“Get some sleep. You’ll need it,” he told Jenkins before heading to his office. He needed to touch base with Greg Day at the lab. If that turned out to be Shelley’s blood ... It wouldn’t be enough to nail Nash legally, but it would confirm a connection between the note he had received after his niece’s murder and the message to CJ. His cell vibrated. He checked the screen. Cooper. She’d relieved Jenkins an hour ago. The chief had allotted only three detectives on this case. They would have to do the best they could with minimal manpower.
“Braddock.”
“She’s waiting outside Banks’s house,” Cooper reported.
A frown furrowed across his forehead. “Jenkins is taking Banks to his car now. Keep an eye on her until I get there.”
After last night’s break-in, he would have thought CJ would be more careful. He should have known better. She’d spent her whole life taking care of her sister. To CJ’s way of thinking, finding her killer would be necessary to finish the job.
If it didn’t get her killed first.
4:05 p.m.
Braddock watched the house on Clopton where Banks resided with his aunt. CJ sat on the steps waiting for his arrival. According to Jenkins, Banks had made a stop at the liquor store on the corner of Drake and the Parkway.
CJ couldn’t get past the idea that Banks was the one who’d killed her sister. Banks would insist when she asked that it hadn’t been him. It had been the King.
The King. Braddock’s jaw tightened with the hatred that exploded inside him each time he thought of that bastard. He was a king, all right. King of a run-down village filled with desperate people eking out the same desperate lives their parents and their grandparents before them had eked out.
It was way past time the cycle was stopped.
One way to help end it was to neutralize its core. The hub that held all the spokes together, spinning in that vicious circle.
Change wasn’t about to come to this neighborhood as long as scumbags like Nash ran things. No matter that a few folks had moved in and revitalized some of the old mill houses, it wasn’t enough. Not yet. Maybe never as long as Nash was still breathing.
Cooper didn’t see this case the way he did. Whoever had killed Shelley, Nash was responsible. He would have given the order. Just as he had two years ago when he’d murdered Braddock’s niece.
Fury whipped through him, slicing his heart into quivering pieces.
Sweet. Beautiful. And only seventeen.
Braddock had promised his brother when he left for his tour in Afghanistan that he would keep his family safe. His wife, daughter, and son would be well taken care of until his tour was over. Six months later, his brother had been shipped back home in a wooden box. Barely two months after that, Kimberly had disappeared. She had gotten into a fight with her mother. Declared that she was going to live with her uncle.
Braddock had given her a firm talking-to when she’d showed up at his door. He’d told her how much her mother needed her. How much her brother needed her. Then he’d made the mistake of telling Kimberly that her mother was on her way to Huntsville to pick her up. The next time he’d turned his back, the kid was out the door.
Braddock had gotten the message less than twenty-four hours after her disappearance. A note, handwritten in blood.
No one messes with me.
Analysis had immediately shown that the type was the same as Kimberly’s. By the time the DNA analysis came back confirming that it was his niece’s blood, her body had washed up on a Decatur riverbank.
That dull ache that lived inside Braddock roared. He’d gotten his niece killed. His determination to take Nash down for his crimes had prompted a reaction.
Nash had let him know that his interference would not be tolerated.
Braddock’s fingers tightened into fists. God, he wanted to kill that son of a bitch.
For more than a year and a half he had been working every case that could even remotely be connected to Nash. Missing sex workers. Two homicides. Numerous assaults and robberies.
Anything in the village or any other part of Nash’s territory, Braddock got involved. He worked day and night, seven days a week if necessary.
Whatever it took to legally bring that son of a bitch to his knees.
Then, eleven months ago, Shelley Patterson had stumbled into his life. After he’d finished the investigation into the break-in at her house, Braddock had kept the friendship going with her. He’d noted how connected she was to both Banks and Nash. He’d seen her connections as an opportunity. Then he’d developed protective feelings for her. He’d wanted to help her. Not long after that he’d met CJ, and he’d been hooked on the Patterson sisters.
CJ had trusted him at first, even liked him on a personal level. The physical attraction had been off the charts. God, he’d wanted her and, he was pretty damned certain, she had wanted him too—for a lot more than a stress-relief rumble in the sheets.
Until he’d screwed it up.
