pain lodges in the back of my throat.
“I recognize her.”
All heads turn in my direction. “I saw her last night coming out of Sweet Tarts with those two. Clearly it was before this.” I point to the photos from the crime scene. “She’s a dancer there.”
My gut twists. Did I miss something last night? Was I too focused on Ali up on that stage that I missed something else going down?
I shake my head. “They were fine when I last saw them. The three of them stumbled out of the club, drunk, and were heading off when I was already outside.”
Mason frowns at me. “What were you doing there last night? We have everything we need on the Marino case right now.”
I shrug it off like it’s nothing, not wanting to reveal why I was really there. If Mason knew, it’d spiral shit into something so much worse than it already is. Only he knows about my mom and why bringing down this family means so much to me. Add a vendetta to nearly screwing a nineteen-year-old girl who works for them and I’ll be on the receiving end of Mason’s extraordinarily bad mood today. It won’t be pretty.
“Wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything,” I reply. My nonchalance seems to work because no one pays me any more attention.
“So what are we looking at then? This our case or what?” Elias asks, folding his arms across his chest.
“It is now. Cassidy, you want to finish explaining?”
Cassidy stands from her desk and walks over to the large screen, pointing to the bullet wounds in the three bodies. “The slugs from the bodies came from unregistered weapons. All AK-47’s. And the only gun supplier we know in this town, who sells those is—”
“Marino,” I finish for her.
She nods.
“So that’s where we start. Why don’t Cass and I go to Sweet Tarts and find out what we can about the girl?” Elias jumps on it a little too quick, already heading over to his desk for something.
I roll my eyes.
Cassidy scoffs her face grimacing. “Ew, Elias.”
He shrugs, eyes widening. “What?”
I chuckle. Had to give the guy points for trying to get into a joint full of mostly naked women, even if he was as obvious as fuck.
Mason stands, feet wide, shoulders tall. “All right you two. Nobody needs to go to the strip club. I’m already on it. Plus, we can’t have Roamyn showing up there anytime and being seen either. Not after he’s been in there for the past few weeks.” He turns to Elias and me. “While you two were late getting in, we weren’t. We had uniforms pick up one of their girls for us this morning. She’s in interrogation waiting on us. Her name’s Alison Jenkins.”
Pressure weighs on my chest as Mason searches across Cassidy’s desk full of paperwork. He pulls out a photo and dumps it in front of me.
Ali’s face stares up at me from the photo. I finger the edge of the mug shot and run my hands over her sullen cheeks and bloodshot eyes. She looks sad, lost, and fucking terrible.
Mason stares at me. Suspicion in his eyes. “You know her?”
I shake my head. “No. Not really.”
It’s not a lie. It’s just not the whole the truth. I may have thought about her every day for the past few years. But she’s still a stranger to me.
Cassidy rattles off Ali’s details as I continue looking at her photo.
“Alison Jenkins, age nineteen. Although like our dead girl, she has a fake ID saying she’s twenty-one. Priors for drug possession, public nuisance, possible prostitution, but nothing ever sticks because she’s protected by the Marino crime family. Where the connection is, I can’t figure out. But whatever it is, the girl is underage and doing God knows what for them. If we can get her to talk, we could hit the jackpot here. She obviously has an in that could prove very valuable.”
“Let me talk to her. See what I can get out of her,” Elias offers.
“No. I’ll do it,” I announce with a sharpness in my tone I forgot to try and hide.
Mason nods. His eyes never leaving me. “All right. Well, Roam and I will have a crack at the girl and you two find the Misery’s Angels and ask them about the shooting seeing it was right by their clubhouse. They must know something so I want to know if they were involved.”
Cassidy groans. “You know they won’t give us anything, right?”
“Won’t know