Better When He's Brave (Welcome to the Point #3)(37)
I swore and pushed away from my desk. The other man rose to his feet as well, but I still towered over him.
“You left her for dead, and now you would toss her in prison if she’s not willing to risk her neck for you? Fuck that.”
“She broke the law.”
“I understand that, but she agreed to testify against Novak’s crew, and when she realized what Roark was up to, she brought that information and that evidence forward. She should still be considered a protected witness.”
“She is. As long as she’s useful. Make her useful, Detective. Do what I’m assuming you already have been doing—flaunt her, and show her off. Get Conner to show his hand. You won’t be out there alone anymore. We’ll put eyes on you and the girl so if he makes a move you have backup. Here’s my card. I want to be apprised of any developments in the Roark case. If I was twenty years younger and hadn’t been riding a desk for longer than I care to admit, I would handle the fieldwork on this case myself. You remind me a lot of myself, King. I know you will do what needs to be done to take care of business. Like I said, we want the same thing.”
I growled at him as he turned to open my office door. I wanted to launch myself over the desk and throttle him. “I wouldn’t blackmail a victim to get my own way.”
“It’s not blackmail. You’re already hanging the girl out there as bait. You know Roark is going to charge at her like a hungry shark reacting to blood in the water. I just gave you a friendly reminder of what exactly is at stake should emotion start to interfere with what needs to get done.”
“You make it sound like she’s expendable.” Reeve was driving me crazy, and while I didn’t agree with most of the choices she had made that led her to where she was now, she was still a person. She was still a young woman that deserved a shot at righting some of her wrongs. She was trying to help, and trying to do the right thing, and that needed to be acknowledged.
The older cop gave me a hard look. “We are all expendable. We only matter as long as we’re doing something to change the world around us, hopefully for the better, but far too often the folks that matter are changing our world for the worse. Good luck, Detective King. You’re going to need it.”
I watched him wind his way through the chaos of the precinct house and felt my hands clench tightly at my sides. I didn’t need luck. I needed a shot. One shot and I was going to bring Conner in and shut him down. I was starting to really resent that the only way to do that was by asking Reeve to offer up her elegant and lovely neck on the chopping block. It didn’t seem right even if she kept saying she knew she was doing the right thing, that she was atoning for past sins. If Roark ended up better at this game than I was, paying with her life seemed like an awfully steep price when all she had done was take an abuser and killer off the streets. Using one bad man to rid the world of another bad man suddenly didn’t seem like an unforgivable crime. I still struggled with the way she had used Dovie and how her actions had led to what was really one of the worst nights of my life. But everyone used everyone else in the Point so the penance waiting for her shouldn’t be any harsher than what was waiting for any of the rest of us.
I took the piece of scrap paper with the name of the man in Colorado the agent had left with me and poked around on the Internet until I thought I found someone that fit the description. It took a little more clicking and two calls to the wrong number before I connected with a man named Alby Jones. He sounded like he smoked twenty packs a day and seemed totally disinterested when I explained that I was a detective looking for information on a possible murder suspect. He was going to hang up on me until I mentioned that I knew he had been in the service; it was the key to opening up the communication door.
He went on and on about his various tours of duty. Regaled me with his heroics and tales of war. I listened patiently because as long as he kept talking I could guide him where I wanted him to go.
I asked if he had ever been married or if he had any kids, and he just snorted, which led to a round of coughing that lasted five minutes. He told me he had been screwed over by a woman once and since then had never trusted the fairer sex again. He explained that he had met a beautiful Irish lass while he was stationed in Turkey. She pursued him, seduced him, and then used him and his status with the military to gain access to weapons she would never have been able to get her hands on otherwise. She used his name and rank to smuggle guns across secure borders, betraying him and ruining his career along the way. He called her a terrorist and then finally, after what felt like hours, mentioned the kid.
A few years after he had been kicked out of the army and sent home disgraced and shamed, the woman contacted him to let him know that he had a son. She wanted money and she wanted his name so that her baby boy could have dual citizenship. The disgraced soldier agreed because despite how she had screwed him, he still loved the beautiful Irish gal and thought raising their son right was the way to win her heart.
Only the boy showed up and the man knew from the start something was wrong with him. He tried to love him, tried to show him guidance, but every summer they spent together the boy seemed to be worse. The man wanted to blame the mother; after all, she was a killer and a terrible person in her own right, but the boy seemed rotten to his very core. He was wild. He was disrespectful. He was cruel to animals and the staff that kept the man’s ranch running. He was explosively violent, but what really worried the man was how effortlessly the boy could turn it on and off. He told me when the boy joined the military he thought maybe he would finally turn it around.