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"Really? 'Cause it looks like I did just that."
"What do you need, kid?" Cash asked. Reign gave him a hard look and Cash held up his hands, palms out. "Bro, if there's one thing I know about women, and I know a fuckuva lot about women," he added with a wink toward me, "it's that when one of them is on a mission, you don't stand in their fucking way. You fall into step or you get plowed over."
Reign sighed, shaking his head. "What's the plan, babe?"
"Nothing I can tell you about. Don't need anyone else getting locked up."
"Janie..."
"Coffee. Silence," I barked, scrolling into the internet radio station and blaring the metal.
Hours passed as I hacked into the NBPD database, figuring out who was on the case and what evidence they had. It was a real clusterfuck weighing heavily on speculation like the approximate weight and shoe size of the person whose boot print they found on the scene. Luckily for me, Wolf must have taken the clothes and boots I had left in bleach and disposed of them. He wasn't walking into the god damn police station with evidence on his feet.
Collings clearly wanted nothing to do with the case if the brushed over reports he filed had anything to say. His new partner, though, was a problem. Marco was a wild card. He was too fresh to Navesink Bank. He didn't get his ass handed to him by one of the syndicates yet. He didn't live in fear of what might happen to him. He also didn't accept the bribes I knew Lex and Richard Lyon had tried to throw at him. He was fresh out of the academy and looking for his first big bust.
Never mind that one bad guy taking out the worst bad guy I had ever met wouldn't exactly make for a good news story. No one would mourn Lex Keith's death. People wouldn't be rallying behind the force when they realized Wolf took out a serial rapist with two dozen unfiled rape kits sitting in storage in the NBPD database, "lost" because of Lex's financial contribution to the right file clerks and detectives.
Yeah, well, those rape kits suddenly found themselves on Collings' desk.
He wasn't exactly a pillar of humanity, but the man had a daughter that was just starting college. If there was ever a time when the idea of rape hung heavily on a dad's (especially a cop dad's) mind, it was when their little girls were away from home for the first time in a place where he knew rape was as rampant as STDs and Ritalin-fueled study sessions. He couldn't see all those files of rape victims on his desk and not picture his own daughter, not feel the need to give those women justice.
There was no punishing Lex Keith post-mortem, but it would make the news. It would overshadow the story of Lex's killer. Or, more likely depending on the newscaster, it could vilify Lex further and make his murderer suddenly a citizen-backed vigilante.
There was no way to guarantee that Collings wouldn't process the kits without making it public, but there was a way to make sure it did get out.
On a deep breath that felt like acid fog, I opened up the forum that Alex had created when she was trying to get help neutralizing Lex. I took the images, blurring the women's faces, almost gagging as I did so to my own, and leaving Lex and his men's faces for all the world to see. Then I packaged them up with the information about the unprocessed rape kits and shot it all off to every news station in the state. A big juicy story wrapped in a big red bow. They would go fucking nuts tearing down the NBPD.
I shot off an untraceable email to Collings.Maybe you never wanted a war, but now you got one. Process those rape kits before the five o'clock news or you'll regret it. You have one chance to make this right, Collings. You've kept your pockets clean and your head down to what is going on around you. I respected you until you took down a man who was righting a wrong you and your station overlooked for years as endless piles of women suffered for your cowardice.
Those rape kits managed to get 'lost' for years. I think a little boot print could easily get accidentally deleted, don't you?
Do the right thing."You think threatening a cop is the best move?" Repo asked, sitting down beside me and shamelessly reading what I was typing.
"I think Collings understands how things work around here. I think he hates his job and what it has made him."
"What has it made him?"
"Weak." I turned my head to look at him fully. "And if there is one thing a once-alpha man hates to be, it's weak. He will finally get his head out of his ass and do something for once, something that matters. Or he can get his ass swept up in the cleanse when Internal Affairs starts smelling the shit festering inside the NBPD."
"You realize you are erasing the leverage The Henchmen, Mallicks, Lyon, and Hailstorm had against imprisonment?"
I could see the tension in Repo, the barely repressed anger. He was a loose cannon like me when he was riled and he was trying like hell to hold onto his calm. Repo was as loyal as a man came and when he saw someone threatening the safety of his brothers, he felt the need to intervene.
I reached out and hit the send button on the email. "It's done. You can be mad at me. You can scream at me. But we both know you can't lay a hand on me. I belong to your road captain. Your prez and vice like me. It would be the ultimate betrayal to fuck with me right now Repo."
"I'd never put a fucking hand on you," he said, his face twisting up like he was revolted at the idea. "I don't hit women."
