“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
“Corinne being dead,” she answered.
Shit.
How had he forgotten that?
“Baby,” he murmured.
“I mean, it’s so weird to think she was alive just twenty-four hours ago and she probably had no idea. And a few days before, I saw her. I got mad at her. And it was safe to be mad because she’s young and vital, and you know, there was time to get over it. She was in her big, beautiful house. And she’d played me. But I liked her. She was good people.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty for being mad at her, babe. She did play you and that wasn’t cool.”
“I know.” She flipped out a hand then took up her cider and downed a sip. She put it back to the table and aimed those blue eyes at him. “I just can’t stop thinking about it. She and her husband loved each other a lot, Boone. The way they looked at each other. I mean, people don’t get it, the alternative lifestyle. But what I saw were two people who, against some pretty crazy odds, found the exact right person for them.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“I honestly don’t know what he’s going to do.”
Boone knew what the guy was going to do.
“Grieve, then hopefully get on with his life and find some happy, even though he’ll never stop missing her.”
She looked down at her drink. “Yeah, I guess that’s life, but it sucks.”
Boone reached out a hand on the table and rapped his knuckles to it.
She looked to it and he opened it, palm up.
Then her gaze came to him, she put her hand in his, and he wrapped his fingers around it.
“I hate saying this shit to you, but sometimes there are no whys. There is no answer. There are no reasons. Bad shit happens. Really bad shit happens. Seriously bad shit happens. Good people, innocent people, unsuspecting people get caught up in it and it isn’t fair. What it is, is life. And the only defense you got is to live your best one while you got it.”
“So you’re hot and wise,” she joked.
He grinned at her. “Stick with me, grasshopper. I’ll show you the way.”
She grinned back. “I’ll bet.”
Their pretzel came, and he let her go, waiting for her to tear off her chunk, before he went for it.
“I dance tonight,” she said while he was chewing.
He just looked at her.
“I kind of, you know…” She broke that off and started up again. “It’s just that it’d be cool if you’d spent the night again. If it isn’t a pain for you.”
Sleeping in her jungle of plants with her tucked into him and the smell of her hair in his face?
Fuck no, it wasn’t a pain.
“We’ll do your thing you wanna do after this. I’ll take you to your car. I’ll go home, shower, pack a bag, come to yours. We’ll hang, do dinner, I’ll take you to work, bring you home and spend the night.”
She didn’t look sure about that and she explained why.
“Boone, you’re not real good at Smithie’s,” she pointed out.
Yeah, he’d gotten in her face about her job.
Or a part of her job.
“I know how you taste now, Ryn. I know how your ass feels snug in my crotch.” He quirked his lips. “So now that ass is officially mine, just don’t do any lap dances, and we’ll be good.”
“Sure?” she asked.
He nodded and tore off another chunk of the pretzel.
She went after her own, saying, “You haven’t mentioned anything about the meeting.”
Shit.
This was because he didn’t want to.
But he had to.
He gave her a rundown over the rest of the pretzel, and they had fresh drinks, their sandwiches, rings and the classic plastic tray of goodness that Brother’s always served that included pickles and banana peppers and shit like that by the time he finished.
“Well, uh…it isn’t for me to say, what you all get into, but now it’s not about Brett. At least not only about him. It’s about Corinne. And I’m not feeling super confident those two jackasses are gonna work hard to find out who took her life.”
“We’re gonna do some poking around, Ryn,” he said.
She didn’t hide her relief.
God-fucking-dammit.
“And we need your help with that,” he went on.
She’d taken a big bite of her sandwich, but when she heard his words, her eyes got wide, and with mouth full, she asked, “Me?”
“We need to know how Cisco knew Crowley was investigating dirty cops.”
She chewed, swallowed, and stated, “Oh. Okay.”
Then she put down her sandwich and immediately grabbed her purse to pull out her phone.
For a second, Boone just stared.
Then he reached out and wrapped his fingers around her wrist.
She again gave him her eyes.
“You can’t just call him,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked.
In that moment, he wished he lived in a zone, considering she seemed kinda tight with this fucking guy, that wasn’t a good question.
“He’s not gonna tell you over the phone,” he noted.
“Sure he is,” she replied.
“Ryn, he’s gonna think someone is listening.”
“Boone, he’s probably gonna hope someone is listening so someone will do something about it so he can come out of hiding.”
He slid her phone out of her fingers, put it on the table and took his hand away, doing all of this saying, “When he comes out of hiding, babe, this means he’s gonna go back to dealing drugs, in earnest, since his players are still out on the street, they just don’t have their overlord making his moves to be certain they don’t lose supply.”
She made a scrunchy face he wanted to kiss.
But he didn’t because she had to get this.
So he kept at it.
“He’s got a headquarters, and for a square block around that, he shakes down every business owner for protection money even though they probably wouldn’t need anyone keeping their business secure if he didn’t do his business close to theirs. He’s been known to get his hands on guns and fence them. He runs book out of his shop. He fronts loans, at very high interest rates, and he gets nasty when he doesn’t get paid. What I’m saying is, if he’s back in commission, Ryn, this is not a good thing.”
“I get that, Boone, and all that is bad. I get that too. So the cops can catch him for what he’s doing, not what he didn’t do.”
Boone had heard that recently.
He picked up his burger.
“Do you want me to call him?” she offered.
He looked at her over his bun. “Yeah, I want you to call him, but not when we’re in a bar. And I don’t want you to ask him over the phone. I want you to see if he’ll meet you somewhere. Somewhere safe for him. And I want you to tell him that I’ll be by your side when we meet.”
“Right. Cool. We’ll do that on the way to where we’re going next,” she said casually, and grabbed a ring.
He watched as she coated it deeply with ketchup before she bit into it.
And Christ.
This was getting a little freaky.
Never in his life had he thought this, but he was a condiments guy. Ketchup. Mustard. Mayo. Horseradish sauce. Soy. Relish. He liked it all.
And he didn’t go light.
“What?” she asked. “I like ketchup.”
She noticed him noticing.
So he grabbed a ring, reached to her pile of ketchup and gave it a thick coat before shoving it in his mouth.
She grinned at him.
No.
Not freaky.
Just right.
They didn’t get into anything heavy as they finished their food and drinks.
But they’d eaten in the back room.
And on their way out, he glanced at the bar in the front room.
There, he saw a man having a beer who was also a man who�
��d been walking to his car in the Cherry Creek mall parking lot when they were heading to Boone’s Charger.
Goddamn shit.
He’d barely gotten them on the road with Ryn giving him instructions to get on Speer before he said, “Cisco on the phone, babe. And tell him I’m here and you’re going speaker.”
She dug her phone out of her bag, called, but left a message, and when she was done, she began to state the obvious, “He’s not picking—”
Her phone rang before she finished.
She took the call with a “Hello.” Then, “Hey, Brett. Listen, Boone’s here…” and the man knew that “…and he wants you on speaker. Is that okay with you?” A pause before, “Okay, cool. Going speaker now.”
He saw her holding her phone up between them.
And immediately asked, “You got a man on Ryn?”
“Of course,” Cisco answered.
“What?” Ryn breathed.
“Corinne was killed,” Cisco stated. “I’m not taking any chances with my girls.”
Boone felt his fingers tighten on the steering wheel as a pulse beat through his temple.
His girls?
“They can stand down, Cisco,” Boone growled.
“Two women are dead. Like I said, I’m not taking any chances,” Cisco replied.
“Our girls are covered,” Boone stated.
Ryn read his mood, which was probably impossible to miss, so she said, “Brett, that’s sweet. But really, it’s not necessary. We have commandos at our backs.”
“I didn’t cover Corinne. I didn’t think she’d be a target. I can’t say I got it all going on, but what I can say is that I only make a mistake once,” Cisco answered.
“Corinne didn’t have a man who kept a sheikh’s son safe while they were extricating themselves from a volatile situation with their tribe sitting next to her in a car or sleeping next to her in her bed,” Boone returned. “Tell them to stand the fuck down.”
“You kept a sheikh’s son safe?” Ryn asked.
“Later, baby,” Boone muttered.
“Isn’t this a situation of more is better?” Cisco asked.
“You got a woman?” Boone queried.
“Not yet,” Cisco shared.
“When you do, you tell me if you want another man on her you don’t know.”
There was a beat of silence before, “I take your point.”
“Tell him to stand down, and if you got men on the others, they can take a hike too.”
“I’ll make some calls. Is that it?”
“No,” Boone told him. “We need to meet.”
Nothing to that.
“This is not a setup,” Boone assured him. “You can imagine I’m tweaked, Ryn’s friend gets executed and the cops are on her doorstep twelve hours later.”
“The man I had on Ryn is just a precaution,” Cisco said. “She has nothing to do with anything. Corinne was not the same. She was my attorney. I was in her home two nights ago. As I said, I’m just not taking any chances.”
“That isn’t what I want to talk to you about.”
More silence.
Ryn broke it.
“They want to help you, Brett.”
“I’m not unaware five cops sat that meeting at Delgado’s joint this morning, Sadler,” Cisco said.
And they were being watched too.
“You dragged the women into this, Cisco,” Boone retorted. “Now we’re wading in and we gotta have a firmer grasp on what we’re wading into.”
“This is splitting hairs, but it was actually Evie’s brother who got the women into this,” Cisco returned.
“That asshole didn’t kidnap them, and he also didn’t have Corinne Morton arrange for one of them to come over to her house for a chat. If there are dirty cops out there, officially last night, Ryn got on their radar. And you can imagine that doesn’t make me happy.”
“It’s my understanding you two hooked up just last night,” Cisco noted.
Boone glanced at Ryn.
She shrugged, saying non-verbally she’d “shared” quite a bit with Cisco.
Friends with a felon.
Jesus.
“What you understand doesn’t factor,” Boone told him.
“Protective,” Cisco said. “I approve.”
Boone fought a sneer.
“Brett, you should talk to Boone,” Ryn encouraged.
“They have what they need to know,” Cisco replied.
“Not even close, and you know it, man,” Boone said.
Cisco had no response.
“It’s them, isn’t it?” Boone pushed. “You don’t have a man on Ryn because you’re taking precautions. It’s Mueller and Bogart. You have a man on Ryn because they showed at her door this morning.”
He got the answer to his question without getting an answer to his question.
“I’ll meet with Ryn or Evie,” Cisco declared. “No one else. They can tape me. But no wire. And you have my assurances they’ll come in safe and leave safe.”
Before Boone could say dick, Ryn told him, “It’ll be me, Brett.”
“I wanna be there with her and you have my assurances I’ll come in and you’ll be safe, and we’ll leave, and you’ll still be safe,” Boone put in.
“Only Ryn.”
Fuck!
Cisco’s voice had changed significantly when he said his next.
“I wouldn’t hurt her, Sadler. I just wouldn’t. I wouldn’t and I wouldn’t let anyone else. I know it isn’t worth much to you, but it’s worth a lot to me, and you can count on it. You have my word.”
He felt Ryn’s fingers curl around his thigh.
He glanced at her and back to the road.
“We’ll have people close,” he grunted.
“I’ll arrange it and call Ryn,” Cisco said. “Until then, be safe.”
“Whatever,” Boone muttered.
“We will,” Ryn said quickly over him. “’Bye, Brett. See you soon.” She disconnected and then said hurriedly, because they were close to the turn, “You need to turn right on Logan.”
Boone didn’t say a word, just changed lanes.
“He won’t hurt me, Boone,” Ryn said quietly.
“You’re as close to this as I want you to be,” Boone told her. “That being circumstantially involved and that being in the past. But we need to know what he knows. So you’re still in. And I’m not okay with that.”
“Once he shares, you’ll have it and can take that ball and run with it, and I’ll be out,” she assured.
He fucking hoped so.
“Do you think Mueller and Bogart are a threat to me?” she asked.
“No,” he answered.
Though he thought, if they knew she had a line to Cisco, and was meeting him for another chat, they would be.
Christ.
Ryn let it go, gave him more directions, but he knew where they were going before they got there.
The pile of brick house she owned but didn’t live in, mostly because it was unlivable.
He parked and looked at it.
There were two big trees in the front that seriously needed to be cut back, overgrown hedges, and the only thing that was tidy was the lawn, which obviously she either mowed, or she had someone else do it.
They got out of his car and walked up the broken and cracked walk.
Ryn took her keys out and let them in.
And once in, she moved through the murk and turned on a standing lamp without a shade that showed him that the inside was worse than the outside.
It didn’t only look bad, it smelled bad.
The old owner clearly had cats.
About fifty of them.
“This is mine,” Ryn announced.
He caught her gaze and admitted, “I know.”
It took her a beat to process that, and he was surprised, and pretty fucking pleased, she let it go.
“I’m gonna flip it,” she said.
He stared at her.
She lifted both hands in front of
her, starting to turn while spreading her arms out, instructing, “Visualize.”
He didn’t visualize shit.
He watched her.
No.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“I already had a guy come in,” she said, “and he told me this has to stay.” She slapped a wall. “But it can be a column. The rest can come down, opening living room, kitchen and dining all in one big great room.”
She turned to him.
“I already have the chandelier I’m going to hang in the dining area and all the tile for the kitchen. It’s in my extra bedroom at the apartment. I also found this great slab for the island. Mom has it in her garage. Quartz. I’m gonna do two different kinds. One on the island. Another on the countertops. I haven’t found that second slab yet, though.”
She gestured down the hall.
“There are four bedrooms, but not really. One is more like a room even Harry Potter’s aunt and uncle would balk at putting him in. But for a house this size, it’ll make a killer master closet. An unexpected bonus in this neighborhood for potential buyers.”
She twisted and pointed through a doorway beyond which he could see more than he wanted to of a filthy, out-of-date kitchen.
“The backyard is huge. The hedges at the sides are great for privacy. I’m gonna do a flagstone patio, with a built-in overhang, put French doors in the kitchen, so it’ll be like an extra room. I’m also gonna add a built-in firepit.”
“That’s a lot of work, sweetheart,” he said carefully.
She didn’t look concerned or angry he pointed out the obvious.
She looked excited and sounded it when she said, “I know.”
She then moved to him, close to him, but she didn’t touch him.
She just tipped back her head, her long blonde hair falling down her back, and she spoke.
“But the plan is, get this done, do most of it myself, sell it, and comps in this neighborhood right now are ninety to a hundred thousand higher than what I got this place for. It’s gonna take some cash to make this what it can be, but not ninety to a hundred thousand. I stand to make thirty to forty grand on this. I invest half the profit in another property. Flip that, a lot quicker, using the extra money and the surplus I don’t spend from my own earnings pulling in a crew. After I unload that, double down, build my crew, and have two on the go, picking up another one whenever I sell one. And then have three on the go. And so on.”
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