Chapter Thirty-Eight
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Lincoln / Present
F ollowing Beaugard out of his office, I’m met with my third, “No, Hawk. I’ve got paperwork up to my dick that I need to finish by end of business today. I can’t deal with any of your shit on top of that.”
I extend the file that Dickers gave to me after taking pictures of each page and saving them to my laptop at home. “You’re going to want to look at this. It’s going to make you want to take on this case. I’m telling you.”
He stops, dropping his head back and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Did you call the prosecutor’s office about Heller’s trial coming up on Friday?”
“Yes.”
“And made sure the arresting officer sent the court all the documents they need?” he asks.
“All done. I even checked with the ADA to make sure there was nothing else she needed. She thinks it’s going to be a slam dunk.”
“Will he plea?”
Heller is a nineteen-year-old kid who got drunk and decided to run over a peer that he’d been feuding with since high school. Since it happened in the middle of the night in a relatively isolated neighborhood, there weren’t any witnesses. But the idiot recorded the whole thing and posted it to Snapchat.
“He’d be dumb not to,” I remark. There’s no way he can deny he did it. There’s video proof that we were able to apply a warrant to obtain from the social media corporation that was more than willing to help us get what we needed.
Beaugard grabs the file and opens it, his brows furrowing when he sees the compilation of information dated from years back up until Conklin’s death. “What is this?”
“You said that the paper Volley gave me wasn’t going to be enough to move forward with on its own,” I say, tapping the stack of papers. “I found this folder that Conklin was working on putting together. There is more than enough reasonable suspicion here to apply for a warrant.”
The senior investigator shakes his head as he flips through the pages. “And you just so happened to find this after your talk with Volley?”
He knows damn well I didn’t, but I’m not going to throw Dickers under the bus for passing it along to me. “It was buried under other files in the cabinet that he used to store copies of his arrest reports. Must have gotten missed when they went through it.”
A doubtful noise rises from his throat. “This is a lot we would need to process,” he tells me, closing the file. “And there’s no way in hell you’d be able to take lead on it. Even if you are cleared to come back full-time.”
If. “I will be cleared,” I correct him. “In a few weeks when I go through my physical. And I already know I won’t be appointed to the case, but I deserve to be a liaison.”
His laugh is startled. “You’re kidding, right?”
When he looks at me, he realizes I’m not.
Tucking the file under his arm, he pulls me to the side to let somebody pass us in the narrow hall. “Look, it’s obvious Conklin invested a lot of time in this. You have too, whether you admit it or not. But if you get any more involved in this, whatever justice you’re seeking won’t matter. They’ll throw it all out because of conflict of interest. Do you want that?”
I shake off his hold. “Does that mean you’ll look into it?”
“That depends.”
I wait for him to finish talking.
“Are you going to get in the way? Because I don’t want to waste my time chasing something that you get in the middle of. I mean it, Danforth. I’ve got a lot riding on me.”
And I don’t? “I won’t get in your way.”
He eyes me down like he’s trying to detect the lie. Whatever he sees must be enough. His chin gestures toward my arm. “How are you anyway? Really?”
My lips twitch as I roll the bad shoulder and feel the tight muscles tug on the marred tissue underneath. “I’m going stir-crazy trying to get back here.”
He doesn’t offer me any sympathy or condolences. “I’m not asking you this to be a dick, but what are you going to do if you don’t get cleared to come back?”
My nostrils flare with irritation at the question. “I don’t know, Beau. I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
Although he seems understanding, he still puts a hand on my good shoulder and says, “It wouldn’t hurt to think about it.”
*
The phone buzzing by my ear wakes me up from a dead sleep. My arm groggily reaches over to pick it up without looking at the caller ID. “This is Danforth.”
“Can you meet me?” Georgia whispers, cracking one of my eyes open to a pitch-dark room.
The blackout curtains sometimes make the morning seem like night, so I pull the phone away from my ear to check the time. “It’s two in the morning,” I tell the woman who used to sleep in the spot beside me.
I’ve never let myself wander to the right side of the bed since she left. Shortly after she moved out, I could still smell the lingering scent of her shampoo on the sheets. I washed them, but her presence clung to every facet of the room, making it hard to forget the body that used to keep me warm on cold nights like these.
“I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important.”
Closing my eyes, I use the pad of my thumb and index fingers to rub my tired eyelids. “What is so important that you need me and not Luca Carbone?”
He’s not you, she’d once said.
She’s right.
But I wonder if she got her manipulation tactic from her father when she said those words to me because I don’t know what to believe anymore.
“Sandy’s Diner,” she replies. “In an hour.”
She’s not asking.
“And if I don’t show up?” I ask, suddenly more awake than I was a few minutes ago.
There’s a brief pause when I hear the tiniest exhale of her breath. “Did you mean what you said that day at the coffee shop? That you were done?”
If you let me walk away today without you, our memories will be what’s left of us.
If I tell her yes, would she feel victorious knowing it was just another lie between us? That if I meant it, I wouldn’t show up at the diner? I don’t know what she wants—what she expects.
Because the truth is, I’m not done.
Not until Nikolas is behind bars.
Not until Conklin’s murder is avenged.
Not until I can go to sleep at night without having nightmares or thinking about her.
So, I don’t answer her question.
I’m sick of the lies.
Sick of the back and forth.
The push and pull.
I want to be done.
I can taste it—the end.
“Make it two hours,” is my only reply, ending the call before she gets the chance to argue.
Staring up at the ceiling, I realize how pathetic it is that she still has any hold over me. It’s been months since we fucked, and I haven’t felt the withdrawals of cutting her cold turkey.
But she always finds a way to slip back into my life when I least expect it.
I throw the blankets off my body and stretch my stiff limbs, wincing when my shoulder pops and a searing pain shoots down my left side. Hissing, I drop my head between my legs and suck in a deep breath to ground myself.
Counting to ten, I lift my head and force myself to get dressed. The pain holds on, and I decide it’s a good thing. It’s a reminder of what I’m walking into.
Don’t go.
My nostrils flare.
I can’t go back and change anything.
But I can make sure the people responsible for that day pay for the repercussions.
And I won’t let whatever Georgia has to say get in the way of that.