Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Lincoln / Present
S enior Investigator Beaugard walks out of the back room and sighs the second he sees me leaning against the wall with two coffees in my hand. “One of those better be for me, Hawk,” he says, taking the one I extend out to him as I match his pace down the hall.
I pass him the one on the right. I know he likes his coffee with three shots of milk and a little bit of sugar. Since I have no idea what this is about, I figure buttering him up couldn’t hurt.
“McAdams said you wanted to speak to me.”
He stops at his office at the end of the corridor and opens it, gesturing me in with his hand. I step inside, standing by one of the chairs across from his desk and watching him pop open the button of his suit jacket before sitting down in front of his computer.
“Sit,” he tells me, setting the coffee down by his keyboard. “We need to chat about why I got a call from Estep from the DA’s office asking me about your visitation request at Rikers to see his client. What the fuck are you thinking?”
Christ. I thought I’d told Estep to call me, not Beaugard, about seeing Jakob Volley. I’ve worked enough with the attorney to have a decent relationship with him. I thought he would have afforded me one favor.
“I need to talk to Volley,” is all I say.
My unapologetic tone has him sighing as he takes a long sip of his coffee. Then he points to his thinning hair and says, “Do you see this? I blame you for all the goddamn grays. I used to be young when I started this job.”
I don’t point out that his hairline was receding when we first met because that won’t get me far at all. “Look, I know it’s not ideal—”
“You’re damn straight it’s not.” He leans forward. “You must be out of your mind to think speaking to Volley is a good idea. Do you have any clue what that could do to his case when he appeals?”
“When?” I repeat.
He doesn’t bullshit me. “You and I both know that they always appeal. He doesn’t want to stay at Rikers for a full sentence. Any chance he can go in front of a judge again, he’s going to take.”
“He shot and killed a police officer,” I deadpan. “There’s no way they’re going to consider resentencing.”
Beaugard scoffs out a dry laugh. “What do you think is going to happen when they find out one of the officers he shot went to see him? They’ll appeal and claim intimidation of their client to get him out.”
“That wouldn’t excuse his previous charges,” I point out. “He was charged with murder in the first degree with a life sentence. He plead guilty . Even if I went to see him, there’s no overturning that decision.”
Beaugard stares at me for a long time before shaking his head. “You really have lost it. They shouldn’t have let you come back until your head was in the right place.”
What the hell? “I’m not crazy.”
“Well, you’re not being logical either,” he shoots back. “What could you possibly want to talk to Volley about? You had your chance to address him at his sentencing.”
Is he forgetting where I was? “I was stuck at the hospital being monitored after my second emergency surgery when he was sentenced. If I could have been there, my happy ass would have.”
He nods, looking only slightly apologetic. “I feel for you, Hawk. I do. But there’s no reason for you to go see Volley. His team is going to use that against you, and I’ve seen people get off on far less.”
Closing my eyes, I lean back in the chair and take a deep breath. “He knows more than he’s letting on. I just want to ask him a couple of questions.”
“At what cost?” he questions. “If closure is what you’re seeking, you already got it. The person who pulled the trigger is behind bars exactly where he should be.”
But not the people who told him to.
That’s what he doesn’t understand.
“He said he wasn’t working alone, Beau.”
“He also said that a demon made him do it,” Beaugard points out with a dumbfounded expression on his face. “I don’t really put much weight into what he said in court, and you shouldn’t either.”
His team was going for an insanity plea, but the jury saw right through that. Volley wasn’t insane, he was scared and willing to do what it took in order to avoid Rikers.
“I made a deal with the devil,” he said into the mic, wild-eyed and sweaty as he frantically looked at the jury. “A demon made me do it.”
Maybe he wasn’t totally out of his mind.
He said that he’d been paid by the devil himself but wouldn’t say the name. His claim was that his life would be in danger if he did. If I had to guess, I’d say the devil wore a designer suit and had the same last name as my ex-wife’s maiden name.
“You know I’m good at my job,” I tell Beaugard quietly. “I’m usually never wrong about these things. My intuition is saying we need to look into this. I’ve got a reason to believe that he’s connected to more than we have him for. Maybe he can be given a deal if he gives us information—we get him out of Rikers and into a different prison for the same sentence.”
Beaugard swipes at his face, looking as tired as I feel. I’m lucky if I get four hours of sleep a night these days, and I know his hours are crazier with all the cases that come into the station. Our hours are supposed to be nine-to-five with the BCI, but with rising crime rates, that almost never happens. “If we opened this can of worms, do you honestly believe it’ll get us anywhere? There’s a lot of time and money that get tied up into these kinds of cases, and I’ve got people on my ass about what’s worth our energy and what isn’t.”
He means the state.
They like to hold our spending over our heads like putting money into getting dangerous people off the streets isn’t important enough.
“Tell the troopers to write a few more tickets so the state has the funding they need then,” I counter, ignoring the narrowed look I get. “I’m sure if they pull over enough soccer moms going ten over the speed limit because they’re late dropping their kids off, then we’ll have enough money to get actual criminals off the roads.”
Beaugard doesn’t bother scolding me for my opinion because he knows there’s no use. I’ve never been the kind of guy who went after the blue-collar workers trying to get to their jobs on time by speeding, or the people whose license plates are dirty in the wintertime from all the grime and muck kicking up from the roads.
“So?” I press.
I don’t tell him about Welsh or the file that Conklin put together. Not yet. Not until I have the information I need to move forward. And that depends on what Volley has to say.
Beaugard finishes the coffee I gave him and tosses the cup into the trash. “Apparently, your intuition is still strong. Estep said Volley wants to talk.” His expression goes stiff as he leans back, tapping his hand against the edge of the desk. “And he only wants to talk to you.”
My eyebrows go up.
“You realize,” the senior investigator says slowly, “that I can’t get this approved, right? There is no way anyone would let you go on your own.”
I figured as much, which is why I was hoping to do this without having to ask. Conklin used to say it was better to ask for forgiveness, not permission. Those words were at the forefront of my mind when I made the call to Estep to get access onto Volley’s exclusive visitor’s list, which was made up only of his legal team.
“So what do we do?”
Beaugard stands, buttoning his suit jacket and checking his watch. “ I am going to the deli to get my wife the sub she’s been craving before she threatens divorce again,” he says with a small smile curling his lips. “Her pregnancy hormones are brutal this time around. They say that means it’s a girl, God help me. But you are going to go home and get some sleep because you look like shit. Think about what I said. You can’t go see him alone .”
He walks by and squeezes my shoulder once before sliding a piece of paper onto the desk in front of me.
It’s Estep’s personal cell number that he must have given Beaugard to pass along.
My boss pats my back and walks out, leaving me alone in his office.
His words sink in.
I can’t go alone.
That doesn’t mean I can’t go talk to him alone.
*
The front door opens as I lift my hand to knock, and a hand swings out before I have time to blink. I don’t expect the sting behind the blow coming from a five-foot-nothing pregnant woman, but pregnancy hormones must give people an extra dose of strength.
I rub my arm. “Damn, Marissa. Are you hitting up the gym? If I’d known you called me to come over just to abuse me, I would have stayed home.”
“Are you out of your mind?” she asks, fury narrowing her slitted eyes at me.
I hold up my palms in surrender. “It was just a question. I didn’t know the gym was such a sensitive top—”
“I’m not talking about the damn gym!” She cuts me off in exasperation, pulling me inside and toward the kitchen, crossing her arms over her chest. Conklin used to say he loved what pregnancy did to his wife, and I knew what he meant whenever we’d all have dinner together. The guy could barely stop staring at her tits.
“Jakob Volley,” Marissa says. I force my eyes to stay on her face and far, far away from her boobs.
Did Beaugard talk to her? “What about him?”
“I know what you’re doing, and I’m not okay with it. Don’t you think you’ve sacrificed enough thanks to guys like him? Come on, Lincoln. Think with your head for once.”
So that’s why she made it seem urgent when she left me a voice message to come over as soon as I could. “I am, Riss.”
“No,” she argues, lowering her voice so Cooper can’t hear us from wherever he is in the house. “You’re thinking with your dick and your male ego. You wouldn’t even be on Volley’s trail if it weren’t for Michael Welsh. And the only reason you care about Volley is because of Georgia and her father. I already lost one person thanks to them. I refuse —” Her voice cracks. “—to stand around and watch as I lose another.”
Her broken tone has my shoulders dropping a fraction as I step toward her shaking body. “I don’t think that’s fair. You know I can’t just let it go. Matt deserves justice.”
“At what expense?” she asks me, brushing my comforting hand away from her arm. Her eyes become glassy. “Where is the line, Lincoln? When are you going to realize that it’s not worth constantly putting your life at risk? Matt is dead. My husband, my soulmate, and best friend is gone forever. We can’t do anything about that.”
“We can make sure the person responsible gets locked up,” I counter, watching as she shakes her head and swipes at a fallen tear rolling down her cheek.
“Volley is already locked up.”
“Marissa, I can make a difference. I know I can. I’m close to the truth. I can feel it. You and I both know he didn’t willingly pull that trigger without being told to. Somebody let him know we were coming.”
She sniffles, anger growing on her face. “He knew you were coming because he missed his court hearing and had an arrest warrant. Lincoln, you said you were close before. When you went to that house, Matt told me he’d stop obsessing over the case when you two got Volley. But what if you get killed too?”
“I won’t.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispers, angrily wiping her damp face off with the back of her hand. “We both know that anything can happen out there. These people aren’t just your everyday users. They’re not out there smoking weed or snorting coke or shooting up heroin for the sake of their fix. The people you’re going after are so much deeper than that. You know what they’re capable of. You’ve seen what they can do.”
Swallowing, I look down. I can practically hear the gun go off. Again. And again. And again. I hear it every goddamn night I lay down.
Smell the gunpowder and the blood.
Feel the piercing pain and hot lead as I try getting to Conklin.
“That’s why I need to make sure they don’t hurt anybody else,” I tell her as softly as I can.
“They’ll get caught with time,” she pleads. “You don’t have to be the vigilante. It’s not only up to you to stop them.”
She’s wrong. “There’s a reason I have a badge. If I can’t be the one who ends this, then what’s the point of having one?”
Her eyes dim. “Do you care that little about your life that you’re willing to put it on the line?”
“Would it really matter if something happened as long as I got what I needed?”
She closes her eyes, clenching them to fight off the tears, and then lets out a long breath before opening them to look at me. “Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Stop acting like you have no one!” she yells, wincing when she looks into the other room. She squeezes her temples and walks away from me, putting the kitchen island between us.
“You have Cooper to worry about,” I remind her. “It’s not the same for me. I go home to an empty house. I’ve got nobody who depends on me. Who’s waiting for me. Who—” Loves me.
She tosses her hands in the air. “You have people, Hawk! You have family and friends and coworkers who would miss you if something happened. Cooper loves you. I love you. Your mom and dad and sister all love you. Why do you always insist that your life matters less than Matt’s or anybody else’s? It matters just as much.”
I have to look away when her intense gaze becomes too much to bear. “Because it’s my mess. It’s my responsibility to fix it.”
“It’s too much responsibility,” she says, voice softening as she rounds the island. “And it shouldn’t be your problem to bear anymore. You walked away from the Del Rossis for a reason.”
But Georgia didn’t. “I told her I’d keep her safe,” I murmur, meeting her eyes for the briefest second until understanding crosses her tense features. “I promised, Marissa.”
The image of Luca Carbone’s hand on her back makes me nauseous. But not as much as the look on her face when I told her I was done.
I’ll never fully be done. Not until Nikolas goes down for everything he’s done, starting with her and ending with Conklin.
Sympathy washes over her. “The promises you made to her when you said your vows hold no weight now, Lincoln. You’re free. She made her choice, and you need to make yours. You’re on a suicide mission, and what will that earn you at the end of the day?”
It won’t be Georgia.
That’s what she’s saying.
Because Georgia made her choice.
And it’s not me.
You’re free.
I tried giving Georgia that freedom once, and look where it led us.
Marissa’s hand finds my biceps. “Matt wouldn’t want this for you. He’d want you to live and find love again. He’d want you to be happy .”
I stare at her hand—at the ring she still wears on her finger.
I wonder if she’ll ever be happy again. I’d like to think she and I are cut from the same cloth. We both love Matt too much to let go. So, how could she expect me to move on without getting any closure?
“I’m in too deep, Riss.”
“It’s a suicide mission,” she repeats.
I smile emptily. “I know.”