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She had told him. Damn it. She’d told him more than once. This thing he wanted to do was not a good idea. Not for someone like him. He didn’t know how to dive into the deep water like this without ending up shark bait. He didn’t have the experience. Just a lot of ambition and fearlessness.
Idiot.
Sadie closed her eyes and blocked the image of his face. Too damned young to die. He wasn’t even thirty. So damned determined to be the big hero.
“I’m the perfect example of how that shit works out,” she muttered.
Now the cops would be crawling all over her ass. She’d been extremely careful—as always. No phone calls unless they used burner phones. No emails or text messages. They’d met in private. No one could know she had spoken to him, and yet there would be no way to hide that fact after what he’d done.
He’d called her last night from his personal cell phone. She’d jumped his shit, but he’d been too excited to care. He was close, he’d said. Kurtz had agreed to talk with other small, independent business owners he’d suspected were dealing with the same concerns. More importantly, Kurtz had found a potential source they were going to confront.
Now Walsh was dead.
The investigating detectives would find the call. No matter if Walsh deleted the call and her number from his call log; they would find it in his phone records.
What she needed was a logical explanation for why he had called her. A call to a wrong number wouldn’t have lasted three minutes or so.
Damn it!
Sadie grabbed her smokes from the table and tapped one out. She tucked it into the corner of her mouth and flicked her lighter. Savoring a long drag, Sadie allowed the chemicals to fill her lungs with the comforting promise only nicotine could make. She didn’t worry about lung cancer. It wasn’t like she was going to have a long and prosperous life. It was a miracle she wasn’t already dead.
Plenty had tried to make her that way. Not that she cared. She didn’t. Another day lived was another day she had to find ways to distract herself from the bits and pieces of the past that haunted her. She wasn’t suicidal or anything. She just didn’t care. She was done.
Done. Done. Done.
Her father slipped into her thoughts, and she dismissed him. He’d given up on her long ago. They hadn’t spoken in what? A year? He’d likely be happy once she was out of the way. Then he wouldn’t have to be disappointed in her anymore. She couldn’t screw up her life any worse if she were dead. She could no longer embarrass him. His life would certainly be less complicated.
Are you married? No, no, I’m a widower. Any children? No, no children. My only daughter passed away.
How nice that would be for him. He wouldn’t have to explain who his daughter was. Where she lived. What she had done since quitting the Birmingham Police Department. The only question that might crop up was how she’d died. He wasn’t above making something up to cover that detail. Cancer like her poor mother? Hit and run? Robbery gone wrong?
But she wasn’t dead.
Truth was she didn’t really understand why. She should have died the day she vanished all those years ago or on any number of other occasions before and since. She’d taken a bullet more than once. Had multiple car accidents—usually while chasing bad guys. Somehow, she had survived them all.
“Your luck won’t hold out forever,” she muttered as she drew more smoke into her lungs. The upside was then she wouldn’t have to bother with allthis.
The DIY route had never been an option. She might be a lot of things, but she wasn’t a quitter. In her opinion, going the suicide route was being a quitter. Taking the easy way out. Leaving the rest of the world to clean up your mess.
Nope. She wasn’t a quitter. Her plan was to piss off the whole world, and then maybe one of these days someone would do it for her.
Easy peasy.
She crossed the room and parted the blinds on a window overlooking Sixth Avenue. No cops yet. Her phone hadn’t rung, whichwas strange. The detectives investigating the case should have called her number already to find out who she was. Unless they hadn’t found Walsh’s cell phone. Or he’d deleted his call record.
If either of those scenarios was the case, it would buy her some time.
She drew her fingers away; the blind snapped into place, sending years of dust filtering through the air. Turning her back, she braced her hip on the window ledge and looked around the room. Really, she didn’t have it so bad. She had this place. It wasn’t much, but it was hers. Damned sure was more than her father would have given her—seeing that he had basically disowned her and all.
Pauley Winters, a former cop and the best damned PI in the state of Alabama before his death, had left the building and his business to her when he’d died last spring. He’d been her best friend and the closest thing she’d had to a real parent since her mom died. Her father had changed after his wife’s death. Pushed Sadie away, grown hard and cold. Not even when she’d joined the Birmingham Police Department could she please him. She’d even gone into narcotics to impress the revered DEA special agent in charge Mason Cross. She could be a big undercover hero like he once was.
He hadn’t been impressed.
Thinking about her father and the past had her stomach cramping. Sadie pushed away from the window and went to the sink. She needed coffee. Too early for a whiskey. She’d allowed her alcohol consumption to get out of control for a while. She wasn’t going there again. Her father would be waiting in the wings to put her in rehab for the third—no, fourth—time.
“Bastard.” She poured water into the machine. A few scoops of grounds and then she pushed the “Brew” button.
The only thing worse than living through the haunting memories of those missing months was rehab. She’d spent more than enough time in hospitals and rehab for a dozen lifetimes.
