Love to Hate You (Hope Valley #9) - Jessica Prince Page 0,10
now. I just . . .” She trailed off, her voice tiny and indecisive, so unlike the woman Leo and I had come to know.
Charlotte Belmont was a fighter, stronger than anyone I’d ever met. She’d lived a life I wouldn’t have wished on my worst enemy, and yet, despite all the nightmares she’d endured, she never once just gave in. She was tough as nails, refusing to roll over and accept the shit hand she’d been dealt. And now, she’d purposefully put herself in a dangerous situation in the hopes of finally being able to pull herself out of the muck once and for all.
“Charlie,” I said on a low, gruff clip. “What the fuck is going on? Is it Cormack? Is he getting suspicious?”
Leo’s back went straight at the mention of Darrin Callo’s partner on the force. When Darrin was killed, Leo and I had discovered he’d been looking into some of the unsolved drug cases. The man aspired to be a detective and was taking the initiative to get there.
A while back, Malachi Black, had run his meth operation from a hidden location up in the mountains. He’d been a thorn in the side of every cop in three counties, keeping his hands just clean enough that none of us could touch him. Everyone knew what he was doing, but there was no way for us to prove it or tie him to the drugs leaking into Hope Valley and the surrounding towns. We hit gold when he bought out a local strip club and started moving his shit through there. We worked with a couple of the dancers who weren’t big fans of Black’s new “private dance” policy and didn’t like being forced into dealing, and with their help, we shut that bastard down.
Now he was rotting in prison, but the streets hadn’t gotten clean. His product was still being moved, and we didn’t have the first clue how that was.
We’d suspected Callo’s death had something to do with the cases he’d been looking into, but we weren’t able to piece together how. Until Charlie came into play. She’d been living on the streets when she met Black and made the mistake of thinking he could be her savior. She’d been an unwilling participant in his business, knowing the ins and outs better than most of the other players. As soon as he went down, his partner stepped into his place, and to hear Charlie tell it, he was even worse than Black.
It hadn’t made sense how, for years, Black had been able to allude cops from three different cities. Until Charlie filled us in on who his partner was.
Officer Greg Cormack had been with the department going on fifteen years, starting as a rookie, and hadn’t once been promoted to a higher rank in all that time. He’d been just quiet and unassuming enough that no one really paid much attention to him. People had questioned why he hadn’t moved up the ranks, but other than that, no one thought much of it. As it turned out, he was too busy with his illegal side hustle to work his way up in the department.
He’d been the key reason it had taken us so long to take Black down. He’d also been the one who told Black when we were about to raid his strip club, making it so the man could abduct two women before going on the run. It was a goddamn miracle neither of them had been hurt.
Now, with Black gone, Cormack was filling his shoes while growing the drug business. Problem was, he played his shit much closer to the vest, not nearly as trusting with his crew as Black had been, so his was the only name Charlie had been able to give us so far.
Neither Leo nor I liked her putting herself in this position, but after Callo’s death, she’d been adamant that she help us take down the person who’d killed an innocent husband and father. There had been absolutely no talking her out of it, and Leo and I both had tried . . . hard and often.
“No. At least I don’t think so. I’m not sure if he suspects I’m working with the cops, but something’s got him seriously tweaked. He’s closing ranks. I’m still in the inner circle, but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll last. Think he’s feeling the noose tighten.”
I cut a look to Leo and gave my head an angry shake. “For