AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You trust this woman, right?”
“Leilah? Of course.”
“Good enough for me.”
Grover ended the call. Ryan walked back inside slowly, puzzling over the conversation.
11
By the timethey’d finished their meal, the sun was setting over the bay. Orange light streaked and shimmered across the water, a muted mirror of the bright orange and yellow striations that striped the sky. Leilah paused beside the car to drink in the sight.
“Gorgeous,” she breathed.
“Yes, you are.”
She turned to Ryan. His eyes gleamed like the sinking sun, but he wasn’t looking at the display in the sky. His gaze was fixed on her. For a moment, she felt as if the sun were in her chest, rising, not setting. A sunburst of warmth filled her.
“Come on. We need to go see your friend. You can be sappy later,” she said, joking to cover the depth of emotion that overtook her.
He held her eyes for another moment before he turned to get in the car. She slid behind the wheel.
“You are, you know. Gorgeous,” he clarified, as if she might not have followed his train of thought.
She smiled at him. “I’d rather be fierce.”
“Luckily you don’t have to choose. You’re both.”
Her grin widened and she turned the key in the ignition. As she shifted into gear and pulled out of the parking spot, she brought the conversation back to the situation at hand.
“So, to recap what you said at dinner, Natsuo’s death is definitely suspicious and someone came around asking Grover questions about an old case.”
“Right. Cortez.”
“And why would the Department of Defense and the Drug Enforcement Administration be interested in that case?”
He twitched his lips to the side and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I mean, Cortez was a drug case. But it wasn’t a big deal.”
“What do you remember about it?” Maybe talking about it would jog something loose in his memory. Or maybe she’d see something he’d missed.
He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “The defendant wasn’t a rocket scientist. He was pulled over for running a red light, and the officer spotted eight ten-milliliter vials of liquid ketamine in the glove compartment when King opened it to take out his registration.”
“King?”
“King Cortez. He was—”
“Is that his real name?”
He chuckled. “Nobody names themselves, Leila. So while I hold King Cortez responsible for many things, his royal moniker isn’t one of them.”
“That’s fair. Go on.”
“Also, his namewasKing. Mr. Cortez met an unfortunate demise in a jailhouse altercation while he was being held pending trial. That’s the reason the case isn’t particularly noteworthy. It never went to trial. We dismissed it when the defendant was murdered.”
“Another murder,” she observed.
“Yeah. It was a frustrating case anyway because he was on the bubble. The ketamine was obviously packaged to distribute. But the amount was low enough that a decent defense attorney would argue it was for personal use. Word on the street is that King was a runner for a dealer who made deliveries. Nat, Grover, and I always thought he was out making the rounds and had been lucky enough to be pulled over toward the end of his deliveries, not at the beginning. We figured the highest and best use of King Cortez would be if we could convince him to give up someone higher in the organization in exchange for a misdemeanor possession charge and one hundred and eighty days, including time served awaiting trial. It would have been a win/win.”
“But, unfortunately, Mr. King died in prison awaiting trial.”
