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Guilt racks me. I should’ve told him a long time ago, but I have my reasons. I don’t want Angelo to find out about this baby—I don’t want him involved.
Now I wonder if that was a bad decision.
But Angelo sighs and squeezes my knee. “Yeah, I figured. As soon as those fuckers started kicking me, I kept thinking, Sara’s stuck in this now. She’s not going to let this go.”
“You’re right. I’m not.”
“Good girl.” His smirk is lopsided as he looks at me. “Get my phone for me, will you? I gotta call Carmine before my guts leak out.”
“Gladly.” I get up and toss it over to him.
As he taps the screen, a plan comes to me, half formed and reckless, but it’s a plan, and I’m not about to let these bastards keep me down.
It takes a couple hours of waiting around on the sidewalk, exhausted and strung-out, watching early morning workers hustle past on the way to their jobs before I finally spot her ducking into the fancy coffee shop five blocks from the Dallas police precinct building. I slowly walk over, keeping an eye out for anyone else I recognize, and wait for her to come out again.
Detective Vance looks tired, like she got a late-night call about something important. I don’t know if she’s working another case or if she’s dealing with the fallout from Angelo’s continued investigation, and I don’t really give a shit. She’s in dark slacks, a dark jacket, and she’s holding a big iced coffee with the shop’s logo emblazoned on the side in both hands.
“Misty,” I call out and walk over to her.
She looks back and I swear one hand flinches to the holster at her hip. Instead, she sees me, curses quietly, and her eyes narrow. “Ms. Bray. What are you doing here?”
“Call me Sara.” I fall into step as she tries to hurry away. “Did you hear what happened to my partner last night?”
“You mean the guy that ambushed me at High Noon? I don’t know anything about it.”
“Liar. He’s lying in bed right now half dead with at least a few broken ribs. Guess who did that?”
She refuses to look at me. “I don’t want to hear any more, Ms. Bray.”
“Sara. My name’s Sara, and that guy’s name is Angelo, and all we’re trying to do is make sure an innocent man doesn’t go to jail for the rest of his life. What kind of cop are you, Misty?”
“Detective Vance.” She stops walking and glares at me. “How’d you know I’d be here?”
“I saw the empty cups in your truck. You really need to clear them out.”
She laughs harshly. “That’s what my partner says. It’s a fucking addiction. Sugar and caffeine. I can’t help myself.”
“Why’d they do it, Misty?”
“I told you, I don’t know anything about what happened to your partner.” She hesitates and glances down the block like she’s making sure nobody’s watching. “Is he okay?”
“He will be. I hope anyway. They’re trying to scare us away, which means there’s something to find and we’re getting close. What are we looking for?”
“I already told you everything.” She turns and starts to walk again.
“If you keep going, you’re gonna run into someone from the precinct. Do you really them to see you talking with me?”
That makes Misty stop. She turns back, jaw working. “You’re a pain in my ass, Sara.”
“Good. I’m glad.” I move closer to her and drop my voice lower. “Just tell me what to look for. I’m not asking you to put yourself out there, but we need something more. Where’s that interview hiding?”
Misty grimaces and looks down at her shoes. “What makes you think they didn’t burn it already?”
“That’s what Angelo said. But there’s no way that dirty cops are ripping up paperwork, not without getting caught. They’re hiding it somehow.”
“It’s always fucking paperwork,” Misty says with a bitter smile. “That’s the thing, right? That’s the reason we fill out all these goddamn forms. So when shit like this happens, there’s a trail to follow.”
“Where’s the interview?”
“You have to understand something. Not everyone working in my department is crooked. Some of them are, some of them aren’t, and the problem is you never know which is which.”
“I can tell you one of them has a mustache. The other is your partner.”
Misty’s mouth drops open. Her jaw works back and forth and she shakes her head. “You’re lying.”
“The guy you left the High Noon with that night, right? Him and another guy, someone with a bushy mustache and a cowboy hat, they jumped Angelo. Nearly beat him to death. I think they also ransacked my apartment in an attempt at scaring me away. Help me, Misty.”
“Shit,” she says quietly and rubs her face. “I knew John was in deep, but—” She takes a long drink from her plastic cup. “There’s a series of documents. The series isn’t publicly known for obvious reasons, and if you ever tell anyone about this stuff, I’ll find some pretext to lock you up for life. But this series of documents, it’s a way of burying shit without destroying it as a sort of backup in case Internal Affairs starts sniffing around. We can point to that paperwork and say oh, hey, here it is, it just got lost in the shuffle, ha-ha, sorry about that. When really it stays fucking buried in the archives.”
