Page 74 of Falling For You

Wyatt squeezed my hand.

He was squeezing it the same way now, sitting beside me at the funeral. I rested my head on his shoulder and he leaned into me.

"I hope we made you as proud as you made us, Dad."

Gus's son pressed his lips together and stepped back from the front. He rested his hand on the casket as he passed it, just for a moment, before sitting down with his sisters.

I went back to work the day after the funeral. I'd already passed Knox's tip about Lockwood Development to Zeus, but something about the case wouldn't leave me alone. I didn't know what it was. I just knew it didn't sit right.

"Andy." Doug stopped by my desk during shift change. "I heard about the bar. I'm sorry."

"Thanks, Doug."

I never talked about my personal life at work. Doug and Jeremy were the only ones at the precinct who knew about Wyatt and me.

He put his hand on top of my shoulder. "If you need to talk, I'm here."

"I know. Thank you."

Doug gave my shoulder a pat before he walked into the briefing room.

The victim files from the bar shooting were still on my desk. Zeus had the case, but I'd been the responding officer, and the supplementals were mine to file.

I opened the folder. The two shooters had been identified as Gino Stasio and Jensen Alridge.

I stared at the name.

Gino Stasio. I knew that name. Jeremy and I had been talking about him in the car the day of the shooting. He was one of the burglary victims. Now Stasio was dead on the floor of Gus's bar.

I pulled up the burglary files.

Stasio. McCarthy. Lockwood.

Three homes. Nothing stolen from any of them. And one of the homeowners was found dead on the floor of Gus's bar.

The third name stopped me. Preston Lockwood. The heir to Lockwood Development. The company Knox told me had been pressuring Gus to sell the bar.

I pulled the autopsy report. Stasio was carrying a nine-millimeter. Alridge had a forty-five. Alridge's gun killed Stasio and Gus. Stasio's gun killed Alridge.

If Stasio and Alridge came to the bar together to intimidate Gus on behalf of Lockwood Development, they wouldn't have shot each other.

So what was Alridge doing there? Was he working alone? And how did Lockwood connect to any of this?

I went back to Lockwood's file. A few weeks ago, Jeremy and I had responded to a monitored alarm at his house. We caught Mitchell Dunne inside.

Did Dunne have a connection to any of this?

I ran the three names: Stasio, McCarthy, and Lockwood, against criminal records, public filings, known associates, and found that they were indeed connected. Same social circles, same network, overlapping business records. The same search flagged two more names linked to the group: Ben Mendelson and Cyril Puno.

Mendelson's death was made to look like a suicide. He was found dead on his living room floor with a note that was torn from a spiral notebook which did not match any of the stationery he had at the apartment.

Puno was found at the bottom of a stairwell in his building with a wound on the back of his skull instead of the front where the wound should have been if he'd actually fallen down those stairs.

Five men. All connected. Three dead: Mendelson, Puno, Stasio. Two still alive: McCarthy and Lockwood.

What was the connection, if there was any, between Dunne and Alridge? Why did Alridge kill Gus if not for Lockwood Development?

I didn't have enough to answer that. But I had enough to know this was bigger than anyone thought.