AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ugh, that was my lack of sleep talking.
“I have a guy on the inside, you remember Keeg?” I asked them. They both nodded.
Keeg was a guy we took down way back in our early days, and got him off by basically hiring him as our inside guy to the Irish mob. It was a little messed up, since he was committing crimes, probably felonies, and we weren’t arresting him. But it helped us close the bigger cases so…yeah, that was the American police system.
“I had a feeling about him after Amy connected all these crimes. His mob was behind those shakedowns a few years back, way before our time.” I start getting dressed because the towel was scratchy. “Anyway, I called him up just to see if he had any ‘idea’ and he didn’t take too kindly to being accused. But that’s besides the point—he knew some shit.”
“Some shit?” Nate chuckled.
“Yeah. A lot of it. Turns out these killings are the same as those robberies back then.”
They both looked confused and I knew why.
Those robberies back then were just that, robberies. They were fairly low on the radar even though they were so many. Mostly because the guys were all rich and no one honestly cared about the few hundred dollars that were stolen from them. Of course, there was an investigation at the time and minimal security once they were all linked, but once they figured out why they got robbed, their wealthy asses skipped town.
“So, they go from shaking to killing? That doesn’t really make much sense.” Nate commented.
I rolled my eyes and finished getting dressed. Once my gun belt was on, Alex got a call and got all stoic. It lasted a few seconds and sounded pretty serious.
“What was that about?” Nate asked him first. Alex ticked his jaw, as he always did when he was tense.
“Some assault in an alley near the crime scene of our vic. I don’t know all the details, but it sounds like our guy’s MO.”
“Another dead victim, then?” I concluded regretfully. A dead victim didn’t do much for us in terms of catching the suspect.
“No actually, he’s en route to the hospital. I need to go down there and get a statement, maybe see how similar he is to the other victim.” Alex went all detective-mode and the realization loomed in the air over all of us.
Maybe we were jumping to conclusions, but another incident meant the suspect was escalating, but why would he leave him alive? If it was anything like the old crimes years ago, then it would get worse.
I thought about getting in contact with Keeg again, hoping he might have some insight to who was doing this.
“What else was there?” I asked Alex.
“All the vic said was that the guy was Irish.” He shrugged.
Damn. It didn’t take me long to put them both together. It was definitely a repeat of those crimes from years ago. Keeg didn’t tell me any specifics about the stuff from back then. Just that the Irish were going after some rich businessmen. It didn’t make much sense since the Irish had tons of cash flowing in from their ‘pursuits.’ I wasn’t understanding why they had to shake people down. Maybe they needed some free lawyer or something? I didn’t fucking know.
“Seriously?” Nate said.
“Yeah, I need to go get all the information down.” He posed to leave but Nate called him back.
“You know what this means right? About Rose?”
Alex and I nodded.
“Look, I hadn’t told you guys yet, but someone was watching Rose last night,” Nate explained.
About a thousand scenarios ran through my head. Rose wasn’t safe—that was at the forefront. I knew I had to be worried about it in the beginning, but I never expected it to actually take form. She lived close to the crime scene, so she was already exposed to any connections with the crime. Not to mention her being a primary witness; at that point no one else had seen anything.
We had been keeping tabs on her since the incident, so nothing serious had happened. But obviously, it wasn’t enough to keep her safe.
“What if she needs real witness protection?” I said, my voice graveled at the severity of it.
She would have to change her whole life around, and not to mention she would not ever really feel safe again, even if she was being watched. I didn’t want that for her at all. She had so much life to her. This case—whatever it turned out being, would put a damper on that.
“I don’t know. She might? The guy looked pretty amateur, but he was taking photos of her. That isn’t a good sign.”
We all went silent, doing our own thinking. I had a lot of feelings about Rose but didn’t really know what to do with them. I mean, Rose was beautiful. Really fucking sexy in all the right ways and it kind of drove me mad a little bit, because I wasn’t sure if she was up for what we offered. Rose was really head strong and knew her own way, it was just as intimidating as it was attractive. I didn’t want to change her, and I was afraid putting all that security on her would do that. I was fine keeping tabs on her in my free time, but having extra uniforms would just make her feel…I don’t know.
