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“What does Raphi want with Oscar?”
Morgan shrugged. “How should I know?”
Maybe he didn’t know and was quickly realizing he was the middleman. Liam said, “Where is he?”
“Café Pietro.” Morgan lifted his chin. “Tell him I said to kill you slow.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were on their way out the doors, and Liam was returning a missed call.
“Something up?”
He shook his head in response to Jasper’s question. “Buddy of mine in Marine Intelligence.”
The call connected. “O’Connell, how the heck are you?”
Liam grinned. “Good. You got my message?”
“Sure did.” He whistled. “Buddy, you need to stay away from Roxanne Helton. She’s bad news, man.Unstable.If you get my meaning. Steer clear of that mess.”
“Anything on the guy she said came after her?”
“Thedeadguy?” His buddy laughed. “Killed while on leave in South Carolina. Car accident. The body was burned beyond recognition. Shoot, if it is suspicious, she’s probably the one who did it.”
THIRTEEN
“Thanks.” Roxie hung up the desk phone and turned in her chair.
“You got something?” Peter leaned back in his, close enough to reach out to each other but not so close they’d bump each other’s chairs. “That sounded promising.”
She nodded because the conversation with a civilian employee at the police department had given her information they needed. “The nurse who was supposed to meet Sierra Turner, the one who worked at Hurstwhile, was in their database. The night before they were meant to have coffee, she got in a traffic accident. She died. That’s why she was a no-show.”
Peter’s eyebrows rose.
Like always, there was something in his expression she didn’t normally see in civilians. She usually saw it in people she’d served with, who had seen the kind of crazy stuff she had. Horror, terror. All those things. When it hammered at your psyche in the relentless way war did, it sank into your soul. There was no stopping it.
Peter had seen things. He’d experienced real fear and pain.
It might seem strange to a lot of people, but it was easier to trust someone like him. They’d clicked in a way that made him a friend and not just a colleague. He had a girlfriend, so he was safe in a lot of ways. Easy to be around.
Roxie got her thoughts back on track. “The death was ruled an accident. The car exploded when it went over the edge where there’s no barrier and landed in the river, burning the body beyond recognition. The report said it was like nothing the responding state police officer had ever seen.”
“Whoa.”
She nodded. “The police never dug deeper than what it appeared to be, which was a tragic accident. And I can’t really blame them. There was nothing about it that indicated foul play or gave them suspicion of it.”
Peter shrugged one shoulder. “Same with William Lincoln Turner. No one looked below the surface.”
“If we’re going to start claiming there’s more to it, then we’re the ones who will have to dig. We’ll have to find something concrete that connects them. Something to convince the police to reopen these old cases as homicides.”
And what was the likelihood they’d be inclined to do that with deaths that occurred years ago. There were plenty of open cases now. People in imminent danger. Killers roaming the streets because the police were still compiling evidence.
If they brought up these old cases, it could mean the police shifted resources to work those, and a dangerous person could be on the streets even minutes longer than they would’ve been otherwise. Roxie, of all people, knew how much could happen in a matter of minutes.
She’d been left for dead.
“You okay?”
She managed to nod…and resist the need to run a finger down her temple over the scar Mark had given her. “Yep. What do we do now?”
