Chapter 13 #2
“Seventeen little ghosts,” Margot said. “Every single one correlates with a fight date in Dre’s notebook.
And I can tell you where they go when the party’s over.
” The map expanded, trails fanning out across the county like veins branching from a dark heart.
Some traced back to Stavros properties. Others went dark—batteries pulled by people who thought they were being clever.
“But here’s the beautiful part. Every phone leaves a fingerprint, even the ones trying not to.
If someone’s carrying a burner alongside their real phone, both devices ping the same towers at the same times.
Same routes, same patterns. All I need to do is match the ghosts against every registered phone in the area, and I’ll find who’s holding them. ”
“Someone knew we’d be at the Towne Square this morning,” Jack said quietly. “And someone knew the funeral home would be empty when they dropped T-Bone on the porch. That’s not surveillance. That’s someone with access to our movements.”
The words settled over the table like a frost. Nobody said what all of us were thinking—that the leak could be anyone. A deputy. A clerk. Someone close enough to see the board and report it back.
“Run it,” Jack said. “Everyone. Start with law enforcement and work out from there.”
“Did you ever get anything from Dre’s phone?” I asked.
“The phone’s last ping was from a cell tower near the docks right before it was shut off,” Doug said.
“They probably destroyed it. But his personal cell was clean. Usual texts and calls, mostly from the girlfriend, Vic, and his mom. He most likely had a burner assigned like the others for fight nights.”
Lightning split the sky outside—a jagged vein of white that turned the river to mercury and threw the room into sharp relief, every face lit for an instant like a photograph taken by God.
The thunder followed so close it was nearly simultaneous, a crack that shook the old windows in their frames and vibrated through the floor and up through the soles of my feet.
And in the beat of silence that followed, Jack’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
I watched the shift move through him the way weather moves through a landscape.
His jaw set first. Then his shoulders drew back, just slightly, the way they did when he stepped into a room where the threat hadn’t declared itself yet.
His eyes went flat and focused, the dark warmth draining out of them until what remained was fury and cold.
He looked at me. I saw the decision form before he touched the screen.
He answered on speaker.
“Hello?”
“Sheriff Lawson.” The voice filled the room like smoke—smooth, unhurried, accented with something Mediterranean that had been polished down to almost nothing.
A warmth on the vowels that made everything sound like a secret being shared.
“I hope I’m not interrupting your evening.
This is simply a courtesy. Businessman to public servant.
I understand you’ve been trying to reach me. ”
The hair on my arms lifted.
“Mr. Stavros,” Jack said. Level. Conversational. “I appreciate you calling. Though I’m curious how you got this number.”
“I make it a point to know the people who serve my community. We’ve never had the pleasure, and I thought it was past time.”
“I’ve been trying to arrange that pleasure. My office has reached out several times.”
“A meeting.” He rolled the word around. “I’m afraid my schedule is quite demanding. But I’m happy to give you a few minutes now. Ask your questions.”
“I’d prefer in person. I’m investigating two homicides and an attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. That’s the kind of conversation that deserves a chair and a table.”
“Over the phone will have to do. I’m a busy man, Sheriff.”
“Then let’s not waste your time.” Jack leaned back, and his voice shifted into the register I’d heard a hundred times in interview rooms—easy, almost friendly, the tone of a man who already knew the answers and was just curious how you’d handle the questions.
“Are you familiar with a young man named Andre Washington?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“How about Terrance James? Goes by T-Bone.”
“No.”
“That’s interesting. Because Mr. Washington was found murdered earlier this week, and Mr. James was found murdered today, and both of them had connections to properties in the dock district that trace back to a company called Dockside Ventures.
” Jack paused. “You’re familiar with Dockside Ventures? ”
The briefest hesitation. A half beat of dead air that Stavros filled with a light, dismissive laugh. “Sheriff, I have business interests throughout the county and across the world. I couldn’t name every holding company associated with every property. That’s what attorneys and accountants are for.”
“Sure. But a man like you probably keeps close tabs on what happens on his properties.”
Another pause. Shorter this time. “I’m not sure what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m asking questions.
” Jack’s tone stayed easy, almost pleasant.
“Mr. Washington had thirty thousand dollars in cash hidden in his apartment and an illegal betting ledger that goes back two years. Dates, names, dollar amounts. The kind of records a careful man keeps when he wants insurance against the people above him.” He let that settle.
“Any idea where a twenty-four-year-old construction worker gets that kind of money?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never heard of the man.”
“Where were you Friday night, Mr. Stavros? Between seven and midnight.”
A beat of silence—brief and controlled. “At home. With my wife. We had dinner and watched a movie. I believe it was Italian.”
“And this morning between nine and eleven?”
“My office at the marina. I had calls all morning. My assistant can confirm.” Another pause. “Is there a particular reason you’re asking me to account for every hour of my week?”
“Two dead men and a cop in the hospital. I’m asking everyone.”
“Sheriff, I’m happy to cooperate with your investigation within reason, but I’m beginning to feel as though you’re less interested in questions than in accusations.”
“Just trying to build a picture. You’re a prominent businessman. I’m sure you want these murders solved as much as I do.”
“Of course.” And there it was—the first crack in the silk, a flash of uncertainty underneath.
“I’m a firm supporter of our local law enforcement.
I’ve built everything I have in this county through hard work and legitimate enterprise.
I employ hundreds of people. I contribute to this community.
I own half the commercial real estate between here and Dahlgren.
” His voice dropped, not in volume but in temperature.
“I own this city, Sheriff. You’d do well to remember that. ”
“Funny,” Jack said. “As one businessman to another—I’m sure you’re very familiar with my family—I’ve barely heard the mention of your name.”
The silence that followed lasted three full seconds, and in those three seconds I watched Doug’s eyes go wide and Margot’s screen flicker with what I could have sworn was delight.
“Well,” Stavros said, and the warmth was back, but it was the warmth of something reheated.
“I can see you’re a man who enjoys a conversation.
I do as well. Perhaps we’ll continue this another time, when you have something more substantial than cash in a dead man’s apartment and questions about holding companies. ”
“Count on it,” Jack said. “And Mr. Stavros—I’d encourage you to stay available. Things are going to move quickly.”
“Things always do in a small town.” A beat. “Give my regards to your lovely wife, Sheriff. I hear she runs that funeral home on Catherine of Aragon. Charming building.”
The line went dead. The silence that followed was the kind that needed a moment before anyone was ready to touch it. Jack set the phone on the desk with a precision that told me every muscle in his hand was fighting the urge to put it through the wall. His face was stone. His eyes burned.
Stavros didn’t call to talk. He called to measure the distance between us.
“He named the funeral home,” I said. “He knows it’s where they left T-Bone this morning.”
Jack’s jaw worked once. “That wasn’t small talk. That was a man telling me he knows exactly where you are and he’s already proven he can get there.”
“Sounds like he’s scared to me,” Doug said.
We both looked at him.
“A guy like that doesn’t call you at home unless something’s changed his math,” Doug said. “If he felt safe, he’s got a million lawyers to handle all his problems. He called because he needed to hear your voice. Needed to measure how much you actually have.”
“Which means he’s going to start cleaning up,” Jack said. “If he thinks we’re close, he’ll strip everything out of those tunnels—the rings, the equipment, anything that ties the operation back to him—before we can get down there.
He reached for his laptop. “Margot, I want you to tap into the city system—stoplights, traffic cameras—I want eyes on all three dock district properties tonight. Anything moves in or out, I want to know.”
“10-4, sugar,” Margot said. “I have access to two traffic cameras and a private security feed at the marina, as well as an ATM at a convenient store.”
“Good. Because we’re hitting the tunnels tomorrow night.”
* * *
Doug went up first, carrying Margot with him. A minute later the muffled thump of his music started up on the floor above us, the usual electronic chaos that meant he was still wired and wouldn’t sleep for hours.
The house settled into the storm. The rain was steady against the windows and the wind pushed through the eaves.
The office was dark except for one lamp. The screen was off. The case waited in digital silence for morning.
Jack was on the couch with his head back and his eyes closed, but I knew he wasn’t sleeping by the way his thumb moved against his knee—slow, rhythmic, the unconscious motion of a mind that was still running the numbers behind closed lids.
I sat beside him and he shifted to make room without opening his eyes. My head found the hollow of his shoulder. His arm came around me. The leather was warm from his body, and the rain ran down the windows in rivulets that caught the lamplight and turned it to gold.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He was quiet for several moments and then said, “He said my name like he had a right to it.”
“He doesn’t.”
“When he mentioned you—” His arm tightened. “I wanted to kill him. Not arrest. Not build a case. End him. And maybe that scared me a little because that’s not me. I’m by the book. I’ve always been by the book. But I find the longer I do this the more the by the book goes by the wayside.”
“You’re a good man, Jack. The best I’ve ever known.
And I know you to your core—who you are deep down inside.
I’ve seen you tested and tempted. So I can say with certainty that those feelings are fleeting.
And human. Though I will say the woman in me is very flattered at the thought of you ripping him apart in my honor. It’s very caveman of you.”
He grunted in response, making me laugh.
Lightning split the sky outside, turning the room white for an instant. In that flash I saw his face without the armor—raw, open, his.
“Come here,” he said.
I went, and his hands found me in the half dark the way they always found me.
One at the curve of my waist, the other sliding into my hair, tilting my face up toward his.
He kissed me slow. It was a kiss that had nothing to do with patience and everything to do with intent, like he was memorizing the shape of my mouth, the taste of my skin, the sound I made when his thumb traced the line of my jaw and his lips followed.
The rain hammered the windows. The thunder rolled through the walls. And somewhere between one kiss and the next, the weight of the day went quiet, replaced by the only thing that had ever been strong enough to drown it out.
Jack.
His hands. His mouth. The way he whispered my name against the hollow of my throat like a prayer he’d been holding back all day.
The solid, certain warmth of him pulling me under like a current, and me going willingly, gratefully, the way I always went.
Because this was where the noise stopped.
This was where the world got small enough to hold.
Afterward. The dark. His heartbeat under my ear becoming deep and even.
His hand tracing the length of my spine in long, absent strokes that made my eyelids heavy and my bones feel like they’d finally remembered what it meant to rest. The rain had softened outside—not gone, but gentled, the fury spent, the thunder moving east in low rumbles that faded across the flatlands like the last words of an argument nobody had the energy to finish.
I pressed my cheek against his chest and breathed him in—soap and woodsmoke from the grill, and something underneath both of those that was just Jack, warm and steady and mine. His arm tightened around me.
Tomorrow the warrants would come through. Tomorrow Jack would handpick his team and tell them nothing until the last possible moment. Tomorrow we’d go underground and drag into the light whatever was hiding in those tunnels.
But that was tomorrow.
Tonight there was only the rain, the solid rhythm of Jack’s heart beneath my ear, and the small life growing inside me that neither of us had told the world about yet.
And sleep pulled me under, steady and sure.