Although Gavin recognized Arlo’s connections in Sunset Bay ran deep—and solid information was gold, after all—he couldn’t help but wonder if there was a better way. A world where people didn’t turn on each other, and criminals didn’t exist at all.
A rather silly thought for a cop, he acknowledged, but one that seemed more fervent somehow.
Was it the fact that he was going to be a father?
“Is the informant reliable?”
“She’s a working woman in the know. She’s got sharp eyes and is highly selective about who she shares her information with. And she knows all there is to know about the block where the shots came from.”
“Keeps her eyes peeled for customers?”
“Among other things.”
Although most of the women who worked the streets in Brooklyn steered clear of cops, it didn’t surprise Gavin at all that one of Arlo’s trusted informants was a prostitute. The man could charm the devil to give him ice, so it made sense he’d made friends with a woman who was both in a position to know things and whose vulnerability would be something Arlo Prescott was bound and determined to protect.
The fact he’d managed to make friends with the woman who worked the block outside a cop bar was another level entirely.
“Jade’s a sharp cookie. Knows how to protect herself and the girls around her. So the fact she came forward with this so quickly is indicative of how much she respects Arlo. And she likes his ass.”
If Gavin had already gotten his coffee, he’d have likely choked on it. “What?”
Kerrigan shrugged. “The man does have an exceedingly nice ass. I can hardly blame her for noticing. And it’s those powers of observation that got us a break so quickly.”
It was an odd sort of logic, but if Kerrigan didn’t mind women ogling her boyfriend, who was he to argue?
“What did she tell him?”
“There have been rumors floating around for a while. Some important people have found a way to get rid of their evidence. They pay through the nose, but after they’re done, they walk away basically scot-free from a crime.”
“The cache of weapons we found.” Gavin exhaled. Hard. “There were so many because they’ve accumulated over time. They weren’t dumped all at once.”
“Likely part of it. And a discovery like that, when your hidey-hole for all your bad deeds is suddenly discovered? Well, that’s bad for business.”
He thought about Sera’s upset earlier: the fear that the two of them had actually been the intended target. He’d dismissed it, but was she right? Were the two of them the end game, and Darius had simply gotten in the way?
It didn’t make sense. Especially since all those guns had just been discovered. Why put any plan of attack in place so quickly?
They walked up to the coffee machines in the hallway, and Gavin dug out some cash for their coffees. Kerrigan put her order into the machine next to his while he picked his blend, the machine whirling to life in time with his thoughts.
“I’m just not getting this. Someone decides to start shooting cops over a routine evidence discovery? That’s a pretty bold choice when no one’s done any digging on those weapons yet.”
“Preemptive strike?” Kerrigan asked, pulling her cup from the machine. “Bold assertion of dominance? Who knows why criminals do what they do? All I do know is you need to watch your back. We all do. Sera, too.”
“Sera, too.” Gavin turned that over, her earlier fears that she’d been the target opening up yet another avenue. “She thought she was the target earlier. That Darius was shot because of her. Wrong place, wrong time sort of thing.”
“Is she working any big cases?”
“I don’t think so. Her schedule was shifted, like mine, to focus on the task force.”
Kerrigan took a sip of her coffee. “Let’s talk to her. See if she’s made any enemies recently. Arlo got the sense this was a cop problem, but when criminals start a war it’s not necessarily for a predictable reason.”
“But why go to war at all? Those weapons were only just discovered. I still don’t get why you’d draw this sort of attention.”
“I don’t have the reasons, Gav. I just have a new line for us to tug.”
As he followed his friend and colleague back down the hall, Gavin wondered about that. It was an awfully flimsy line, with very few facts attached to it. What if they tugged too hard and unraveled something far deeper than they ever expected?
Yet as he thought about the deadly weapons laid out on the boat deck earlier, Gavin had to admit that they’d already started to tug that line. And maybe there was more in motion than any of them realized.
Sera had never considered herself someone comfortable with grief. She had her own, of course, but she kept it carefully buried. And she regularly came up against grieving families in her work. People decimated by the loss of their loved ones at the hands of another.
She’d found a way, through the years, to compartmentalize those tearstained, distressed faces. They were a part of her work, and that same work was what would give them some measure of closure. It didn’t bring their loved one back, but she remained hopeful they found peace in the fact that justice had been done for them.
But now? Watching the entire Houston family rally around Jayden as he waited for news of his husband? Sera understood something else.
Just how clearly grief was an expression of love.
With that sudden understanding so present in her mind, when Sera saw an empty seat beside Jayden’s mother, she moved over to offer whatever comfort she could.
“Mrs. Houston?”
The woman looked up, her expression still welcoming even in the midst of her sadness. “Sera, sweetie. Come take a seat.”
They’d been introduced earlier after Sera had been released from her hospital room, and the kind woman had peppered her with questions about how she was feeling and how the baby was.
Sera hadn’t even questioned how Mrs. Houston knew. She simply accepted that she did.
Weathered hands took her own, cradling them. Sera stared down to where they held on to each other, the seamless blend of youth and age wrapped together, and she wondered what it must be like to have such warmth and encouragement. Such care and love. Even before her mother’s fall into apathy and recreational drug use, she’d never been a warm woman. Her parenting style was tepid at best and flat-out cold much of the time. For as much as she hated the reason she’d been given a peek into the Houston family dynamics, clearly led by their matriarch, Sera was touched and awed by how present they were for each other.
