Walker finally spoke. “This is not news.”
“Jackson.” This time, Peña guessed correctly that Tate had uncovered the last part years ago.
Walker didn’t confirm. He didn’t need to.
“You want real news?” Peña asked.
“If you got it,” Walker answered.
Peña studied him and he did this awhile.
Then he laid it out.
“Your gun, the murder weapon was never recovered.” He ignored the tightening of Walker’s jaw at the mention of “his gun” something he knew his way around but he’d never owned until Shift gave him one, and Peña kept going. “But it didn’t disappear. Know this because another dealer done in LA had a ballistics match to that gun, took me a bit to uncover that, even my source out there balked ‘cause that information was buried so deep. I’m sure it won’t surprise you that another brother got fingered for that, witnesses, prints at the scene, motive, opportunity, overwhelming evidence even if the murder weapon was never recovered. He was goin’ down but he’d been down before. Gang shit. Small time he didn’t enjoy. Learned his lesson. Got out. Kept clean.” Peña leaned in, lost it for a moment and hissed, “Volunteered at the local Boy’s Club to keep kids outta gangs.” Peña leaned back, sucked in breath to pull it together again before he finished, “Didn’t like his time, knew he was facin’ more, maybe knew why, definitely knew who he was up against. Wasn’t gonna go down and found his way to run away from that forever and he did it hangin’ from a beam in his Momma’s garage.”
Walker sucked in breath and looked away. It wasn’t the only reaction he exposed. He knew his body expanded because he knew most of his muscles had tightened reflexively.
Another brother down. Fuck.
He forcibly released his muscles and looked back.
“Been busy, Peña,” he noted.
“Told you, got an interest in Alexa Berry.” When Walker’s eyes narrowed he corrected swiftly, “Walker.”
Walker made no comment.
Peña still wasn’t done. “You copped a plea. Gave you a lotta time to think, I reckon. About what, I don’t know. I could guess, five years of my life rotted away, I know what I would be thinkin’. And, gotta say, Tyrell, wouldn’t normally give a f**k what you do. Problem is, what you do won’t be what you do. What you do will affect others and not just those who it needs to affect. And that’s where I got a problem.”
“This is not your business,” Walker informed him.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Peña shot back and Walker misread him, partially.
“My garage where she parks her Charger, Peña. My bed she’s sleepin’ in. The bouquet of flowers I bought her before I put my ring on her finger that she tore up and pressed the petals between two squares of glass and she hung that shit in my window in the kitchen so she can see them when she does the dishes. This means I am not wrong.”
He’d scored again, this hurt worse and Peña didn’t hide it.
But he denied it. “You don’t get where I’m comin’ from.”
“I get you want a piece of my wife. What you need to get is every inch of her is mine,” he leaned in, “Every inch. You don’t get a piece of her.” He leaned back. “No one does. No one but me.”
“Like I said, you don’t get where I’m comin’ from.”
Fuck, but he wanted to be home with his f**king wife.
Therefore, to get this done, he invited, “Educate me.”
“I got an interest in Alexa Berry Walker, Tyrell, but I’m also a cop. You are not my brother. I do not know you. I do not give a f**k about you. What I do give a f**k about is what’s goin’ on in your head. And I also give a f**k about brothers goin’ down in two states in two ways neither of them f**kin’ good for shit they did… not… do.”
Now that, that surprised the f**k out of him.
He didn’t give it away. He did nothing but stare.
Peña put his cards on the table. “So, the reason I’m here is for Lexie. The reason I’m here is because, I heard she was hitchin’ herself to you, I got interested and what I found got me more interested and that more interested got me more but in the end led to nothin’ but questions, questions without answers. So now another reason why I’m here is because I’m lookin’ for answers. And last, the reason I’m here, right now in this parking lot with you, is to warn you to remember what you got in your garage and hangin’ in your kitchen window and mostly in your bed. And it’s also to give you a head’s up that I’m in town, why I’m in town and whatever the f**k you’re plannin’, so I don’t screw you, you gotta know I am.”
And again, that surprised the f**k out of him.
“You’re doin’ Lexie a favor,” he said quietly.