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Falco closed the door and locked one of the dead bolts. He knew how she was about security. Your ass didn’t go missing for nearly a year—most of which time was a blank—without becoming a little paranoid about security. Not that she was afraid. Not really. Death wasn’t such a bad thing. It was the stuff they did before they killed you that typically sucked.
“Do you know DDA Asher Walsh?” Devlin asked, opting not to drag her feet and going straight to the point.
Good.
“No.” Sadie wasn’t dragging hers either.
“Come on, Cross,” Falco griped. “You were the last person he called.”
She shrugged. “Was my name in his contact list?”
“You know it wasn’t.” This from Devlin. “Cut the crap, Sadie. Why did Walsh call you?”
There were moments like now when Sadie wished things were back to the way they used to be—when she had no friends. Any facsimile offriends she’d ever had had dropped out of the picture after her disappearing act. Some of those so-called friends actually had the balls to believe she’d fallen off the radar on purpose, then returned when things didn’t work out. Yeah, right. People were so quick to condemn anything they didn’t understand.
She should have learned her lesson about friends. Allowing Falco so close had been a mistake. Then he’d dragged Devlin with him. Damn it.
Maybe the termfriendswas a bit of a stretch, but these two humans knew her better than most. Mostlivinghumans, anyway.
She thumped the coffee mug down on the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. “He wanted information.” Sadie cocked her head. “You know,” she said to Devlin, “like you did last year when your niece was missing. When I helped you out of a really fucked-up situation.”
Funny how people never remembered that kind of shit unless it suited their purposes.
Falco shook his head, but before he could go busting her chops, Devlin walked toward Sadie. Brushed past her and grabbed a mug and poured herself a coffee. Then she sat her skinny ass down on the sofa. The one Sadie had helped Pauley retrieve from a curb over in Mountain Brook and haul up those damned rusty stairs. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have bought a new one, but he’d sworn the brand of this sofa made it worth the trouble. It barely had any wear, but the people in the multimillion-dollar house had no longer wanted it.
Pauley had been like that. He’d liked saving things. Like broken detectives.
“I’ve had a really bad day,” Devlin said, dragging Sadie’s attention back to her. “I had to pick up my daughter from school after one of her classmates fell—possibly with some assistance—down a staircase. Because DDA Walsh went and got himself murdered, I had no choice but to dump my traumatized child on my sister’s doorstep and come here.” She produced a fake smile. “Now stop wasting my time and tell me the rest.”
Falco chuckled. “Damn, Devlin. Why don’t you tell it like it is?” He strode over and poured himself a coffee and then sat down next to his partner.
Knowing a stalemate when faced with one, Sadie decided to throw the pair a bone. If it got them the hell out of here, it would be worth it. She strolled over to the chair that had once been a recliner but no longer worked other than as a chair, dropped into it, and hung her hands between her knees.
“Walsh had visions of grandeur. He wanted to make a big name for himself really fast. And he wanted to get dirty doing it. Two of the biggest things on people’s minds these days are drugs and human trafficking. We all know the drug cartels are eyeball deep in the human trafficking as well as the drugs. You stamp out one, and you stop the flow. For a while anyway. The ambitious DDA made no secret of his stance against drugs.”
“The Osorio cartel,” Falco suggested. “He knows you got in once, and he wanted to pick your brain.”
“Right,” Sadie said with all the sarcasm she could muster. “Apparently someone forgot to tell him that my brain got damaged during that operation. It’s full of pieces from that time period that don’t fit together or make any kind of sense. Like someone lost part of the puzzle, and now it doesn’t come together in a complete picture.”
“When did he first contact you?” Devlin asked.
Sadie stared at the other woman. As much as she didn’t want to like Devlin even a little, she did respect her. Devlin had learned a hard lesson last summer. She’d picked up her own shattered pieces and gotten on with her life. That was the thing about being a cop; sometimes it broke you into a million little bits.
“About a month ago.” Sadie leaned back in the chair and forced her body to relax. It sucked that Walsh was dead. He’d really wanted to do this thing. He’d wanted to help her in the process, but she’d told him he was painting a serious target on his back. Dumb-ass rich boy. “Hewanted to know if I would walk him through anything I remembered about the Osorio cartel’s compound and the operation.”
After an expectant second or two passed, Devlin asked, “Did you?”
“I told him what everyone else already knows. I only have fragments of memory, and they’re foggy and blurry and completely unreliable.”
This was not the whole truth. She had told him this at first—two months ago—but he’d just kept coming back, and finally a month back she’d shared shit about her past with him. Shit she hadn’t shared with anyone since the regression therapy.
Shit that probably got him killed.
“Did he contact you again after his initial visit?” Falco placed his mug on the table at the end of the sofa. “I’m guessing when we check his phone records, last night’s call won’t be the only time he called you in the past month.”
Sadie shrugged. “He called me several times, usually with this burner phone he used. He wasn’t prepared to accept that I couldn’t remember anything useful. I told him that even regression therapy hadn’t pulled it out of my head, but he just kept prodding me. Some people just won’t listen if the words you’re saying messes with their plans.”
“What did he want last night?” Kerri sipped her coffee, her gaze never leaving Sadie’s.
