Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) - Karen Rose Page 0,60

I saw her,” Tom said, then winced. He could hear the acid in his own voice and wasn’t foolish enough to think that Rafe hadn’t. Sure enough, when he turned from the fridge with two beers, Rafe’s brows were lifted.

“Do I want to know?” Rafe asked.

Tom shrugged. “Nothing to know.” He rummaged in the drawer for a bottle opener, then flipped the caps off the bottles. “She had company when I got home.”

Rafe looked way too interested. “Company?”

Tom handed Rafe a bottle and drained half of his own in one gulp. It had been a long day and technically he was off the clock, so he wasn’t going to feel guilty about drinking a beer.

He stared at the bottle in his hand, glaring. Yeah, he was going to feel guilty, because he hadn’t yet traced Cameron Cook’s e-mail. He set the bottle aside and pulled some cheese from the refrigerator. “I didn’t have lunch. Want some?”

“It’s dinnertime,” Rafe said mildly. “Who was her company?”

Tom took his annoyance out on the cheese, stabbing at the block with more force than needed. “Mike.” The Groper. “Some nurse she knew at the veterans’ home.”

“Mike,” Rafe said slowly. “Well, he wasn’t there just now.”

“Because he left.” He finished slicing the cheese and put a plate on the kitchen island between them. Time to change the subject. “Today, at your parents’ house? You looked like you wanted to say something before I left, but you didn’t.”

“That’s why I’m here. The gang, the one whose tattoo Belmont has on his back?”

“The Chicos? What about them?”

“I know them.”

Tom went still. “How?”

“I was Narcotics before Homicide. I worked with the Gangs division.”

Tom nodded. “I knew that. You went undercover. Took down a local crime boss.” That was no small feat. Undercover work could be emotionally debilitating, on top of being dangerous. Especially for a man as social as Rafe seemed to be. “How long were you under?”

“Two years.” And from his expression, those had been very difficult years.

“And you met someone from the Chicos?”

He nodded again. “They didn’t call themselves that then. They were still Yanjingshe. Going by ‘Chicos’ was a smart move on the new leadership’s part. They were a supplier to the organization where I was embedded. This was before the big raids.”

“Agent Croft told me about them. She also said the management had changed.”

“True. Many of the lower-level guys moved up to take over when the bosses were hauled in by the Feds. The lower-level guys would have been the guys we worked with, so . . .”

Tom felt a small spurt of hope. “Excellent. Croft is checking with tattoo artists. If she can track the one who did their tats and they point us to DJ’s fellow gang members, maybe you can do an ID from a photo array.”

Rafe’s expression went wry. “I get to be a civilian witness. Oh goody.”

Tom winced. Rafe was on DB from the police force because of an injury he’d sustained months before. Last he’d heard, Rafe’s return to the force wasn’t a given. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s fine,” Rafe interrupted firmly. “I didn’t take offense. Seriously. It’ll just be weird, being on the other side of the process.”

Tom thought about Tory. He hadn’t been interviewed by the cops when she’d been killed, because no one knew they were a thing. He hadn’t come forward, either. He’d tracked down her killer on his own. And . . . well, he wasn’t proud of the outcome, but the asshole was dead, and that was what was really important. The monster would never hurt another innocent woman.

“Yo. Hunter.”

Tom blinked, suddenly aware that Rafe was snapping his fingers. “Sorry.”

“Where did you go?”

“Somewhere I don’t like to talk about.”

Rafe lifted his brows. “Fair enough. Anyway, I’m happy to help you take down some of those Chicos bastards if I can. Full disclosure—it’s personal for me.”

Tom sat on a stool, leaning an elbow on the counter. “How so?”

Rafe’s expression was a combination of grim determination and banked sadness. “You once told me that you left the NBA for the FBI because you lost someone. That you’d always planned to make the change, but that the loss spurred you.”

Tom remembered the conversation. It was the first time he’d met the Sokolov clan, the first time Irina had sent him home with cake and a motherly hug, making him miss his own mother so much that he’d called her as soon as he’d gotten to his car. “You said you’d also lost someone, that that was