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No kidding.
And she wasn’t the only one.
FOUR
Roxie scrolled down on her computer screen so she could keep reading. The police report on the homeless veteran’s death was pretty sparse. William Lincoln Turner had died alone in an alley, by all accounts. No one had collected much in terms of evidence. An autopsy hadn’t been done, just a drug test that had come back positive for a cocktail of uppers and downers that would prolong a high—and in this case, had contained a lethal dose for this man. Something new to him, or his heart hadn’t been able to take the strain anymore.
No dealer killed their client on purpose. That didn’t make sense.
Drugs were manufactured to make the most money, stretching the purity with other substances that could have nasty effects.
A mug of coffee landed beside her hand.
Roxie flinched and twisted around, trying not to flip out of her skin at being jogged from her thoughts.
“Sorry.” Peter grabbed a chair and slid it over to sit by her.
“Don’t worry about it.” The guy was a good kid, who might be a trained operative now, but he still made her feel every one of the years of experience she had on him. She was about to turn thirty-one. Nearly ten years older than him, and sometimes it felt like a hundred.
“What have you found so far?”
“I’m still familiarizing myself with the victim.” She hadn’t yet gotten to the incident involving Liam’s father. “He has a niece who lives in Seattle still, but she’s never lived here and only spoke with officers over the phone when they informed her of his death as his next of kin.”
Peter sipped from his own coffee.
“Maybe he has friends from the Corps.” She still had contacts in the military. Perhaps one of them could give her information on his teammates or his squad. Marines that he would’ve kept in contact with. Everyone she knew and had been friends with from the Marines, she’d cut them out of her life afterward.
Shame. Necessity.
Didn’t matter which it was. She’d had to build back friendships and got to choose who she had in her life right now. Her roommate was her best friend. Things were easy there. Why complicate it?
“Good idea,” Peter said. “Maybe Liam can give us some context on the incident with his father. A cop’s point of view.”
“He was still in when it happened.” They had been deployed when his father was killed in the line of duty. She tried not to let on that talking about him wasn’t easy.
“I’ll see if he can meet us. Maybe for lunch.”
She looked at her screen. “There’s a lot to read through. Why don’t you do lunch and catch me up when you’re back?”
Peter said nothing.
Roxie glanced over to see how much she’d managed to fool him.Not much, by the look of his expression.“Dividing tasks gets them done faster.”
“Mmm.” Peter took a sip, staring at her over the rim of the mug. “Right.”
Roxie slumped back into the chair. “Fine. Ask.”
“I heard you two had…words.”
Roxie sighed. “During the search for River’s father?”
“They said you and Liam were off to the side, having some kind of heated discussion.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.” She winced.
Peter frowned. “Did he hurt you?”
Yes, but not the way you think.Liam thought she’d hurt him with no regard for his feelings, so he’d lashed out. Hurt her instead. “Both of us said things we regret.” Hopefully, he regretted it as much as she did. Otherwise, her opinion of him had been all wrong, and he wasn’t a good man.
