If Lily was going to survive this fiasco, owing money to a drug dealer’s attorney was not the way to start.
When a couple stepped out of the police station, Heather moved away from the door and stood off to the side with her cell phone. She called her apartment three times, but Lily didn’t pick up. Sighing, Heather shoved her phone back in her purse and shaded her eyes to look for her car. She spotted her gray Ford sitting in one of the spots right up front.
She headed to her car, but when she unlocked the door and pitched her purse into the passenger seat, she had the oddest feeling someone was watching her. She paused and looked around.
There, at the end of the parking lot, was Nick’s massive black four-wheel-drive pickup. It was too far away for her to see details, but she could tell someone was inside. Was Nick watching her? Was he witnessing her humiliation as she left the police station in dirty, wrinkled clothes, her hair a mess, her makeup washed away long ago courtesy of a coarse rag and a filthy bar of soap she’d had to share with five other women? Was he waiting to see how broken she’d be after spending the weekend in jail?
She straightened her spine and got into her car with as much dignity as possible. It took every ounce of control she had not to slam the car door.
* * *
NICK TIGHTENED HIS hands on the steering wheel. The passenger door of his truck opened and his police detective brother climbed inside.
Rafe plopped down beside him. “Is that Heather, in the gray compact?”
“That’s her.”
“You could have come inside and talked to her. That would have been far less creepy than sitting here in the parking lot, like a stalker.”
“She wouldn’t want to see me.”
“How do you know that?”
Nick scrubbed his face and blew out a deep breath. “Because I’m the one who arrested her.”
“Yeah, there is that. But you also made me cash in my only chip with Judge Thompson to convince him to reduce her bail so she could get out of jail. Does she know you arranged that for her?”
“No.” He glanced at his brother. “And she never will.”
Rafe raised his hands. “I’m certainly not telling her, especially since you owe me, big time. You do realize I interrupted Thompson’s weekly golf game?”
Nick winced. “What’s that going to cost me?”
“Babysitting. For a month.”
The dark cloud that had fallen over Nick since the night he’d arrested Heather lifted, if only a little, and he knew he was probably grinning like an idiot. Being an uncle to his oldest sister’s two boys was one of the true pleasures in his life, especially since they loved football as much as he did. If Rafe’s new wife was going to have a baby, Nick would gladly welcome another nephew into the family, or even a niece. Hopefully if the baby was a girl, she’d love sports, because the thought of having to sit through a tea party or playing with dolls had him breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Darby’s pregnant?” he asked.
“Not yet, but we’re working on it.” Rafe grinned. “We’re practicing. A lot. So I’m sure it won’t be long.”
“TMI, brother. Way too much information.”
Rafe laughed but quickly sobered. “You didn’t call me out of a meeting to talk about my new bride. What’s up?”
“Operation Key West.”
“The task force that asked you to raid the club and promptly dumped you when Heather came under suspicion?”
“One and the same.”
“I thought you were suspended. You can’t be involved with a task force if you’re suspended.”
“Still suspended, pending an Internal Affairs investigation. But Waverly told me to come here to talk to the head of the task force.”
“Here? Why would he want you to meet him at the police station? Why not meet you at the DEA office?”
“I asked the same thing, but Waverly just told me to get my butt over here for a ten o’clock meeting.” He shrugged. “I was hoping you might have heard something. Captain Buresh didn’t say anything about the DEA dropping by?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Nick stared through the windshield at the vacant spot where Heather’s car had been a few minutes ago. Even now, several days later, he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that Heather had been at that club the night of the raid.
“Maybe the head of the task force is here to discuss another local operation,” Nick said. “Maybe Waverly wanted to make sure I met him before he left.”
“Why would he want that?”
“Waverly’s ticked at me. He might want to make me grovel and apologize for shaming our unit by having a drug-dealing girlfriend.”
Rafe cocked his head and studied him. “From what you’ve told me about her, she doesn’t sound the type to be dealing, just the opposite. She’s been trying to build a private investigation business for years. She works all the time, putting everything she can into growing her client list. Do you really think she’s going to risk throwing that away to deal drugs on the side? Her sister is—”
“Her identical twin.”
“Okay. Not what I was going to say, but I’ll go with that. Being a twin doesn’t make two people the same and you know it.”
“Yeah. Maybe. It did surprise me that she didn’t let her sister’s drug-dealer lawyer bail her out. If Heather had let him help her she could have been out of jail Saturday morning, like her sister. But she didn’t, and she ended up staying in jail the entire weekend because of it.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”
“You could always talk to her, give her a chance to tell her side.”
Nick absently studied the rows of cars in front of the police station. Rafe was right. Heather did deserve a chance to explain. And he hadn’t given her that chance. He’d been too angry, thinking she’d betrayed his trust in her. Now that he was thinking more clearly, he knew he’d made a mistake in judging her so quickly. But it didn’t matter now. There was no way to fix this.
“I’m not allowed to talk to her now anyway, not with IA all over me. If I’m seen anywhere near her, I can kiss my career goodbye.”
“You sure know how to pick ’em.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying your judgment in women could use some work. You wasted nearly a year of your life with your on-again, off-again engagement to psycho-girlfriend.”
“She wasn’t a psycho. She was...conflicted.”
Rafe let out a shout of laughter.
