when I wake in the morning, and I don’t want to go to sleep without you in my arms every night.”
Her lips curved gently, and she whispered, “This is scary.”
“What’s scary about it, sweetheart?”
“Because I feel the very same way. But it’s also scary because I’ve never felt this, so I don’t know what to expect.”
“Then we take it one day at a time until we’re both at the same place.”
Kimberly barely roused from her deep sleep when Kyle kissed her early the next morning. With his lips still pressed to her forehead, he whispered, “See you tonight, babe.”
She heard him go downstairs and woke just enough to feel guilty that she had not given him a better sendoff. Pushing the covers back, she padded to the top of the stairs and had just started down when she heard his voice near the front door.
“Alex, I’m heading in early because I may have found a way to tie some of our loose ends together at Kilton. I went through Kimberly’s notes yesterday and discovered that there’s a personal tie between the Kiltons and Congressman Dell. She has pictures from inside their office and they’re all pretty chummy. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not unusual for politicians and donors, but I’d like to follow the money trail a little more. I know I can’t use her for inside information on Kilton, but her insight gives me the idea that we should dig into them more. This might shut the Kilton pipeline down. Okay, see you when you get there.”
Her front door opened and closed, the sound of Kyle’s heavy boots fading as he walked toward his truck. She remained rooted to the floor, her heart pounding. I went through Kimberly’s notes. Discovered a tie. Shut Kilton down.
Her legs gave out and she plopped her ass onto the stairs. The sting of tears hit her eyes as her heart spasmed. She lifted her fist and pressed it against her breastbone, wondering if someone her age could have a heart attack or if it was simply breaking.
21
Kyle dragged his hand through his hair, pacing in front of the evidence board while Alex leaned against their desks. He had printed out the information he’d photographed from Kimberly’s notes, including the organizational chart of Kilton Pharma.
“I kept thinking it might be somebody lower down. Somebody from the warehouse. Somebody who could get hold of the driver schedules easily. But with this tie into the congressman, I’m now looking at this differently. Someone with pull and money put the fear of God into Beth Washington and Doug Tiller. I thought in terms of somebody who had possible reaches into prison, but now I’m thinking it came from higher up.” He stopped pacing and glanced over to Alex. “What have we got on Congressman Dell?”
Alex grabbed the folder sitting next to him on the desk and flipped it open. “Artog International Shipping. Hope City and New York are their two major eastern city ports. They have ships that span the globe, with headquarters in New York, Guangzhou, China, and are based out of St. Petersburg. Interpol lists them as having ties to Russian Mafia, but then it appears that a lot of what comes out of Interpol is controlled by Russia anyway. The FBI has certainly had their eyes on them.”
“Is there anything to tie the congressman into that shipping company? Russian Mafia? And does that even have anything to do with the drugs coming out of Kilton?”
“Artog is used as a shipping company by Kilton. They not only do port shipping but air shipping as well.”
“So, we can definitely tie Kilton with Artog shipping, tie them to the congressman, and tie them to the company that owns the truck that stole from pharmaceuticals from Kilton?”
“Right,” Alex agreed. Holding his gaze, he added, “But this is a huge mess. What do we do about it?”
“Break it down.”
Both Alex and Kyle turned around at the sound of their captain behind them. Rick Hollister moved closer, stared at the board, then turned around and looked at the two detectives. “Look, you’ve got a lot of links to some pretty impressive players in this game. But if you start chasing every angle right now, you’re going to lose sight of trying to close the pipeline of opioids from Kilton Pharmaceuticals. Focus on that. The other,” he said, waving his hand toward the board, “shipping company, Russian ties, congressman… all that can wait. Now, you can use that to put some