizer questions. I knew what Dante meant though, because it could be a lost cause. In groups like that people came and went. There was always turn-over and organizers changed. It was all voluntary, so it tended to have a changeover of staff and organizers every so often. I didn’t know specifically, because the one time I tried drugs I swore I’d never do it again. I ended up on the roof of a hundred story hotel thinking I could fly. It was my friend Dante here who had got me down alive.

  We were about seventeen at the time and that was the outcome of a wild party we shouldn’t have gone to.

  “We’ll see what happens?” Dante raised his shoulders into a shrug.

  “Yeah, let’s see what happens indeed.”

  Chapter 16

  Gio

  * * *

  It was the typical set up.

  Community Centre, but this group had a room for themselves with the chairs all set out in rows like a classroom.

  Of the two groups Paul had given me, this one was still in operation. The other location had closed and merged into this group.

  They were called Sacred Heart Support, covered everything from drug and alcohol abuse to women who’d gone through domestic violence. There were groups running throughout the day. It was only two, we’d just sat through the lunch hour group for guys with both drug and alcohol problems. The same guy who ran the group for the specific individual problems of drugs or alcohol ran this one too. Apparently, there were different triggers and sometimes one trigger kick started the other.

  I didn’t think we were going to sit through the whole thing, but it was Gibbs’ way of analyzing. I looked at him, saw his face, and realized this was part of the plan.

  Today was a speech on the triggers and the organizer was a middle aged tough looking guy with a beard. He looked a little like Paul Bunyan, like a guy’s guy with the lumberjack look. He also seemed like the type of guy who’d have heart too.

  We stood when he wrapped up the group and Gibbs set off to approach him first. I kind of hated when he did that, because he was the kind of guy who went with the flow of things. I just didn’t know what he was doing until he actually did it.

  Just like right now.

  From the way Dante rolled his eyes I could tell that it annoyed him too. We were the type of people who communicated what we were doing before taking action.

  We followed Gibbs up to the guy and waited until he finished talking with a young Hispanic guy. Gibbs approached the organizer the minute the young man walked off.

  “Hi, Mr. Underwood.” Gibbs smiled as he spoke. “Great speech. I wonder if we could steal some of your time?”

  Mr. Underwood looked from Gibbs to me and then to Dante. I didn’t miss the way his gaze scanned over the tattoos of our crosses. Dante had the edge of a dragon’s wing snaking up his neck too. It made him look tougher.

  “Hi of course. Call me Mark. Everyone else does.” Mark nodded and put out his hand to shake Gibbs’ own.

  “Thank you Mark, I’m Gibbs. This is Gio and Dante ... We wanted to talk with you in private, or here’s good if you think this is private enough.” Gibbs looked around.

  There wasn’t anyone around and it probably was okay to talk here. Still maybe it wasn’t though. I didn’t like places like this for private discussions.

  Over by the corner there was a closet looking area that led into the next hall.

  Behind us was a thin wall that separated this room from the next.

  Depending on what this guy could tell us it would perhaps be best to go into an office if one was available.

  “I have an office. What is this about?” Mark looked cautious.

  “It’s about a guy who used to come to this group eight years ago. He was murdered.” Gibbs explained.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It’s going to be difficult though for me to answer questions. I only started volunteering here two years ago. I was around I suppose back then, but I didn’t really know many people.”

  Like fuck was I going to sit through an hour of this guy talking and just leave here with that.

  “Look, if you were around maybe you can still help.” I cut in before Gibbs could talk. “We’re looking for a cop that used to hang out here. We need to speak to him so if you know him or anyone who does. That would be really helpful.”

  Mark held my gaze like something I said snapped his attention into gear.

  I wasn’t sure what it was I said, but the way he looked at me meant I definitely hit a nerve.

  “Come to my office,” he said and moved to go in the opposite direction to where we’d come from.

  Dante glanced at me, probably noticing Mark’s shift in mood.

  We followed him to the next corridor which had a set of offices.

  His was the last one and looked like it was the biggest.

  He’d opened the door for us to go in and closed it after. We sat in front of a large mahogany table with stacks of documents, a wide screen PC, and some books on psychology.

  The interior was set up the way a doctor’s or therapist’s office was laid out. Medical and psychology books were on the shelf. A large sofa was placed over by the long French windows with a chair in front and this table.

  “I run private counselling sessions,” Mark stated when he saw me looking around.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yes. Started up a year ago after I got qualified.” Mark looked at each of us. “Before that …” his voice trailed off as if he were contemplating something.

  “Before that you were a cop?” Gibbs offered and Mark snapped his gaze to him. I did too, because I didn’t know why Gibbs would think that.

  I straightened up on hearing that the question.

  Gibbs looked at me and smiled. />
  He was smiling like he’d just won the jackpot.

  Mark leaned forward. “Yes, I was a cop. How the hell would you know that? You been checking me out?”

  Gibbs shook his head. “No. It wasn’t that at all. It was the way you questioned us. A little at a time until you saw we weren’t a threat. I was a Navy man. We kind of do the same thing.”

  “The thing is the only people who knew I was a cop hanging out here were the people who worked with me. I never disclosed I was a cop to anyone else. There were only two guys I knew of, who knew me. They both were here eight years ago, and aren’t with us anymore.” A tension then washed over his face and that got to me.

  Gibbs looked to me. I’d gotten used to his habits by now. It could only mean it was my turn to talk.

  “Marshall Carson. Was he one of them?” I asked.

  Mark nodded. “Yes. Who are you people? You’re ex- navy,” he pointed at Gibbs then looked to Dante and me. “But you two look like the other side to me.”

  “Because we are.” Dante smirked.

  I cut him a sharp glance. “We’re from Chicago and that’s all you need to know. Marshall was my best friend. He was like family to me. We were told he died in a gang shoot out.”

  “Didn’t he?” Mark asked, keeping his eyes glued to mine.

  The guy was a former cop and he knew we weren’t law abiding citizens. I was going to have to give him something more than just our words to earn his trust. So I did, handing him the envelope with the coroner’s report first followed by the note. He read the note first.

  “I think that was meant for you.” I told him.

  He bit the inside of his lip. “Fuck, damn it. Damn it.” He made a fist and hit the desk. A quick scan of the front page of the coroner’s report had him looking like he was going to explode.

  “I take it this means a little more to you,” Gibbs stated.

  Mark set the note and the report on the table before he brought his hand up to his head shaking it.

  He looked at me and then Gibbs.

  “I don’t know what to say. This was my fault. It was all my fucking fault.”

  “Look, blame is something we can reserve for later. I blame myself too, but it’s different.” I spoke up. “It’s different, because I was the kid who was the bad influence on the good kid who went rogue. I’m still here and he’s not. Try that for size, because if not for me he wouldn’t even have known you. if you know something, help me. Help us. It’s the least you can do if you truly blame yourself.”

  The worst thing about anything like this was all the vagueness. You never knew where to start. I was grateful that we’d been able to narrow things down this much so far. Maybe it was luck, or maybe it was Gibbs. Whatever the fuck it was we just had to keep moving with the information we had.

  Keep moving before anyone who wasn’t supposed to know what we were up to discovered anything.

  “Look, I’ll help you.” Mark nodded. “I will absolutely help. You are right. It’s the very least I can do, but please … leave my name out of it. The person I think is responsible would do everything he could to destroy what I have. I have a wife and kid now. I can’t put them in danger, because I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t have people watching my back. I probably never did.”

  “You have my word.” I told him. I could see the fear on his face. Cops weren’t like mobsters. They didn’t have the support system we did either. They sure as fuck couldn’t stand alone the way I could, me or any of the other guys. We could work as a unit or by ourselves.

  He pulled in a breath and bowed his head. When he lifted his eyes back up to meet mine, he looked ready.

  “Marshall was my main informant. I used to come here looking for guys who I knew could get around the underground for me. Obviously, I couldn’t do it myself. These guys though could get around and they loved money. He was the most popular, because in my stake outs I’d seen him a lot. I saw him on the street with some dealers I would never be able to catch. Fuck he was able to get into this club I’d been trying to get into for months. I was working a kidnapping case, a young girl age sixteen went missing. People thought it was a run of the mill type thing. I did too until another girl went missing, followed by another. It all matched and looked to me like these girls were being taken for something. They were never seen again. Even to this day these girls haven’t been found.” He stopped and thought for a few seconds before continuing. “I instantly suspected sex trafficking, but there was someone I had suspected was involved with a lot of serious shit for a long time. Stuff didn’t add up and evidence went missing.” He held up the coroner’s report. “Or there was something different altogether to what I knew to be true. There’s a lot of dirty cops on the force, but no one was dirtier than who they now have as captain.”

  Fucking hell. I hated cops, hated the dirty ones even more. Now I was being told that the guy I was looking for was potentially a dirty police captain.

  “Tell me more.”

  “I saw him with the Santoras organizing stuff by the docks. That club I mentioned was there. Marshall was able to get me some intel. He saw some girls being taken into a van. They looked like they’d been drugged. The police captain was there too. This,” he held up the note. “It could only be an extension of that. I’m sure of it, because a few nights before he died he’d seen them. I was supposed to arrange with him to go together, but maybe he saw something more he wanted me to see. That’s the best I can do, that I remember.”

  “The Santora you saw, who was it?”

  “Back then it was Julio Santora, the older brother. Someone hired a hit on him two years ago and shot him dead in the street. But his brother Frankie was there too. I saw ricin on the coroner’s report. A couple of guys turned up dead from that stuff back then. They were injected with it just like Marshall. In my time it was how I knew mobsters were involved. It was like a thing with them to torture their victims with it, making them believe they were going to let them live. The effect of the poison in these high doses is almost instantaneous. They tell them they have an antidote, but they don’t have shit. It’s all to get info out of them, then the vic dies anyway. They’re definitely involved, but they would have been working for the captain. I’m sure of it.”

  “Name, what’s his name?”

  “Bailey Donovan. Captain Bailey Donovan. The man me in the back when he was my superior, because he thought I had allowed a perp to escape. It was a set-up. I didn’t fight it, because at the time my eyes were open to all the shit. I didn’t want to be a cop anymore.”

  I nodded understanding completely. “This club, what was it called?”

  “The Hook.”

  I stood up. We were done here.

  “Thank you. Thanks for sharing that.” I told him.

  Right it was the time to take this to the next level.

  I had a name and a place. It was all narrowed down to where I wanted it to be.

  Captain Bailey Donovan, did you kill Marshall Carson?

  I think you did …

  I was going to find out why.

  Chapter 17

  Lyssa

  Okay … I was nearly done.

  I was just in the drinks cellar doing the stock take and audit, and I was nearly done. This was the part of working here that I hated—all the counting and shit.

  I was terrible at math in school. I’d just passed the required level to get into Browns and had to work my ass off by the way. Having to do anything math related for a living to me was like living in hell.

  One whole day of counting and checking felt exactly like hell. Thank goodness I had that time off from the salon, because I was able to get it all done today. And, with no help. Getting help meant I’d have one less person on the floor.

  Thank God it ran smoothly too with everything checking out thanks to the tight shift and checking system I had.

  We had a fully stocked bar out front and enough liquor to last through the summer.

  More whiskey, vodka, and scotch wer
e on order, because those were the most popular. Oh and we needed some more Prosecco.

  It was popular in the summer with the college students. We weren’t that far from the campus of Temple University and one of the girls’ dorms.

  They were in here on the regular, but with the Spring semester over the students who lived on campus and didn’t go home for the summer vacation always came here. They brought friends too.

  They loved prosecco and cocktails. Sounded a little like me back in the day. I was a cocktail type of girl, loved a mojito or sex on the beach.

  In my naughtier days with Gio, we’d gone out to the beach with a bottle of wine, drank the whole damn thing and had sex on the beach.

  My cheeks burned at just the thought. Us now and then had no real difference. We were just older.

  I guess more experienced too.

  I hated thinking about him with other women. It was a thought that drifted into my mind though.

  So not important in the grand scheme of things. I was just having some down time, shutting my brain down and directing my thoughts to foolishness.

  It was the best word I could use to describe my thoughts. It felt like I’d been in this weird mode since yesterday when I realized the shit had definitely hit the fan.

  Dad telling me he would take care of things was as good to me as him saying he’d brush the neighbor’s dog.

  It basically meant nothing.

  While I took on the mundane task of going over the stock, I thought of everything else we could do like sell the house.

  Dad could sell the house and get something smaller—just for him. Matthew and I had to do that and the house was worth a lot. It would cover the debt and get Frankie off my back. I was thinking it was the biggest asset we had right now. The thought had come about now too, because we were going to Chicago.

  God, listen to me.

  I said it, had thought it and now decided it.

  I was going to Chicago with Gio like I should have done years ago, and we were going with our son.