Hold On

It was that his job was not the kind of job that at the end of the day, you were filled with joy. Or energy. Or anything.

Except, if you closed a case, you got a high off of your part in bringing justice.

Luckily, those highs were huge and they made the job worth it.

Homicide didn’t give you that. Not ever. Not even if you caught the killer.

It was too final. There was no going back. No coping.

It was just done.

The bad guy had to be caught. He had to be punished. You busted your ass more than any case you had to see to that.

But the only thing a successful takedown offered was closure to those left behind.

And that didn’t mean shit.

“Meet you at the scene,” he muttered unenthusiastically.

“Text you where,” Mike replied in the same tone.

“Right.”

“Later.”

They disconnected and Garrett’s phone sounded again the second his feet hit the floor as he pulled his ass out of bed.

He looked at Mike’s text and texted back his ETA considering shower time, dressing, and getting to the location.

He was there before Mike even though Mike’s house was closer. Then again, Garrett didn’t have a woman in his bed to slow things down, even for a morning kiss.

This reminded him that day was the day Cher’s time was up on making a decision.

Ryker was MIA. Even Tanner couldn’t get a lock on him.

This did not make Garrett happy and it made Tanner worried.

Without Ryker to explain, none of them had any idea what Jaden Cutler had to do with Carlito Gutierrez—Ryker being their usual informant on all things Carlito—or what Robert Paxton had to do with either of them.

And Colt having a conversation with Ryan the day before didn’t shed any light on the situation either. Ryan had been on the job for approximately two hours before Cher spotted him. He’d planted his bugs but hadn’t heard anything since Cutler hadn’t returned home.

A mystery.

And cops didn’t like mysteries.

But all this going down on Cher’s street, Garrett really didn’t like this particular mystery.

He approached the address Mike texted and saw uniforms at the scene, crime tape already up. Marty, plus Marty’s new partner (a rookie), Abe, and Adam were milling around. Ellen, Adam’s partner, wasn’t, which meant she was likely talking to a witness somewhere.

It was early. School and work traffic hadn’t even started, so the scene was deserted except for police presence.

And the scene was right at the mouth of a cul-de-sac in a lower-middle-income development that had been so hard hit by the recession the country was just pulling itself out of, half the houses in the development were abandoned, and they looked it, or they were for sale, and that didn’t look much better.

Empty was empty. There was a feel to it, and no matter what it was that was empty, it didn’t feel good.

Garrett parked, got out, gave a chin lift to Adam and Abe, then moved toward Marty, who had seniority over all the uniforms, and he was closer to a blue Ford Fiesta, the lone car parked on the street. Also the scene of the crime.

“ME’s on his way,” Marty announced when Garrett got near. “Ellen’s inside with the lady who called it in. Mike comin’?”

“Should be here soon,” Garrett muttered, his eyes on the driver’s side of the car. “Fuck,” he whispered.

It was a woman.

He hated homicide because he was a human being.

But he hated it worse when it was a woman.

This one young. Too fucking young.

Then again, they always were.

“Far’s I can see, she took three. The one to the throat did it, though,” Marty said.

He was right. She had a bullet hole in her thigh, one in her chest, but the one in her throat had left a stream of blood down her chest—so much blood, it had pooled in her lap.

GSWs meant blood, obviously, but not that much blood.

The shooter hit an artery.

Good news, she bled out in seconds.