Chapter 3
Chapter Three
MICAH
“Welcome back, brother.” My partner Leo came up behind me, clapping me on the shoulder as he moved past to his desk. “How was the shower?” he asked with a condescending smirk.
“Fuck off,” I grunted as he took a seat across from me.
“Whoever’s idea it was to start co-ed baby showers can rot in hell.
Madeline melted candy bars into diapers so it would look like chunky shit, for Christ’s sake.
Then everyone was expected to sniff and taste it to identify what it was.
Not sure I’ll ever be able to eat another candy bar. ”
Leo’s head fell back as he laughed uproariously. “Damn, he chuckled. “That had to have been a special kind of hell for you. Stuck playin’ baby games and shit instead of out chasing tail.”
While that bastard got off on my misery, my mind flashed back to a particular part of the weekend that had been pretty fucking spectacular.
This wasn’t the first time images of that night had popped into my head.
Far from it, actually. I’d jerked off more in the past couple days than I probably had in years.
Every time I thought back to that night I got hard as stone, unable to get it under control and left with no choice but to fuck my fist until I came with the image of Hayden on the backs of my eyelids.
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that night, and it was really screwing with my head.
I’d never had a woman invade my thoughts the way she had, but it had just been so damn good.
The best I’d ever had. I wanted a repeat.
Then another. And another. That was uncommon for me.
The feeling . . . the need was so goddamn strong it was unnerving.
Not only was it a pain in the ass, it was also a bad time for my head to be fucked up, considering everything that was going on.
For the past five months, Leo and I had been investigating the murder of a fellow officer.
At first we’d gotten a whole lot of nothing.
Each lead we ran down took us to a dead end.
Then we hit pay dirt when a woman tied to ex-drug kingpin and current resident of the state penitentiary, Malachi Black, came forward with information on the shooting of Officer Darrin Callo.
It was worse than anything we could have expected. Not only was a cop dead, but it looked like there were other cops involved. We were now investigating our own, which meant we didn’t know who the hell we could trust.
Unable to bring in other officers to assist in the investigation, we’d connected with Lincoln Sheppard, a former Marine who ran a private investigation and security firm based here in Hope Valley.
The man and his team had a gift for uncovering dirt, as well as a litany of other skills most civilians wouldn’t be able to wrap their heads around.
With everything we were doing needing to be covert and completely under the radar, I couldn’t risk my head not being in the game.
“You make it sound like all I care about is getting laid.”
“Maybe not the only thing,” he said. “But I’d be willing to bet it’s up there in the top two.”
I leaned back, kicked my boots up on my desk, and smirked. “Don’t hate me just ’cause you got yourself tied down and have to live vicariously through my incredible bachelorhood.”
He chuckled, giving his head a shake. “Keep telling yourself that, man. One of these days you’re gonna meet a woman you can’t get out of your head, and you’ll be fucked. And I’ll be the first to tell you I told you so.”
Red hair and eyes the color of sapphires came to mind . . . glorious curves and flushed, creamy skin. And fuck me, I was getting hard again.
Gritting my teeth against my body’s uncontrollable reaction, I tried to shake off what my partner had just said, only it was harder to do this time. “Not a chance in hell.”
My cell went off just then. One ring, then the call dropped. It was a signal from my informant to call her back. It was a code we’d come up with for when I was at the station and unable to talk.
Knowing exactly what that ring meant, Leo pushed to his feet, asking, “Feel like a coffee run?”
“Cup of joe sounds good.”
We exited the bullpen and headed out of the department. As soon as we were far enough away, I pulled the phone from my pocket and hit speed dial.
“What do you have for me,” I asked the instant the call connected.
My CI’s voice came through the line a moment later. “Not a lot. But, Micah . . . I think we may have a problem.”
Fucking shit. “Are you safe?” I growled through the line, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Yeah. I mean, I think so . . . for now. I just . . .” She trailed off, her voice tiny and indecisive, so unlike the woman Leo and I had come to know.
Charlotte Belmont was a fighter, stronger than anyone I’d ever met.
She’d lived a life I wouldn’t have wished on my worst enemy, and yet, despite all the nightmares she’d endured, she never once just gave in.
She was tough as nails, refusing to roll over and accept the shit hand she’d been dealt.
And now, she’d purposefully put herself in a dangerous situation in the hopes of finally being able to pull herself out of the muck once and for all.
“Charlie,” I said on a low, gruff clip. “What the fuck is going on? Is it Cormack? Is he getting suspicious?”
Leo’s back went straight at the mention of Darrin Callo’s partner on the force. When Darrin was killed, Leo and I had discovered he’d been looking into some of the unsolved drug cases. The man aspired to be a detective and was taking the initiative to get there.
A while back, Malachi Black, had run his meth operation from a hidden location up in the mountains.
He’d been a thorn in the side of every cop in three counties, keeping his hands just clean enough that none of us could touch him.
Everyone knew what he was doing, but there was no way for us to prove it or tie him to the drugs leaking into Hope Valley and the surrounding towns.
We hit gold when he bought out a local strip club and started moving his shit through there.
We worked with a couple of the dancers who weren’t big fans of Black’s new “private dance” policy and didn’t like being forced into dealing, and with their help, we shut that bastard down.
Now he was rotting in prison, but the streets hadn’t gotten clean. His product was still being moved, and we didn’t have the first clue how that was.
We’d suspected Callo’s death had something to do with the cases he’d been looking into, but we weren’t able to piece together how.
Until Charlie came into play. She’d been living on the streets when she met Black and made the mistake of thinking he could be her savior.
She’d been an unwilling participant in his business, knowing the ins and outs better than most of the other players.
As soon as he went down, his partner stepped into his place, and to hear Charlie tell it, he was even worse than Black.
It hadn’t made sense how, for years, Black had been able to allude cops from three different cities. Until Charlie filled us in on who his partner was.
Officer Greg Cormack had been with the department going on fifteen years, starting as a rookie, and hadn’t once been promoted to a higher rank in all that time.
He’d been just quiet and unassuming enough that no one really paid much attention to him.
People had questioned why he hadn’t moved up the ranks, but other than that, no one thought much of it.
As it turned out, he was too busy with his illegal side hustle to work his way up in the department.
He’d been the key reason it had taken us so long to take Black down. He’d also been the one who told Black when we were about to raid his strip club, making it so the man could abduct two women before going on the run. It was a goddamn miracle neither of them had been hurt.
Now, with Black gone, Cormack was filling his shoes while growing the drug business. Problem was, he played his shit much closer to the vest, not nearly as trusting with his crew as Black had been, so his was the only name Charlie had been able to give us so far.
Neither Leo nor I liked her putting herself in this position, but after Callo’s death, she’d been adamant that she help us take down the person who’d killed an innocent husband and father. There had been absolutely no talking her out of it, and Leo and I both had tried . . . hard and often.
“No. At least I don’t think so. I’m not sure if he suspects I’m working with the cops, but something’s got him seriously tweaked. He’s closing ranks. I’m still in the inner circle, but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll last. Think he’s feeling the noose tighten.”
I cut a look to Leo and gave my head an angry shake. “For Christ’s sake, Charlie, pull back. Let us get you out of there.”
“Not yet,” she demanded. “I can do this, Micah. I’m seeing this through to the end.
That woman goes to sleep each night without her husband beside her,” she bit out, speaking of Darrin’s widow, Sidney Callo.
“And his two babies probably won’t even remember their dad when they’re grown up.
These asshole’s need to pay for that, if nothing else. ”
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, with Leo at my side, scanning the crowd to make sure there were no eavesdroppers.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a beleaguered sigh.
In the months we’d been working with Charlie, I’d developed a tight-knit relationship with the prickly woman.
She wasn’t a typical CI. She’d become like a sister to me, and the more tangled up she’d got in this mess, the more I stressed.
“They’re going down, Charlie. You have my word on that.
But it’s not gonna help anyone if you get hurt or dead in the process.
I get you have some demons of your own, but this isn’t how you work them out of your system, sweetheart. ”
“This has nothing to do with me,” she clipped, that hardness I was so used to coming back into her voice, only now it was directed at me.
“I’m not trying to rewrite my past or whatever bullshit you think this is.
It’s about right and wrong, plain and simple.
I’m in a position to help, so I’m going to help. ”
“Goddamn it,” I gritted.
“Deal with it, Langford. And keep an eye on Cormack. I’ll call if I hear anything, and you do the same.”
Before I could get another word out, she disconnected, leaving me standing there pissed and worried out of my mind.
“Fuckin’ Christ,” I grunted, stuffing the phone back into my pocket. I started toward Muffin Top, careful to make my strides easy and calm despite the tempest swirling inside of me.
“What’ve you got?” Leo asked under his breath.
“A headache and a whole lot of nothin’ else, that’s what,” I seethed. “She says Cormack’s freaked, closing ranks, but not sure what’s got him that way.”
Leo’s brows sank into an unhappy V. “And let me guess. She’s not pullin’ back.”
“You know that woman as well as I do. What do you think?”
“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath. He was close with her too, and the level of responsibility we felt for her welllbeing wasn’t something either of us took lightly.
“Exactly. So now we gotta watch him, see if he suspects anything’s happening, and keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t get dead.”
“God deliver me from hardheaded women,” he sighed just as we reached his woman’s shop.
The smell of sugar and coffee filled the air but did little to touch the anxiety churning in my gut. “Don’t let Dani hear you say that. She’ll cut me off simply out of association with you, and if I lose out on her coffee or pastries there’s a good chance my head will explode.”
Trying my best to shake off the discomfort clinging to my shoulders, I pasted on my charming smile, like it was just any other day, and pulled the door open. I needed coffee now more than ever. Along with a shot of bourbon.