IT SHOULDN’T HAVE SURPRISED me how well my brother’s girlfriend was taking the news about her father’s murder. After all, she had never met the guy and he had tried to hire the city’s worst and most violent criminal to murder her, but there was something about Dovie that just screamed goodheartedness and sweetness. I often forgot that she had to have a core of concrete, reinforced with rebar, in order to stand toe-to-toe with my thug of a younger sibling and to survive in the Point.
Race was another story. I expected rage, anger, fury . . . I expected anything but the icy indifference that seemed to cloak him as soon as I gave the two of them the news. There was no love lost between Race and his old man. In fact, more than once threats had been tossed around, and had Reeve not materialized out of the blue with her outrageous story, I would have put Race and my brother at the top of my suspects list for the old man’s murder.
Neither man made it a secret that they thought Lord Hartman deserved to take a long walk off of a short pier, but Race’s frozen expression as he shifted his gaze between me and his sister told me that there was also still a part of him that wanted to grieve the loss of his parent, no matter how awful that parent may have been. Dovie must have sensed it too because she reached out a hand, put it on Race’s shoulder, and gave it a squeeze.
“How did it happen? Did Novak’s guys find out where the feds took him?”
I rubbed the back of my neck and turned the cell phone I had in my hand over and over so that the corner tapped on the messy surface of the desk. I was dying to open it and scroll through the messages, not just for the information but also to see if the raven haired beauty was actually on the up-and-up. There was something about her, something that stuck with me the first time she walked into the precinct and told me she had dirt on Novak, that she had made a deal with the gangster to kill her sister’s boyfriend. I’d never seen anyone so calm and collected when admitting to a felony before. I had never seen anyone so composed when they were pretty much throwing the rest of their life away, and I would never forget how endlessly dark and unreadable her navy-blue gaze was as she candidly admitted to relaying Dovie’s location to Novak’s goons as repayment for the hit he had carried out upon her request. Reeve was the reason Dovie got snatched off the street and the reason I had been forced to watch my brother, my only family, put a gun to his head with every intention of pulling the trigger to save not only his lady but me as well. Even with that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the beautiful backstabber since the feds had whisked her off after she agreed to testify against the rest of Novak’s crew if they could guarantee her immunity and a new life.
“No, we don’t think it was anyone from Novak’s crew. I’m looking into it.”
Race lifted a gold-tinted eyebrow and the corner of his mouth pulled down. “More dirty cops?”
That was what made Race so dangerous and why he had been the clear choice to take over the long-running criminal enterprise once Novak was out of the picture. He was just so damn smart. He could see the dots connecting before they were even laid out.
“I’m not ready to say that yet. I’m looking into it.” I blew out a deep breath. “I called Bax and Brysen. I thought you would want to tell them what was going on in person.” The real reason I had called in reinforcements was because I wasn’t sure how their reactions were going to play out. Bax would protect Dovie from anything that hurt her, including the news of her father’s demise, and now I thought that Brysen was the only person that could snap Race out of the frigid shock he seemed to be encased in. I was a cop. I never underestimated how beneficial backup could be.
Dovie gave a small grin and shook her head at me a little. “You wanted Bax here because you want to make sure he doesn’t