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Duke said, “You’re among friends here.”
“Need to know. But trust me, it’s trivial. Besides, all the principals in that case are either dead or in jail.”
“That you know of.”
“Touché.” Ari relaxed her stiff posture. “Vince was trying to start something up. He recognized me or Isabelle and tried to make a play for himself. Look what I did, other criminals. I killed someone you wanted dead.”
“Think there is a further threat to you or your sister?” Duke asked the question burning in Warrick’s mind.
“I guess it’s possible, but what’s more likely is that he tried to play big man by taking down someone he discovered didn’t die that night or go to jail. Maybe he saw Isabelle working in her Chicago hotel and thought it was me recreating my former persona. Maybe he thought he had inside information. Maybe he figured out I was undercover at that rave and wanted to take me out or rat me out. I don’t know who’s left to care.”
Warrick nodded. “Guess it doesn’t matter. The Feds will take care of him.”
Duke nodded but said, “I’ll talk to the guys picking him up, make sure if he gets released for some reason one of the three of us in this room gets a call.”
“Thanks, Duke,” Warrick said.
After Duke left, Warrick turned to Ari. “What’s next for you?”
Ari smiled. “I need to have a long talk with my sister.”
“Where are you headed back to?”
“Not sure. I’ve been rethinking my life. Perhaps I’ll settle down here for a while.”
“No more undercover work?”
She shrugged. “Truth is I’ve been outed and I can’t go back, but I don’t really want to anyway. Besides, I’m getting too old to play a fresh-faced college student.”
Warrick smiled. “I don’t know about that. You look pretty good to me.”
She smiled. “That’s because you’re in love with my sister. You’re only being nice.”
He huffed. “I’m never nice. Ask anyone.”
“Whatever. But I approve of you for my sister. She deserves to be happy.”
“So do you.”
She shrugged again. “But first I need to have a long talk with my little sis. It’s way long overdue.”
“Come over to my house. You can talk there. And even stay at the house if you’d like.”
“I appreciate the offer, but Sven took me in.”
Warrick smiled. “Probably a better offer.”
“I think so.”
Warrick added, “Sven’s a good guy.”
“Yes. He is exceptional.”
“I’ll bring you back to my house tonight anyway. Then you can have a quiet, long chat with your sister uninterrupted.”
Warrick led her home and set them both up in his solarium with a bottle of wine and some snacks his chef had prepared earlier in the evening.
He left them alone to figure things out, grateful that Isabelle was safe and still their woman.
* * * *
Isabelle kissed Warrick soundly before he left her alone with her sister in the solarium. He whispered that he liked Ari and to give her a chance.
So Isabelle was taking the advice of the man she loved to make peace with the sister she hadn’t seen in almost a decade.
They sipped wine and nibbled from an enormous tray of cheese, fruit, and toasted bruschetta among other treats displayed.
Ari settled back and started talking. “The summer after we graduated from high school, I was out with some older college friends one night going from place to place, party to party as we did back then. Toward midnight and after my not-enforced curfew, we ended up at an out-of-control party at someone’s house in a really nice neighborhood. Unfortunately, the police raided it after we’d gotten inside. And even though I was sober and not on any drugs, I still got swept up in the mess. Wrong place, wrong time. Whatever.”
“I never heard about that.”
Ari wiggled her eyebrows. “That’s because I made a deal.”
“They didn’t call Gran?”
“Nope. I was already eighteen. But I hadn’t done anything wrong either. When they realized I wasn’t drunk, stoned, or dealing drugs, they couldn’t charge me with anything big. Misdemeanor, loud noises. Whatever.
“Being a smartass, I told them I refused to be charged with anything. I hadn’t done anything. But I did tell them about a few things I’d seen during my short time at the party. I was able to identify some very bad people who’d been doing lots of very bad things there. I agreed to testify, but didn’t have to because a deal was cut.
“I was let go without any charges. The next day they came back to me and asked if I’d be interested in helping them with another undercover case involving a batch of bad drugs being distributed at a small college campus. There had been many kids sickened and one almost died. They put me through a quick training program, figuring it would be easy for me to fit into a college setting, and it was. And I liked it.”
