Say Goodbye

by Karen Rose

  Giving her an ear scratch, he got up to look for Liza, then remembered that she had company. Mike the Groper had stayed and he’d heard them watching a movie when he’d come home from the field office.

  That he’d had to press his ear to the wall to get that tidbit of information wasn’t anything he’d admit to anyone. Even to Pebbles, although she’d never tell.

  He peeked through the blinds, relieved to see his driveway clear. He hadn’t heard the garage door open, so Liza’s car was still in there, parked next to his own. Mike the Groper was gone.

  Going to the door, he called for her. “Liza! Where are you?” Because she always came in with Pebbles. They’d have dinner together and settle in to watch some TV.

  Tom needed that. He’d been staring at his computer screen for far too long and was becoming frustrated. He’d been unsuccessful in tracking Cameron Cook’s e-mail. He’d traced it through several proxy servers, then hit a wall.

  Either their network person was really good, or their server was no longer active. He hoped Croft was having better luck with tracking the Chicos’ tattoo artist.

  “Liza!” he called again, then sighed when his phone buzzed with an incoming text.

  I just put Pebbles in your house. She’s been fed.

  That was all. No See you later or How’s it going or What’s for dinner. He wondered if she and Mike were still going out tomorrow. He wondered if he should have told her not to go.

  She’d almost seemed like she’d wanted him to.

  He started to call her, then stopped himself. He didn’t know what to say. They’d been friends for years. Liza had been the only person he’d trusted with knowledge of Tory while they’d dated. They’d shared secrets and hopes. He’d even told her when Tory got pregnant.

  But not so much after that. Tom had been in love, blind to the rest of the world. And then he’d been in shock, grieving. And then he’d been focused on getting justice for his love and their unborn child.

  He’d shut Liza out, albeit unintentionally. He’d never even told her that Tory was dead. She’d found out when she’d arrived home from Afghanistan last Christmas Day. She’d come fully expecting to meet the woman he’d wanted to spend his life with.

  He still remembered the shock in her eyes when he’d told her that Tory was dead. Then the hurt that he’d kept it from her.

  “But she seemed fine after that,” he told Pebbles, who stared up at him. “She was happy.” Until she wasn’t. And when did that really start? Now he couldn’t seem to remember. Distracted by the danger Mercy and Gideon were in, he hadn’t been paying attention. “I don’t know what to do,” he confided. “What do you think is wrong?”

  Pebbles simply wagged her whip of a tail, her tongue lolling to the side.

  “You’re no help at all.” He leaned down to rub her ears. “But you’re still a good girl.”

  She licked his face and he abruptly straightened, grimacing. He’d nearly broken her of that habit, but Liza let her do it.

  He sank back into his chair, glumly staring at his screen. He’d created a project file for Eden a month ago, when Ephraim had been intent on kidnapping Mercy Callahan. It was still pathetically thin.

  He heard the car engine a second before Pebbles began to bark. She sounded fierce, even though she’d most likely just lick a burglar’s face.

  He shushed her, then checked the window again, frowning when Rafe Sokolov and Mercy Callahan emerged from the Subaru parked in his drive. Leaning on his cane, Rafe escorted Mercy up the front walk, keeping his body between hers and the street every step of the way.

  A glance across the street revealed a black SUV with Agent Rodriguez behind the wheel. His shift would be over soon and his replacement would take over guard duty. For now, the man was watchful, giving Tom a slight salute before resuming his surveillance of the street.

  Mercy quickly disappeared into Liza’s side of the duplex, as if Liza had been holding the door open. This made him want to march down there and remind her that she’d witnessed an attempted murder only hours before.

  He’d be giving her a lecture on proper security when her guests left. For now, Rafe was with them, and that was more than good enough in Tom’s eyes. The homicide detective was savvy and knew his way around firearms. He wasn’t a sharpshooter like Gideon’s girlfriend, Daisy, but he was more than capable of protecting Liza.

  Except Rafe didn’t go inside. Blowing a kiss to Mercy, he stepped back from Liza’s doorstep, aiming a look up at Tom’s window before crossing the grassy patch between their two front doors. His knock had Pebbles barking again and Tom went downstairs to open the door.

  “Hey,” Rafe said, his eyes taking Tom in. “No offense, dude, but you look like shit.”

  Tom smoothed his hair, which had to be standing every which direction. “I’ve been working,” he said stiffly.

  “I figured as much.” Rafe pointed inside. “Can I come in or do I need to tell you stuff standing on your front porch?”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Cheeks heating, Tom stepped back to allow Rafe to come inside. “My mother would be very upset with me. Can I offer you something to drink? I have beer, water, and pop.”

  “How about a beer? Mercy and Liza will be busy for a while, so I don’t need to drive for a few hours. I can have one.”

  Tom walked to the kitchen, Rafe following behind him. “Busy doing what?” he asked.

  “Talking.” He smiled. “And talking, and talking some more. I’m thankful for Liza. Mercy needed a friend. She misses Farrah.”

  Farrah was Mercy’s best friend from New Orleans. Tom liked Farrah. She was funny and smart and had a heart like his mother’s. “I guess she does.”

  Rafe perched on a stool at Tom’s kitchen island. “Liza seemed . . . off today. Mercy was worried. I told her it was probably the shock of seeing a sniper, but Mercy had to check for herself to make sure Liza is all right.”

  “She seemed fine when I saw her,” Tom said, then winced. He could hear the acid in his own voice and wasn’t foolish enough to think that Rafe hadn’t. Sure enough, when he turned from the fridge with two beers, Rafe’s brows were lifted.

  “Do I want to know?” Rafe asked.

  Tom shrugged. “Nothing to know.” He rummaged in the drawer for a bottle opener, then flipped the caps off the bottles. “She had company when I got home.”

  Rafe looked way too interested. “Company?”

  Tom handed Rafe a bottle and drained half of his own in one gulp. It had been a long day and technically he was off the clock, so he wasn’t going to feel guilty about drinking a beer.

  He stared at the bottle in his hand, glaring. Yeah, he was going to feel guilty, because he hadn’t yet traced Cameron Cook’s e-mail. He set the bottle aside and pulled some cheese from the refrigerator. “I didn’t have lunch. Want some?”

  “It’s dinnertime,” Rafe said mildly. “Who was her company?”

  Tom took his annoyance out on the cheese, stabbing at the block with more force than needed. “Mike.” The Groper. “Some nurse she knew at the veterans’ home.”

  “Mike,” Rafe said slowly. “Well, he wasn’t there just now.”

  “Because he left.” He finished slicing the cheese and put a plate on the kitchen island between them. Time to change the subject. “Today, at your parents’ house? You looked like you wanted to say something before I left, but you didn’t.”

  “That’s why I’m here. The gang, the one whose tattoo Belmont has on his back?”

  “The Chicos? What about them?”

  “I know them.”

  Tom went still. “How?”

  “I was Narcotics before Homicide. I worked with the Gangs division.”

  Tom nodded. “I knew that. You went undercover. Took down a local crime boss.” That was no small feat. Undercover work could be emotionally debilitating, on top of being dangerous. Esp
ecially for a man as social as Rafe seemed to be. “How long were you under?”

  “Two years.” And from his expression, those had been very difficult years.

  “And you met someone from the Chicos?”

  He nodded again. “They didn’t call themselves that then. They were still Yanjingshe. Going by ‘Chicos’ was a smart move on the new leadership’s part. They were a supplier to the organization where I was embedded. This was before the big raids.”

  “Agent Croft told me about them. She also said the management had changed.”

  “True. Many of the lower-level guys moved up to take over when the bosses were hauled in by the Feds. The lower-level guys would have been the guys we worked with, so . . .”

  Tom felt a small spurt of hope. “Excellent. Croft is checking with tattoo artists. If she can track the one who did their tats and they point us to DJ’s fellow gang members, maybe you can do an ID from a photo array.”

  Rafe’s expression went wry. “I get to be a civilian witness. Oh goody.”

  Tom winced. Rafe was on DB from the police force because of an injury he’d sustained months before. Last he’d heard, Rafe’s return to the force wasn’t a given. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “It’s fine,” Rafe interrupted firmly. “I didn’t take offense. Seriously. It’ll just be weird, being on the other side of the process.”

  Tom thought about Tory. He hadn’t been interviewed by the cops when she’d been killed, because no one knew they were a thing. He hadn’t come forward, either. He’d tracked down her killer on his own. And . . . well, he wasn’t proud of the outcome, but the asshole was dead, and that was what was really important. The monster would never hurt another innocent woman.

  “Yo. Hunter.”

  Tom blinked, suddenly aware that Rafe was snapping his fingers. “Sorry.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Somewhere I don’t like to talk about.”

  Rafe lifted his brows. “Fair enough. Anyway, I’m happy to help you take down some of those Chicos bastards if I can. Full disclosure—it’s personal for me.”

  Tom sat on a stool, leaning an elbow on the counter. “How so?”

  Rafe’s expression was a combination of grim determination and banked sadness. “You once told me that you left the NBA for the FBI because you lost someone. That you’d always planned to make the change, but that the loss spurred you.”

  Tom remembered the conversation. It was the first time he’d met the Sokolov clan, the first time Irina had sent him home with cake and a motherly hug, making him miss his own mother so much that he’d called her as soon as he’d gotten to his car. “You said you’d also lost someone, that that was why you moved from Gangs to Homicide.”

  Rafe’s nod was sober. “You told me not to do anything that would get me into trouble with Molina, but then you said that you’d have done anything to protect your fiancée. I figured that’s who you lost. Am I right?”

  Tom’s throat tightened, making it hard to force the words out. “Yeah.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Victoria. I called her Tory.” He swallowed, the movement painful. “She was murdered.” As was the baby she’d carried. Our baby. But it hurt too much to think about their unborn child, much less to talk about them.

  Rafe blinked. “I didn’t know that. My fiancée was Bella. She was killed by the mob boss’s men. She was the prosecutor working our case.” He hesitated. “Our relationship wasn’t public.”

  Wow. Helluva thing to have in common. “One of you would have had to recuse yourself.”

  “Yes. And neither of us wanted the other to have to do it, so we kept our relationship secret. I wouldn’t have been able to make it public anyway, not when I was UC, but I wanted to.”

  Tom dropped his gaze to the plate of cheese, absently fiddling with one of the slices. “I get it. Tory was our team’s physical therapist. It probably would have been okay, but she was adamant that we not tell anyone. She was afraid she’d lose her job.”

  “I didn’t realize we had so much in common. I’m sorry you lost your Tory.”

  “Likewise.” He looked up. “Did you get the guys who killed Bella?”

  “I did. Had to kill a few of them. Was able to take a few in alive. I didn’t lose a wink of sleep over the ones who chose to fight me, though. They shot first, but my trigger finger was ready, willing, and able.”

  Tom thought about what he’d done to take down Tory’s killer. He wasn’t sorry. Well, maybe about one or two details, but not about the end result. “Does Mercy know?”

  “She does. I wasn’t sure what she’d think of me, but she was happy I’d taken them out. Said that I’d made it possible for my partner to go home to his family by having his back. That I’d survived and seen justice done.”

  “I’m glad.” Tom’s voice was rough, and he had to clear his throat. He wondered what Liza would think if she knew what he’d done and immediately relaxed, knowing that she’d be happy about the end result as well. His Liza was fierce and unafraid and wired to protect. Tory would have liked her.

  Wait. What? His breath stuttered in his chest, making him cough. His Liza? She was not his. And if he wanted her to be? She wouldn’t be happy with that. Especially not given their most recent conversations. And even if she were happy with it . . . Just thinking of her and Tory in the same breath seemed like betrayal.

  “You okay?” Rafe asked blandly.

  Tom took a gulp of beer. “Yeah. Just swallowed wrong.” He cleared his throat again and waited for his breathing to even out. What were they even talking about? Oh. Right. “Did the Chicos have a hand in Bella’s murder? Is that why it’s personal?”

  “Indirectly. They were one of our target’s biggest suppliers. The Chicos had a reason to keep the city’s organized crime alive and well. Supply and demand and all that. I remember a few of the midlevel thugs. DJ wasn’t one of the ones I worked with. I can tell you that.”

  “Good to know.” Tom pushed the cheese plate away, no longer hungry. “I hope Croft is more successful with her search than I’ve been with mine.”

  “You’ve been trying to track that kid’s e-mail.”

  Tom just looked at him. “Jeff Bunker told you?” Because of course he would have.

  “Yeah. It all came out over dinner when his mom and mine teamed up to make sure Zoya and Jeff know never to drive to San Francisco alone again. You weren’t able to track it?”

  “Not to the source. I think they’ve pulled their server offline. Or maybe they only hook it up when they want to use it.”

  “Before this morning, I’d hoped that they’d gone quiet because DJ was dead.”

  “Yeah. Asshole,” Tom muttered. The picture of Liza standing in front of that glass door would not vacate his mind. “How are Mercy and Abigail doing?”

  “Abigail is okay but Mercy is wrecked. She held it together for Abigail, but once we were alone, she fell apart. After a month of watching her every move she’d grown a little complacent. Her word, not mine. She knew he’d never give up, but, like the rest of us, she hoped he was dead. She was worried about Liza because of the way she left this afternoon.”

  Tom felt his cheeks heat at the question in Rafe’s direct gaze, but there was no way he was going there. Especially when he didn’t understand it himself. “She was upset for a while, but I think her friend helped cheer her up.”

  “Her friend?”

  “Mike.” The groper. Smug bastard.

  “Right.” Rafe shook his head again. “If the e-mail trace is a bust, what else do you have?”

  Tom opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I can’t talk about those things.”

  Rafe pulled a notepad from his pocket. “Good thing that I can talk about it.”

  “What?”

  Rafe waved the notepad. “A summary of my own Eden project
file.”

  “You’re not—”

  “Supposed to be working on it. Whatever. If you can’t talk to me, you can listen.”

  Tom settled on his stool. “I wondered what you’d been doing for the last month. I figured you wouldn’t sit idle when it came to Mercy’s safety. Hit me.”

  EIGHT

  ROCKLIN, CALIFORNIA

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 8:00 P.M.

  Mercy dipped her spoon into the carton of rocky road. “Why don’t you just talk to him?”

  Liza rolled her very sore eyes. Because as soon as she and Mercy had been alone, Mercy had opened her arms and patted Liza’s back while she cried. “He had a fiancée. Her name was Tory.”

  “Oh.” Mercy winced. “Was?”

  “She was killed. Murdered, actually. It was a little more than a year ago, when I was still in Afghanistan. He went dark, wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t answer any of my e-mails.”

  “A year isn’t all that long, is it?”

  “No.” That Liza had lost her own husband wasn’t something she wanted to discuss, even with Mercy. So she added the one fact that would ensure Mercy understood. “She was pregnant.”

  Mercy paled. “Oh no.”

  “Yeah. So I get it. I do. He’s not ready. And when he is, it won’t be for me.”

  “So what are you gonna do?” Mercy asked practically. “Avoid him forever? Move out and share custody of the dog?”

  “Maybe. I’m going to try to get a room in the dorms for this semester. It might be too late, but I’ll get one for next year. That’ll give Tom time to find a new renter.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” Mercy said.

  “I wasn’t.” She ate some ice cream, then sat back to study her friend. “You’re not okay.”

  Mercy laughed, the sound harsh. “No, I’m not. I figured we could be not okay together.”

  “Is Rodriguez still outside?”

  “For another hour. They do the shift change and Agent Fisher comes on. She’s a fan of Irina’s cooking, so I always save her a snack for later. It’s in a cooler in the back of Rafe’s Subaru, along with a late-night snack for Rodriguez to take home.”