Chapter 57
He didn’t know if the chief’s call had saved his ass from making the biggest mistake of his life with Madison, or if it had just delayed the inevitable.
Dom left Jake’s place in Hughes Heights close to one a.m. They’d had an emergency meeting, and Lake had grabbed a very weak McKellen along the way.
Gunnar had been chauffeured over from Mel Barratt’s place, along with the chief.
Dom had updated everyone on what he was working on now. Jarrod had confirmed that what Madison had found—combined with what Dom had been given by Hope, copies of which had been sent with Hope’s oversized errand boy Miguel—it fit into Jarrod’s crime ring theory almost too well.
Kimball had said multiple times that someone was using the TSP as foot soldiers.
For profit. But what all exactly those foot soldiers had been used for wasn’t exactly clear yet. They were going to have someone—probably K.J.—dig through old case files, to see if anything popped out to her. Fresh eyes and all of that.
Now they needed to go over the list of anyone tied to the TSP in any way, who had wealth and means enough to pay low level grunts to do their dirty work for them. And how they were identifying them in the first place.
Not every damned cop could be bought.
The ones who had surrounded him tonight were proof of that.
But for outsiders…Jake would make an interesting fall guy.
Jake had a very wealthy wife. Her money could hide any dirty dealings Jake would be involved in—just like a judge that had been arrested in Wyoming after attempting to kill Powell Barratt’s twin brother. His wife had helped him hide millions in dirty deals.
Major Crimes was tying Wyoming in, too.
So…time to do some digging. Who in the TSP—most likely the Wichita Falls and Finley Creek posts—had money they shouldn’t have, and who had familial connections to Wyoming. And some kind of ties to Hughes Heights.
That was going to be a very, very small list.
Jake was going to handle the digging into the Hughes Heights angle. He said he had a special interest in making sure the bad apples were removed from the tree he lived in.
Dom was on a mission of his own now.
Tony had told him there were threats to the forensics lab. Dom had shared that information with the chief earlier. Marshall was supposed to have sent out warnings to all it could apply to.
But Dom had a certain scientist of his own to protect.
He looked at her. In his passenger seat.
He had taken her with him tonight. There wasn’t any way in hell he was leaving her behind right now. No one at the meeting had been shocked to see her there—Jake and Lake had only joked about them arriving together a little.
Now, she slept in the passenger seat of his truck.
What was he going to do about her?
Her words were playing in his head. How long could they do this? Keep hiding what they felt for each other? Or was it more keep not acting on what they felt for each other.
She wasn’t denying the fire between them. Not any longer.
Dom couldn’t hide it at all.
He wanted her, burned for her, and yes—loved her, more than he had any woman ever before.
Dom didn’t know how much longer he could keep doing the half-life with her.
Hell, maybe it was time to go all or nothing? Or move to Alaska, to get away from her.
He was thinking about that on the last stretch of road before the turn-off to her complex. She lived on the south edge of town—the exact opposite of Hughes Heights. It was a good twenty-five minutes with traffic between the two places.
Except now. When traffic had all but died off.
When the two trucks pulled up behind him at a high rate of speed, Dom knew it wasn’t ordinary. “Madison, wake up. Now.”