Burnout_ A Legal Heat Novella - Sarah Castille Page 0,27

going on? You in some kind of trouble?”

She shook her head. “My brother is missing and someone shot up his house. I called it in and everyone went crazy. I’m not sure why.” But Ace knew. He knew and wouldn’t tell her, leaving her to suffer the embarrassment of feeling like the only person in Vancouver who didn’t know the full truth about her brother.

“Come see me after the meeting.” He gave her arm a tight squeeze. “Let me know if I can help.”

Sophie mustered a smile and then walked through the open-plan space to the meeting room. Tall and dark-haired, with deeply tanned skin and a youthful face that belied his forty years with the VPD, Skinner nodded when she came in, but it wasn’t his thin-lipped smile that chilled her blood but the thick file on the table in front of him.

“Sit down please, Officer Nichols.”

She sat and clasped her hands together under the table. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Do you have information about Jason? Have you been able to find him?”

Skinner cleared his throat. “When you applied for the police service, you filled in a number of forms asking for details of family members and for full disclosure of any criminal records, isn’t that right?”

Sophie swallowed past the lump in her throat and nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

“But it seems you failed to disclose your brother’s name or his lengthy criminal history.”

Sophie frowned, thinking fast. “If I recall correctly, the question asked for details of full-blood relatives. Jason is my mother’s son from her first marriage and not a full-blood relation. And in any event, I’m not aware of any criminal record.”

Skinner slid the file across the table. “That entire file is about your stepbrother, Jason Merida. He has a criminal record several pages long, not including his juvenile record, which we managed to have unsealed.”

Her breath left her in a rush as she opened the file. She recognized the photograph of Jason at once, although the mug shot had been taken a long time ago, well before his face had filled out. She scanned his criminal record, noting it consisted mainly of drugs and weapons offences and resisting arrest. He’d been in jail for the last three years, and his current known associates included some of the biggest arms dealers on the West Coast.

For a long moment, she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. She’d known Jason had been in trouble when they were younger, but it had mostly been small stuff—disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, and petty theft. She had also suspected that his paper factory job was likely a cover for something else, but she’d never imagined anything like this. He had been released last year after serving three years in jail for drugs and weapons offences including possession of over fifty guns, three-point-five kilograms of ecstasy worth four hundred thousand dollars for the purposes of trafficking, nine hundred grams of marijuana, and ten stolen passports. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Now, it appeared he had expanded his arms dealing overseas and into the USA and was associated with some of the world’s most wanted arms traffickers.

“I didn’t know.” She flipped through the file. “He said he worked at a paper company and spent a lot of time traveling.”

Skinner shook his head. “As far as we can tell, he’s never held a regular job and never filed taxes. But we are more concerned about his disappearance so close to your transfer to Vancouver and your failure to disclose any details about your connection to a convicted criminal.”

A chill ran through her, and she gripped the table and met Skinner’s gaze head on. “I was investigated when I first joined the police force in Ontario and again when I applied for the transfer, which was only a few months ago. If you need to conduct further investigations, I’m more than happy to cooperate, but you’ll find my contact with Jason over the last few years has been sporadic at best.” Now she knew why.

“Jason’s case is being handled by the Investigative Division. I can assure you they are looking for Jason, but as a suspect and not as a missing person. Our limited resources are best spent looking for innocent taxpaying citizens who are legitimately missing and not suspected criminals who are likely in hiding.”

Sophie gritted her teeth and fought back a wave of nausea. “Can I be involved in whatever investigation the Investigative Division is running?”

Skinner pursed his lips