He looked up with a grimace as I approached.
“You do this on purpose, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Make me drag my ass into the middle of nowhere,” Rourke said. “Get my shoes dirty.”
“If you dressed like other cops it wouldn’t matter.”
“I’m not like other cops,” he said. “I’m not even a cop, technically speaking.”
I sat next to him on the boulder. “You know any detectives who wear Italian loafers and custom shirts?”
“Not in Blackwell Falls.”
“Exactly.” Being a detective in Blackwell Falls meant being in the mountains now and then. Not my fault Rourke was dumb enough to wear expensive clothes to work. “What do you have?”
“Not much,” Rourke said. “And I don’t mean that in the usualnot many clueskind of way.”
“How do you mean it?”
“Chief wants to move on,” Rourke said.
“It hasn’t even been a week.” Hawk had survived the Code Blue, but he was still in the ICU, still unconscious. Cassie had only left the hospital to shower. She ate all her meals there, slept there in either Vigo’s room or Jagger’s.
“I know.”
“Where is it coming from?” I asked.
The chief of police didn’t decide to hurry along an investigation on his own.
“No idea,” Rourke said. “This time of year it could be anybody.”
I knew what he meant. It was fall, one of the biggest tourist seasons in Blackwell Falls. The town was overrun with out-of-towners wanting to pick apples and take pictures for social media with pumpkins and local hard cider.
So far the incident at the paper mill had been glossed over by the local press as an “unexplained explosion,” but it was only a matter of time before it got more attention, especially if the investigation dragged on.
And a team of men in military-grade tactical gear launching an attack on four locals wasn’t going to be good for tourism.
“How many casualties on their side?” I asked.
Other than what Cassie had told me, I knew next to nothing about what had happened at the paper mill. I’d been too busy taking care of her, making sure she was protected at the hospital.
Making sure the Hawks were protected because apparently that was my job now.
Fuck me.
“One,” Rourke said. “Bad luck. Big piece of glass hit his jugular when the explosion went off.”
“I take it he had no ID?” I asked.
“Correct.” Rourke hesitated, then reached into his pocket. “But he did have this.”
He held out a cell phone encased in a bag markedEvidenceand I lifted my eyebrows in question. No way was I touching that thing until I knew who it belonged to and where it was going.
“Took it off the dead guy,” Rourke said.
“Anybody know about it?” I asked.
