Page 12 of Lethal Justice

Chapter Seven

His ringing cellhad Malco cursing as he watched Frida pick up her clothes from the kitchen floor and walk back to the room she’d slept in. Every bone in his body wanted him to ignore the call and follow her, but his sensible side wouldn’t let him do that.

Sliding the phone from his pocket, he saw Shane’s name flash across the screen. He wondered what he would say about what had just happened. Their relationship, or perhaps the secrecy regarding their history, bothered Malco in ways he couldn’t explain and didn’t want to look too closely at.

He answered with a curt, “Yes?”

“You need to get to the office. We’ve just had a case come in, and you’re gonna want to be here for this.” Malco felt his gut clench at the urgency in his boss’s voice. His pique over Frida was forgotten.

“Tell me.”

“We just had a call from Reiner Ward, the supervisor at the Youth Center. Tycen Neal went missing last night. His mom is going crazy with worry, and Ward wants us to look into it.”

Malco felt the cold knot of fear squeeze his gut. Tycen Neal was one of the good kids, getting himself on track to pass his exams and graduate school. At sixteen, he was the oldest of the Neal kids with four younger siblings and wanted to make a better life for himself and for them.

“I’m on my way. Give me twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, fine, they won’t be here until she’s given a police statement anyway.”

“Police statement? What for?” he asked, confused that the police were already acting on it. It was a sad fact the police didn’t take the disappearance of gang kids seriously, at least not until there was some kind of evidence to suggest foul play.

“His jacket was found covered in blood near the old train yard.”

Malco didn’t react outwardly, but inwardly he was screaming. This couldn’t happen again, not to Tycen. He was a good boy; he’d turned his back on the gangs.

“I’m on my way.” Malco hung up and walked toward the room where Frida had slept. He didn’t knock but pushed open the door to see her standing in a towel, still wet from her shower. Already hard from making her come, his cock stood up even harder. His eyes traveled over her warm silky, wet skin, and he wanted nothing more than to lay her down and make her scream his name, but it would have to wait.

He walked toward her, and she read the look on his face.

“What happened?” Malco fingered a wet strand of hair before letting his eyes catch hers.

“Shane called, one of the kids I work with at the Youth Center went missing last night. They found his bloody jacket out by the abandoned train yard.”

Her sharp intake of breath told him she knew the significance of that. The train yard was a well-known gang hang out.

“We need to go.” She shed the towel with no self-modesty whatsoever, and he almost swallowed his tongue as he looked at her beautiful naked body. Pulling her pants up, she looked at him and smirked.

“Go, get the car, I’ll be two minutes.”

Malco took one last lingering look, then turned and headed for the garage, grabbing and securing his firearm in a holster before pulling his shirt over the top to cover it as he went. He’d be going back into a world he had fought to leave, and there was no way he was going in unarmed.

He pulled the car out then exited it to wait for Frida.

The door between the garage and the house opened and Frida stepped out. She was showered and fresh, wearing one of his old shirts and her pants from yesterday, her hair pulled into a neat ponytail. She looked nothing like the cutthroat lawyer he knew she was. She looked like the girl next door that every boy in the neighborhood had fantasies about.

He wasn’t sure which look he liked best on her; both worked for him, but then perhaps it was just that Frida worked for him on so many levels. She moved toward the car, and he quickly locked up behind her and secured the alarm before getting into the driver’s seat.

They drove to Alliance in almost silence, not strained in any way but restful as if each were in their own head, preparing for what was to come in their own way.

He parked and turned to her. “I need to work this case this for Tycen Neal. He’s a good kid, and deserves better than this life.”

Frida nodded her agreement. “And I want to help in any way I can too. So how about we work this and my case together? I can’t help thinking that the sudden uptake in violence, his disappearance after my attack, and the break-in at my office aren’t a coincidence.”

Once again, this woman had surprised him with the way she made the connections so quickly. He’d been thinking the same thing, and Frida’s offer to work the cases side by side was a good idea.

“I agree. Let’s go speak to Shane and get everyone’s thoughts on this.”

Thirty minutes later, they were in the conference room with Shane, Emme, Alex, Caitlin, Kingsley, James, and Mercy.