Gone Too Far (Devlin & Falco #2) - Debra Webb Page 0,14
sat down next to his partner.
Knowing a stalemate when faced with one, Sadie decided to throw the pair a bone. If it got them the hell out of here, it would be worth it. She strolled over to the chair that had once been a recliner but no longer worked other than as a chair, dropped into it, and hung her hands between her knees.
“Walsh had visions of grandeur. He wanted to make a big name for himself really fast. And he wanted to get dirty doing it. Two of the biggest things on people’s minds these days are drugs and human trafficking. We all know the drug cartels are eyeball deep in the human trafficking as well as the drugs. You stamp out one, and you stop the flow. For a while anyway. The ambitious DDA made no secret of his stance against drugs.”
“The Osorio cartel,” Falco suggested. “He knows you got in once, and he wanted to pick your brain.”
“Right,” Sadie said with all the sarcasm she could muster. “Apparently someone forgot to tell him that my brain got damaged during that operation. It’s full of pieces from that time period that don’t fit together or make any kind of sense. Like someone lost part of the puzzle, and now it doesn’t come together in a complete picture.”
“When did he first contact you?” Devlin asked.
Sadie stared at the other woman. As much as she didn’t want to like Devlin even a little, she did respect her. Devlin had learned a hard lesson last summer. She’d picked up her own shattered pieces and gotten on with her life. That was the thing about being a cop; sometimes it broke you into a million little bits.
“About a month ago.” Sadie leaned back in the chair and forced her body to relax. It sucked that Walsh was dead. He’d really wanted to do this thing. He’d wanted to help her in the process, but she’d told him he was painting a serious target on his back. Dumb-ass rich boy. “He wanted to know if I would walk him through anything I remembered about the Osorio cartel’s compound and the operation.”
After an expectant second or two passed, Devlin asked, “Did you?”
“I told him what everyone else already knows. I only have fragments of memory, and they’re foggy and blurry and completely unreliable.”
This was not the whole truth. She had told him this at first—two months ago—but he’d just kept coming back, and finally a month back she’d shared shit about her past with him. Shit she hadn’t shared with anyone since the regression therapy.
Shit that probably got him killed.
“Did he contact you again after his initial visit?” Falco placed his mug on the table at the end of the sofa. “I’m guessing when we check his phone records, last night’s call won’t be the only time he called you in the past month.”
Sadie shrugged. “He called me several times, usually with this burner phone he used. He wasn’t prepared to accept that I couldn’t remember anything useful. I told him that even regression therapy hadn’t pulled it out of my head, but he just kept prodding me. Some people just won’t listen if the words you’re saying messes with their plans.”
“What did he want last night?” Kerri sipped her coffee, her gaze never leaving Sadie’s.
Here it was. The moment for another piece of the truth. Devlin and Falco were good detectives. Relentless. They would figure it out eventually or bug the hell out of her until she told them what they wanted to know just so they’d go away. She had no interest in prolonging the misery.
“He said he believed he’d found an inside source. Possibly related to the distribution of illegal drugs in Birmingham. He and Leo Kurtz were going to confront this source. Walsh would offer a deal for cooperation. The usual bullshit.”
“You have any idea who this source was?” Kerri nudged. “Man? Woman?”
Sadie laughed, the sound as dry as the leaves would be in Alabama’s relentless summer heat. She actually couldn’t remember the last time she’d experienced a real laugh. “He referred to the person as ‘the source.’ Never indicated male or female. Obviously since you’re here, the source wasn’t interested in the deal he had to offer.”
Devlin glared at her with that holier-than-thou attitude. But they both knew the real story. Devlin was no saint. She had secrets. Sins. Everyone did. She’d gotten her hands dirty at least once, by God.