Chapter 10
Dixon was sitting in his dining room alone, eating his ribeye because it was there, not because he craved it. He was still pissed off at Whistler for daring to talk back and had sent him to the kitchen to eat with the hired help.
He was bothered that the cop who’d been feeding him info had gone silent and tried to convince himself that it was because there was nothing to share, but it felt like he’d left something undone.
* * *
Whistler was eating steak in the kitchen and listening to the chatter from the rest of the staff.
As soon as the meal was finished and the kitchen cleaned and set up for tomorrow, they would go to their suite, and he’d be going home.
He had his own set of issues and future to think about and knew he’d soon be moving on, and if there was one thing he’d learned from his boss, it was leaving no loose ends behind.
* * *
Detectives Beale and Rowdy returned to the division to file reports on the case they were working on and walked in on a very subdued crew eating their way through what looked like the remnants of someone’s birthday cake.
“Who died?” Rowdy said and laughed, then frowned when no one laughed with him. “What? Did someone really die?”
Frankie Adams’s spiked hairstyle was grass-green today, and she’d already been teased about it. But being outrageous was what kept the men from hitting on her. She thought it was funny they considered her too weird to fuck.
“Gunner was here,” she said. “He brought cake. Said it was his birthday.”
Cliff groaned. “Damn it! Is he okay? Why didn’t he call?”
Frankie shrugged. “I don’t think it was a celebration.
I think it was a warning. His cake didn’t have Happy Birthday written on it.
Just the word Bulletproof. I’d say it was a message to whom it may concern, that he wasn’t afraid of shit.
He thinks there’s a dirty cop in the division, and he’s still pissed about the bounty that was put on his head, so I don’t see him coming back until this is resolved.
And since he no longer knows who he can trust, I don’t blame him. ”
Cliff paled. Now he knew why Gunner had been acting so weird, but to think Gunner didn’t trust him was a shock. What the hell did I do to make him think I would hurt him? He felt sick.
Lieutenant Samuels walked up behind them. “Gunner told us to save you and Rowdy some cake. It’s on my desk. I’ve been staring at it for over two hours, so come get it or donate it to the cause.”
Rowdy was eyeing the crumbs in the box. “What cause?”
“Cause I’m going to eat it if you don’t,” Samuels said and walked off smiling.
Rowdy let out a big belly laugh and followed the lieutenant into his office, picked up the two plates, and carried them back to their desks.
“Here you go, Cliff,” he said and set it down on his desk.
Cliff stared at the cake, then pushed it aside. “I’m going home,” he said and walked out with his head down and his shoulders slumped.
Rowdy shrugged and ate both. By the time he was finished, the only people in the room were janitors. He tossed the paper plates in the trash and left the building.
* * *
Gunner was on edge all evening. He scrambled eggs and made toast, then ate them in the living room in front of the TV. When the local six o’clock news came on, one of the lead-in stories had to do with the mysterious, and as yet unnamed, winner of the Mega Millions lottery.
One of the co-hosts was teasing the other one, reminding him that whenever the payout happened, his identity would become known. Once that amount of money landed in a bank somewhere, someone was bound to tell all.
Gunner frowned. That was also on his horizon and would likely complicate his life even more. All the more reason to get the first monkey off his back before the handout horde descended.
He was still sitting in the dark, with only the light of the TV flickering in the room, when his phone rang. He looked down, then immediately answered.
“Hey, brother. Hammered any thumbs lately?”
Dylan laughed. “Nail guns, buddy. The hammers on our tool belts are just there to look sexy.”
Gunner grinned. “Right… How is Angie? How is CJ? Still digging up worms in his mama’s flower beds?”
Dylan laughed. “He’s a busy little three-year-old, and he never stops moving.
We recently had to fence in the whole backyard with an eight-foot privacy fence because he learned to climb over the other one.
Angie nearly had a heart attack. We’re considering razor wire around the top.
We also built the new fence with the smooth side of the fence facing inward, so he doesn’t have anything to grab or get a toe hold in.
All of the braces and supports for the fence now face the street.
It ain’t pretty, but so far, it’s climb proof. ”
Gunner laughed out loud, picturing it happening. Colter John—CJ, for short—was Dylan’s mini-me in looks, but he had his mama’s fire-and-brimstone temperament.
“I know you are not calling me to complain about CJ. And I’m assuming Asher told you I came back to Dallas, and I’m also assuming you know why. Rest assured that I have boarded myself up behind all kinds of security systems and Ring doorbells, and I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“I know you are good at your job,” Dylan said. “But you don’t have eyes in the back of your head.”
“I know,” Gunner said. “That’s why I’m making them come to me. Because here, I have eyes everywhere. Understand?”
Dylan exhaled softly. “Understood. I just want you to be careful. You matter so much to all of us. We don’t want to lose you.”
“Thanks for calling. Love to Angie, and tell CJ that Uncle Gunner loves him, okay?”
“Will do.”
The call ended, but Gunner’s mood had lifted. He went to bed later, still thinking about the little monkey his nephew was turning into.
He was sound asleep in the back bedroom when the same vehicle circled his block four times, driving slowly past his house each time before finally driving out of sight.
Gunner saw the replay the next morning, and when he tried to get a close-up of the tag number and realized it had been completely covered, the hair stood up on the back of his neck.
And so it begins.
* * *
Dixon was in his office going over the bookkeeper’s monthly updates on Dixon Down and Dirty services.
All of the locations were making a profit, but his best locations were in the higher-income residential areas.
So, the wealthy women of Dallas kept their manicures pretty, and Dixon’s cleaning services kept their great mansions clean. It was a win-win situation.
It was the side job to his business that had raised red flags with the Feds and got him in trouble.
They frowned upon using his cleaning vans to move drugs, and his special cleaning crews who changed the bedclothes only after they’d had sex in the sheets with the resident dilettante.
Some people had pool boys. Dixon provided gigolos who did dishes.
His narrow escape from prison had come at a high cost. It was one thing to be in the drug and sex trade, but killing had not been on his bingo card. Still, Burgess Dixon was pragmatic. One did what one must to survive.
He had just pulled up the spreadsheet on the financials at one of his locations when the burner phone in his desk began to ring. He quickly unlocked the drawer and answered.
“You better have a good explanation for not answering my calls,” he said.
The male voice in his ear was gruff but shaky. “Since you called off your hunting dogs, there’s nothing to report, and I’m out. Don’t call me again. I’m about to set this phone on fire, so don’t bother trying to call.”
“You don’t quit me!” Dixon shouted. “I own you.”
“You own mop buckets. If you out me…you out yourself. You went too far.”
Before Dixon could respond, the line went dead. He stared at the phone in his hand in disbelief, and when he tried to call the number, he got a recording saying, “This number is no longer in service.” He rolled his eyes as he dropped his phone back in the desk and locked the drawer.
“Son of a bitch.”
* * *
Holly came to work early to put a thank-you note on her boss’s desk for the flowers that were sent to her mom’s funeral and then began sorting through her own messages.
The most urgent ones were follow-ups on deeds that had not gone through probate and needed to be updated so the sales of the houses could go through.
After that, it was all about running down other deeds that had been misfiled at court clerks’ offices in the surrounding counties.
She had her work cut out for her today and would work through the oldest requests first and go from there.
The thought of Gunner using himself for bait to catch a dirty cop was horrifying, but she had to trust that he knew what he was doing. She knew he would initiate phone calls when it was safe for him to do so, but she needed to let him know she was thinking of him.
She reached for her phone and sent him an emoji greeting.
Gunner heard his phone ding a text. He opened the message from Holly, saw the good morning GIF with a sun rising above the horizon, and a good morning message to go with it, and smiled.
He returned the message with a kiss emoji and wished he could deliver that in person, then called a florist near her place of work and ordered her flowers and had them sign the card Roadrunner. He paid through PayPal rather than giving them a credit card number more easily traced.
Soon, darlin’, soon, he thought, then kept going through that piece of video from the security camera over and over until he finally spotted something he hadn’t noticed before.
On the driver’s third trip past Gunner’s house, he met a car coming from the other direction, and in the moment just before they were passing, the car’s headlights briefly flashed on the windshield, revealing a blurry image of the driver.