All I Want(25)

He sent the pic to Amory, thumbing in a quick miss you. When he got a ping that told him the message had been sent, he shoved the phone back into his pocket and forced himself to keep going.

As Sharon had pointed out, he needed to get back to lean, mean fighting shape for the job. He’d worked his ass off to climb the ranks. He wasn’t going to let anyone think he wasn’t able to get back to it. And if a small part of him realized that in pushing himself so hard to become something important, to make something of himself, he’d instead become a workaholic like the workaholic parents he resented, he ignored it.

His phone buzzed an incoming text. He was smiling as he pulled it back out of his pocket, already formulating his teasing response about Amory being up so early.

She loved when he sent her pics and stories. A late-in-life baby, she’d been born with Down syndrome when Parker had been twelve. Their parents had qualified for state funding and had gotten help, and they’d been lucky enough to have that help genuinely love and care for Amory. But this had created an unexpected problem. Amory had been overprotected and overshielded from normal life at every turn.

She expressed only contentment with her life, but Parker could only imagine how constricting it was. She had to feel closed in by perimeters of her quiet existence.

He hated that for her, and that more than anything else had him texting her pictures from wherever in the world he was as often as he could.

But it wasn’t Amory on the phone.

It was Kel. “So,” the sheriff said without preamble. “Interested in knowing that Cat’s Paw is suddenly a hot topic around the water cooler?”

“Very,” Parker said. “Although word got back to my boss that I’ve been digging.”

“You up shit creek?”

“Without a paddle,” Parker confirmed. “Tell me you got something concrete to make it worthwhile.”

“I’ve got a buddy in the ATF. He couldn’t confirm for certain, but word’s out that your guy cut some sort of a hush-hush deal.”

Parker had suspected this very thing, but goddamn, that * didn’t deserve a deal of any kind. “Anything specific?”

“Nothing,” Kel said. “Whatever’s going on up there, it’s above my pay grade. They still haven’t included any local law enforcement. I’ve got a few feelers out for more intel. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Thanks,” Parker said. “Appreciate it.”

“Stay safe.”

“You, too.” Parker stared at his phone after he disconnected, torn by conflicting urges. He wanted to say f*ck everyone and whatever they were waiting on and go in after Carver himself. But that was stupid and selfish, and he tried very hard not to be either of those things.

He needed to play this safe but he wasn’t exactly in tune with his safe side. He looked at the time, and knowing it was two hours ahead in D.C. and that his boss would be up and in the office chewing on the balls of her underlings for breakfast while simultaneously running her world, he called her.

“All I want to hear from you,” Sharon opened with, “is that you’re on a f*cking island making your left hand jealous of your right.”

“I have a theory,” Parker said.

“Oh Christ. Is it that you’re a pain in my ass? Because that’s a fact, Parker, not a theory.”

“I think Tripp Carver made a deal,” he said.

Sharon’s silence went glacial.

“I think he’s giving information,” Parker went on, “and in return he’s got his freedom. How am I doing? Am I close?”

“We’re not having this conversation,” she said.

Yeah, he was close.

“Listen to me, Parker,” Sharon said. “You’re not able to see reason on this case because of Ned’s death, and I get it. But I’m trying to protect your job here.”

He blew out a breath and rubbed his still-sore ribs. “I know, and I appreciate that. But I need you to be straight with me on this.”

There was another long silence, during which Parker heard rustling and then a door shutting, as if Sharon was getting herself some privacy.

“What did he have that made it worth keeping him in the wild?”

“I’m not confirming this, Parker.”

But nor was she denying. “Shit,” he said with disgust. “This is insane. To give him his freedom after all he’s done—”

“You need to see the bigger picture here,” she said. “The much bigger picture, which, trust me, makes Carver look like a saint. Something’s going down and if you screw things up, I won’t be able to help you save your career. You have to let this go, Parker. Now repeat that back to me. You’ll let it go.”

He got what she was saying. If he pursued this, he was risking the career he’d so painstakingly built, but Christ it went against the grain. “I want in on the takedown,” he said.

“I can’t promise that. We’re not running the show.”

Yeah, he was getting that loud and clear.

“You know I’ll do what I can,” she said. “But in the meantime, stay the hell out of Idaho because if Carver sees you, he’ll run. He’ll vanish like smoke, and then he really will get away with it.”

“He’s not going to see me.”