35. Chapter 34
I don’t need anger management. I need for it to be socially acceptable to dick-punch people when necessary.
Hope knew she wasn’t alone, but it was still nerve-racking sitting at Cross’s Diner waiting for the sheriff to arrive. After going over everything with Bradford’s people and getting a good night’s sleep, she was as ready as she’d ever be for this.
If it worked, it did. And if it didn’t…well, then it was a risk she was willing to take.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Kim called out when the bell overhead jingled with his arrival. “I’ll bring over your usual.”
Hope hadn’t even seen him drive up, but maybe he’d pulled around back.
Or just walked from the station. She’d interviewed hundreds of people over the years.
People who made her skin crawl. The sheriff didn’t even rank in the top ten of the crappy people she’d faced down.
She could do this, she reminded herself.
She couldn’t get a read on him as he approached the booth, but he smiled as he slid in across from her. “Glad to see you’re okay. You’ve had everyone in town and beyond talking. ”
She shrugged, keeping one hand wrapped around her mug to steady her. “It’s been a wild few days.”
“So what’s going on? What was that video all about?”
“Pretty sure you know who was on that video. Or you can at least guess,” she said quietly as she gave him a pointed look.
To his credit, he didn’t seem all that surprised by her words. He just sighed and leaned back in the booth, but didn’t respond.
“I had an interesting conversation with one of my dad’s old friends yesterday,” she continued when it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything. “Told me my dad had been doing a little investigating of Edward Killeen.” She paused when Kim strode up, a coffee mug in hand and two pieces of pie.
“Figured you could both use some pie,” Kim said with a big smile for both of them.
“Thank you,” she murmured, with the sheriff doing the same, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes.
Once they were alone again, she cut into the blackberry pie with her fork, but didn’t take a bite yet.
“I’ve got some really interesting information on Edward Killeen now.
The kind of stuff that will land him and anyone on his payroll in jail.
As I looked at the videos and photographs—oh yeah, I’ve got rock-solid evidence about all his drug running,” she added as he clenched his jaw.
“I kept thinking, why wouldn’t Hank talk to someone?
Someone like…you. And then I realized that of course he would have gone to you. ”
His jaw tightened again as he glanced around. “Where’s your phone?” he demanded even as he snatched her purse off the side of the table.
She leaned back as he pulled out her recording device. Glaring at her, he turned it off.
Then he held out his palm. “Phone.”
Sighing, she lifted it from where she’d been keeping it on her lap .
He took her phone, turned it off, then set both the phone and recorder under an empty pie display on the countertop. If he noticed the strange looks a couple of customers gave him, he didn’t let on. Or more likely didn’t care.
His expression was dark as he slid back across from her. He leaned forward, his mouth pulled into a tight line. “What the hell do you want?”
“Did you kill my dad?”
He blinked in shock, the kind you can’t fake. “What? No. Hell no. And for the record, no one killed Hank. He died of a heart attack.”
Yeah, she knew that, she’d just wanted to take him off guard and get a baseline for how honest he would be. “Did he come to you about the Killeens?”
The sheriff’s jaw did that clenching thing again. “Jesus, Hope. The town is doing well,” he finally snapped. “Businesses are popping up everywhere. People are actually moving here and having their kids here. This is what we needed for growth.”
“Drugs are what we needed?” She kept her voice pitched low.
He struggled with her question, she could see it in his eyes. “We’ve got two factories here now. Legit ones. And everything else that comes with that. Your dad…” He shook his head, looked out at the half-empty parking lot. “He was upset, but he let it go once I explained things to him.”
“Explained things?”
“That our town needs the Killeens. I hate what they’re doing, but…there’s no fighting them. He has too damn many people working for him. They’re an army.”
“So you just look the other way while he grows his heroin and poisons people?” She let the mask on her rage slip so he could see how angry she was. And it wasn’t hard. Because that internal fury was feeding her. This man had been voted in to protect this town, the people in it .
Instead he’d lined his own pockets while some asshole built up an empire on other people’s pain.
“It’s not like that. He’s not some low-level dealer.
He doesn’t…do anything here. This is a safe town.
” There was a hint of desperation in his tone, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying.
“Now tell me what kind of evidence you have. We can figure this out. I can keep you safe from him. I promise we can make all this go away.”
“I’m keeping myself safe,” she shot back. “Now why don’t you tell me who broke into my house?”
He leaned back again but didn’t respond. Instead he had that same hard look on his face she’d seen before and she knew this conversation was over. “I’ll reach out later and we’ll talk again once you’re thinking more clearly. Because you do not want to go up against someone like him.”
She held back a snort of derision as he stood and dropped a twenty on the table.
Before he’d made it to the door, two FBI agents strode out from the back of the diner just as an SUV pulled into the parking lot sideways blocking the front door.
The sheriff looked back at her, his dark eyes flinty, but she just shrugged and took a bite of her pie as one of the agents slapped cuffs on him and began reading him his rights.
She wasn’t surprised that he didn’t struggle or make a scene—though the rest of the diner was watching with shock as he was marched out the front doors and tucked into the back of the idling SUV.
Once the darkly tinted SUV pulled away, Kim grabbed Hope’s cell phone and recorder, then sat across from her.
She started to speak, but turned around and shouted, “Everyone eat your food and mind your business!” and everyone did just that.
Because Kim was a little terrifying and no one wanted to get on her bad side and risk being banned from the diner. Not with pie this good.
Hope was pretty sure everyone was murmuring about what had just happened, but at least they weren’t staring at her and Kim or trying to eavesdrop.
“How’s the pie?”
Hope blinked at the unexpected question. “So amazing that it deserves its own Pulitzer. Or a trophy at the very least.”
Kim cracked a smile. “Right answer. So…what happens now?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Last night Hope and Bradford had reached out to Kim to ask her about wiring her diner for a mini-sting operation. Hope hadn’t been sure if she’d be into it, but the woman had jumped at the chance to take down the sheriff. “My guess is that he’ll cut a deal.”
Kim’s face scrunched up. “Sneaky bastard.” She glanced out in the parking lot. “You’re sure you’re good to be out in public?”
“Yeah. I mean, as much as I can be sure.” The truth was, Bradford and a couple of the others were also waiting for her in at Jeep in the parking lot. And Rowan and Adalyn were stationed at the back of the place.
The Feds had jumped at the chance to get the sheriff incriminating himself because they desperately wanted to flip him, but Bradford hadn’t been about to let her out of his sight. Another reason she loved him.
“I think it’ll just be a matter of time before…” She shrugged, not wanting to say anything about Killeen even though no one seemed to be paying attention to them.
At this point, enough people had seen the sheriff arrested by the FBI so word would be spreading like wildfire. Which meant she did need to get out of here soon…
Almost as if he read her mind, Bradford texted her. Time to wrap it up.
“We’ll see what plays out, but no one will know about you letting the Feds plant listening devices.
I mean, the sheriff will but I don’t think it’ll matter.
” Because he would be cutting a deal, she had no doubt.
If he had something to hand over and bring down the bigger fish, he’d probably sell his soul to get out of going to prison.
And she hated that he likely would, but that wasn’t her problem anymore. She had to focus on the future—Bradford.
“I’m not worried about that,” Kim said, then glanced behind her at the few customers. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t trust everyone in here, but I think the Killeen family has a lot more to worry about than me.”
Hope snorted in agreement.
Kim continued, “Oh, I heard from Nestor. He’s good, heading back home with his church group tomorrow. I’ll pass on whatever you say is okay.”
“Just tell him thank you again from me. That’s it. I appreciate everything he gave me.” The videos her father and some of the others in his AA group had taken on Killeen’s property had been what the FBI and now DEA needed to start infiltrating Killeen’s holdings—of which there were many.
They were going to be untangling a lot of threads in the near future, and while she didn’t think she was out of the woods yet, she didn’t feel like she was walking around with a bull’s-eye on her chest either.
Not with the Feds closing in on him. She still wasn’t sure what would happen with the frozen bodies but figured that wasn’t her problem.
“I will. Oh, I’ve got two pies packed up to-go, for you and your friends,” she said, whispering the last part.
“You are an angel.”
By the time Hope said her good-byes and made it to the waiting Jeep with two pies in hand, she was already breathing easier.
“Ooh, what’s in the box?” Berlin asked.
“What’s in the boooox?” Hope and Bradford said at the same time in maniacal voices before cackling. God, she hadn’t laughed like that in a long time and it was all because of him.
Berlin turned around and stared at the two of them. “What the heck was that?”
“It’s from a movie before your time,” Tiago murmured, throwing the Jeep into reverse.
“We can all watch it,” Bradford said.
Berlin looked between the two of them before turning back around. “I think I’m good.”
Hope grinned at Bradford, a lightness in her chest she hadn’t felt in ages. This man brought out a side of her she’d kept buried for so long, afraid to have too much fun. To just live.