Carver shrugged. “You’ll get no disagreement from me. But I got no way to prove they’re lying.”
“And where were they when Marcel was killed?” Samantha demanded, dark eyes flashing. “Did you ask them that?”
“They were at their repair shop. And that’s something I can prove. They showed me the security footage that backs up their claim.” Carver noisily slurped the last drops of Sprite through his straw.
“That doesn’t mean they weren’t responsible,” Samantha insisted. “It doesn’t mean they didn’t order Marcel’s murder. Any member of the Basilisks could have—”
“We know.” Washington cut her off. “But short of rounding them all up and waterboarding the information out of them, we’re left holding the bag. And guess what’s inside. A big, stinking pile of shit. Which, if you’ll remember, was my original point.”
“But there is one lead we still might be able to follow,” Carver mused.
Samantha turned to look at him, meal forgotten. Good thing, since Ozzie didn’t think he could take watching her eat one more bite of that damned hot dog. For months, he had wanted her. But now that he knew what it was to hold her, to kiss her, to watch her come apart in his arms, the word want didn’t even live on the same continent as his feelings for her.
“The Basilisks’ president admitted to being in the military,” Carver said. “His vice president too, come to find out. They were both army—went through basic training together and then deployed together. Two tours in Iraq.”
Samantha gaped. “And that wasn’t enough of a connection to make this maple-syrup judge”—Ozzie chuckled at the nickname—“grant you the warrant you want?”
“Judge Maple’s argument is that a lot of men did tours in Iraq. We can’t start investigating all of them based on one weapon that’s supposed to be half a world away and, again, the vague confession of a gangbanger to a local reporter.”
The sound Samantha made then could only be described as incredulous.
“I’m assuming you pulled their military records,” Ozzie said to Washington. The police chief nodded. “Find anything interesting?”
“As a matter of fact,” Washington drawled, looking at him meaningfully, “it wasn’t what we found but what we didn’t find that was interesting.”
Ozzie raised a brow. “Redacted?”
“Their records are blacker than I am.” Washington grinned at his own joke, revealing a set of dimples that rarely made an appearance. “I tried to use my pull as police chief to get an unedited version. Told the DOD and anyone else who would listen that the ex-soldiers in question were suspected of running guns and a whole mess of other criminal activity. But I got the Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Two Hundred Dollars card for my efforts.”
The look in Washington’s eyes was worth a thousand words. Ozzie heard every one of them. If they had any hope of forwarding the investigation, Ozzie would need to put a call in to his connections.
Unfortunately, there was a teeny, tiny, itty-bitty problem with that. Neither Samantha nor Carver knew about his connections. And Ozzie was bound by duty, honor, and his unsigned but understood contract with all the men of BKI, not to mention the freaking president of the United States, to make sure neither Samantha nor Carver ever found out about the aforementioned connections.
Seated between Ozzie and Washington, Samantha glanced back and forth between them. “What?” she finally demanded. When neither of them spoke, her impatience erupted in its usual way…with foul language. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, are you two sharing the same brain right now, or what? And if you are, could you please stop? It puts the rest of us at a distinct disadvantage.”
Okay. So he could do this. He could admit to being able to get the information Washington needed. He just needed to be very careful how he couched his explanation.
“What you…uh…what you might not know about me is that I have some pull with the military brass.” He didn’t want to flat-out lie to Samantha. He was tired of doing that. So he tangoed his way around a half-truth. “It’s possible I could use that pull to get an unredacted version of their military records.”
Samantha cocked her head. “And why do you have pull with the military brass?”
“Oh, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” He waggled his eyebrows, hoping to distract her.
It worked. She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Keep your secrets if it tickles your pickle. But tell me, what—”
She was interrupted by the sound of her phone jangling inside her purse. His lips twitched—a condition he rarely suffered nowadays except when he was in Samantha’s company—as he watched her dig around inside the bag.
Wait for it…
She quickly got fed up and upended the purse. The usual culprits tumbled onto the countertop. Pens, pencils, and notepads. Two Snickers bars and one dented can of Diet Coke. There was a scarf, a wallet, a rubber-banded stack of note cards. Three tampons. A book of stamps. An electric bill and a cable bill. Two tubes of ChapStick. Fingernail clippers. A rolled-up pair of dress socks. And a Kindle e-reader. Beyond that, Ozzie couldn’t tell. It became a blur.
Carver pulled back as if she’d dumped a slithering pile of snakes onto the counter.
“Don’t judge me.” She glared at the detective as she located her phone in the mess. “It’s not my fault I was raised in a society of rampant consumerism.”
She’s adorable, Ozzie thought, pressing a hand to the center of his chest where a strange ache had set up residence.
It’s just indigestion, he assured himself.
Himself answered back with, If that’s what helps you sleep at night, brother.
*
“What do you mean, you’re spiking my second piece?” Samantha growled at her editor over the phone. She pressed a finger into her opposite ear, blocking out the sounds of traffic on Rush Street and the bawdy laughter drifting through the open front door of the bar next door.
She’d been forced to take the call outside because a large group of tourists had packed into the small eatery, all talking at once. Dedicated bodyguard that he was, Ozzie had followed her out onto the sidewalk. Now, he leaned against the side of the building, hands stuffed into the pockets of his biker jacket, injured leg bent, and boot resting flat against the bricks. He looked for all the world as lazy and bored and gorgeous as ever.
That was, if you didn’t take the time to watch his eyes. Those were intense, bright with intelligence, and cataloging every facet of the world around him. She cocked her head, wondering where he had learned to do that. Then Charlie accused her of writing her last piece with an opinionated slant, and she forgot everything except for the conversation at hand.