Chapter 16
16
QUIN
For a long while, Derek and I stared at each other across the table we’d moved to. I suspected the scrutiny was because he’d already lost track of me once tonight. With a grin, I crossed my legs and leaned back in my chair. His gaze darted down as I arranged my skirt so it fell smoothly.
“I look good, but not that good.”
He snorted and shook his head, then shifted to staring down into his empty mug. “You don’t have to play coy with me. Just stick to saying you know you look good.” His smile was wide and goofy, and his face had pinked up.
The bartender caught my eye from across the room, and I shook my head. No, I needed Derek clearheaded, not halfway drunk.
“You’re not going to your room yet?” He tipped his head back, moving a little more loosely than normal.
Shrugging, I tapped my nails on the table, and he watched them as if hypnotized. “Is there anything we can do about that terrible detective? The one we saw tonight.”
“O’Neill?” he said, sitting up in surprise. “You don’t need to worry about him. We’ll take care of it.”
I shrugged. “Oh, but I would like to do something about him. He wasn’t nice to me today, and I know Matt was going off to do some things he probably can’t ever tell anyone about, but I don’t think they involved O’Neill. That jerkoff of a detective threatened us all tonight.”
Derek leaned back in his seat, a snake coiled and ready to strike. “Yeah, I was going to try to see what I could make happen.”
“What does that mean?”
He grinned. “When you’re in my line of work, there’s always someone in debt to the house. You know, me. I’m the house.” He waggled his eyebrows. “And generally speaking, when that happens, those people would rather not be in that position. Unless they’re ultrarich, they struggle once they’re in the pit too deep. And that’s good for certain other parts of my business, but overall, I try to avoid letting people get in that bad. Unless it might be useful.”
“This makes you sound like a bad guy, Derek.”
He sighed and nodded. “Yes, it does.” There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
“So, who do you know that can help with O’Neill? Who owes you?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
“And?” I leaned forward and settled my elbows on the table, propping my chin up with my hands. Adrenaline twisted in my belly.
“O’Neill has a partner. Well, sometimes they’re partners, sometimes they work alone these days. But a few years ago, you always saw them together when they were out harassing people. His name is Hanlon. We could get to him that way.”
“I met him today. Why do you think that?”
Derek sighed and pulled a quarter out of his pocket. He flipped it, and when it landed heads up, he grimaced. “Hanlon is an old-school cop like O’Neill, but he’s matured. He’s grown with the times. O’Neill is stuck in the past. He thinks he’s better than everyone else, and there’s no reason to change if you’re already perfect, right? Hanlon sees all the shitty things that O’Neill does, and I know for a fact he doesn’t love it. For a while Hanlon soothed his conscience with a nasty cocaine habit.”
Frowning, I bit my lip. “Does he still have one?”
Derek rolled his eyes. “No. It’s a long story, but he almost got caught and straightened himself out. It’s heroic, actually.”
“How do you know about it?”
“I saw him snorting a line in a bar parking lot ten years ago and made it my business.”
Sighing, I cupped my face, avoiding my lipstick. “How is this useful now?”
Derek’s smirk was pure evil. “I run a casino because I’m a betting man. I went inside the bar and paid the bartender a few hundred bucks to let me schlep through the video of the parking lot, and low and behold, I got a perfect view of Hanlon doing lines off the spoiler of his Hyundai Genesis Coupe. I’ll never forget the car because he had it painted the most disgusting gold metallic color.”
“Hey! My car was golden pink!”
“Your car was a gem in comparison. I’m sorry for your loss.” He grabbed his mug and slurped up the foam from the bottom.
“And you still have the footage?”
Derek tapped the empty mug on the table. “I’ve held that particular card close to my vest, waiting for the right time to play it. But I haven’t had any bullshit with Hanlon. No, it’s always O’Neill. Maybe we can get Hanlon to help us by putting some pressure on him.”
“I see you’re saying us like you’re not dumb enough to assume I’ll stay here and do nothing while you go off to save the world.” I wrinkled my nose at him.
Derek winked at me, stood, and held out his elbow. I hopped to my feet and took his arm.
“How are we going to find him?”
Derek shrugged. “I’ll put out the word to my guys.”
He texted as he walked me to his car, and I was a tad nervous as he opened the door and I slid into the passenger seat. I knew exactly what Matt would have to say about this, and I knew what he would do to Derek if anything happened to me, but I couldn’t stand the idea of sitting around doing nothing while he went off to play cowboy and “handle things.”
In less than fifteen minutes Derek had an address for a small bar on the outskirts of the city’s west side. “The Precinct is run by a man named Tubbs, who retired twenty-five years ago from the NYPD. Now most of the cops in town go there to drink.”
The sign for the bar was yellow neon in the shape of an oversized police badge. The Precinct flashed in bold white letters at the center. Derek pulled his car into the parking lot, and I swallowed hard. There were a lot of trucks taking up spaces, and most of the cars were high-end. Well, high-end for normal people. The bar itself was a squat ugly brick building with windows full of lights advertising different beer brands, but there was a wooden patio that was packed with people laughing and drinking. Twinkle lights had been strung around the umbrellas that were still raised over every table, despite the chilly night air.
“There he is,” Derek said, pointing out a man slouched at a table.
“Yes, I remember him from earlier.” I smoothed down my skirt. “You can’t go over there, can you? Someone will recognize you.”
Derek stared at me with a tight jaw. “No. Matt really will fucking punt me into the sun if I let you go over there alone and something jumps off. He won’t think twice about dropping me into a sewer to rot.” He cleared his throat, then smiled. “We’ll go together.”
“How?” I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Hmm. Well . . . .”
“Stay here,” I said, opening the door. “You really have that footage?”
“Yep. Wait.” He fiddled on his phone, and when he handed it to me, there was a black-and-white video cued up and ready to play. “The passcode on my phone is 3030.”
“Thanks for trusting me, Derek.”
“Play it carefully. Hanlon isn’t too bad, but he’s still a cop. And he’s not just a man in blue, he’s a detective. He’s not stupid.” Derek scowled.
“Okay.” As I got out of the car, I smoothed down my skirt again, a nervous habit. I set my sights on Hanlon and walked toward him with my head up. Happily, I didn’t see O’Neill. But it didn’t take long for me to have the attention of every man on the patio. Hanlon’s body was curved over his phone where it lay on the table, a beer in front of him, not unlike the way Matt and Derek had been sitting around earlier.
I stifled a nervous laugh.
“Hello, beautiful!” a man called.
I twiddled my fingers in his direction at a table full of men. A few were smoking. There was a loud “aww” as I pulled out the chair in front of Hanlon and some laughter as the guys elbowed each other and jostled around their table.
When Hanlon glanced up, his mouth fell open.
“Hello, Detective. We meet again.”
He gulped and glanced around at the guys, who were staring without any sort of guilt. “Did you remember something about the incident today?” I could tell he pitched that question loudly for a reason when a chorus of “boos” went up.
“We thought you finally got yourself something fun to do!” someone from another table called. More laughter followed.
Hanlon stood up with a pained smile and gestured toward a table farther away from the other men. I followed and was a little amused when he pulled out a chair for me. I nodded and sat down, and he went across from me and took a seat but fumbled with the chair in the process.
“What’s this about?” he asked, and even though his cheeks were flushed, I could see he was doing his best to pull on his professional face. “Do you need help?”
“Of a sort,” I murmured.
Keeping the phone in my hands, I opened it up, then turned the screen toward him. I played the video.
Hanlon watched, then glanced at the other men nearby out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t even bother keeping his attention on the video as it played out, only leaned back in his chair. He began to cross his arms, then glanced at the other men again and very deliberately set his hands on the table. He smiled, which was a shock.
“Whatever it is you’re hoping to accomplish, I’m not going to do anything illegal for you. I would rather lose my job than help someone commit a crime.” He pursed his lips and brushed a hand through his dark hair.
“How about helping to take an awful cop out of the picture? I mean, if you think about it in that way, you’d only be doing your civic duty.”
He snorted and rested his forearms on the table, studying me. His gaze slid down my body, mostly in an assessing way. I knew what it looked like when a man was eating me up, but it seemed more as if Hanlon was sizing me up , trying to figure out what I was capable of, and that was almost as intoxicating. I felt good and in control right now.
“That’s a hell of an argument. Compelling. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about putting a bullet in him. I assume we’re talking about O’Neill?”
I shrugged and swiped the ribbon in my hair back away from my face.
“He’s an asshole, but he does more good than harm. I think,” he muttered with a small scowl.
“He offended me today,” I said, sitting up straighter. “And I think he deserves some karma for that.”
Hanlon nodded. “I did tell my captain that he was verbally abusive, but I got the impression any complaints were going to accidentally go into file thirteen.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The trash.” The small smile on his lips wilted as I glared.
“You can’t think of anything else you could do that wouldn’t violate your moral code?” I flicked my gaze back down to Derek’s phone and started the video again.
He groaned and reached toward the phone, but I tugged it back.
“I’ve dropped that bad habit, but like I said, if it comes down to me and my job or doing the wrong thing, I’ll eat the bullet. I’ll let myself be fired.” He stared at me grimly.
Derek had miscalculated. A cold tingle slid down my spine. Hanlon really was a good guy, which was great and restored some of my faith in humanity—but wasn’t what I needed right now. He pulled the phone closer, and I let him. With a world-weary sigh, he watched himself doing the drugs, Adam’s apple bobbing.
“On the other hand, it wouldn’t do a lot of good for New Gothenburg if you were off the police force.” I smiled at him and hit the button to lock the phone screen, then rested my hands on it. “Surely you can think of something to help me. I would love to make certain that I don’t cross paths with O’Neill again.”
He blinked and tilted his head, then glanced at the men who were still keeping tabs on us out of curiosity. “You know, O’Neill’s been known to drink on the job. It would be a shame if someone reported him to the anonymous tip line for it. He would be put on leave while the accusations were investigated. They would be less likely to cover up something that could lead to busted-up vehicles and insurance trouble. If the right person checks on O’Neill, he might be forced into treatment to keep his job, which would take him out of the picture for a few months, at least.”
“And wouldn’t that be helpful for everyone? Maybe he would even learn to control his mouth,” I said sweetly.
Hanlon pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. He didn’t press Send yet, though, just handed the phone to me. “It’s a recorded line. Say you’ve seen Detective O’Neill swerving on the road after he leaves a bar called The Precinct.” His gaze flicked to the neon sign blazing out near the road. “Tell them it’s been during the day, around lunchtime.”
Covering my mouth for a second to hold in a snicker, I nodded and did just that once the automated voice came on. Before I ended the call, Hanlon wrote down a number on a napkin, and I frowned at it. He wrote Badge Number . I rattled off the number.
“Anyway, that’s the police officer I saw.” That’s how I ended the recording, and I felt very diabolical as I slid Hanlon’s phone back across the table to him.
He glanced up at me. “You know, a man died today,” he said quietly. “Someone should pay for his murder. Do you know anything about that crime that you didn’t tell us earlier?”
“No, I wish I did. But justice has a way of hitting its mark eventually.” I tapped his phone, then leaned across the table and popped a kiss on his cheek. I left behind a pink outline of my lips.
Yelling and whistling erupted from the men who had clearly never stopped watching us, and I waved at them with a grin. I curtsied at Hanlon before I carefully walked across the parking lot to Derek.
“How’d it go?” he asked as I situated myself in the passenger seat and dragged my skirt inside. After a few seconds of tucking the fabric against my leg, I closed the door.
“Great!” I was just opening my mouth to tell him what had happened when Derek’s phone rang. My stomach dropped. Colt was on the screen.
“Don’t answer it. Just drive back to the Courtesan,” I said, tossing the phone at him like it was poisonous.
He bared his teeth at the phone. “Yeah, good idea. I’ll drive fast.”
I groaned as he punched the gas pedal on his car, and we took off out of the parking lot.