Page 29 of Innocent Intent

“Come on, Davis. You can give me more than that. Unlike some of the other guys, I don’t entertain teenage-girl gossiping. Your personal shit’s safe with me.”

Davis laughed at the reference to the back-and-forth he and Harper had engaged in shortly after he took over the Williams case. “I guess you heard that.”

Reese smirked and shrugged again. “We all did. It was funny as shit because Harper really fucking hates that they took Evans’s case from him and put you on it. He was very vocal about the power exchange, and now the guys keep giving him shit about running his mouth. You’re not his favorite person at the moment.”

“I don’t give a damn how Harper feels.”

“Which is why you have more allies than you think. Harper’s a decent-enough guy and a damn good detective most days, but sometimes, he forgets that we’re all on the same team. The guys appreciate that you don’t give a damn about what Harper thinks. Don’t discount their stance on things. Like I said before, you might not want friends, but it won’t hurt to have allies, and you’ve got them if you want them.”

Davis lifted his beer, taking down some before he nodded. “’Preciate it.”

He decided that since Reese was being genuine, he’d open up some about why he transferred to their precinct.

“My ex thought that me being a detective wasn’t good enough. She kept urging me to get a law degree. When I refused, she ended up engaged to a lawyer, a district attorney, to be exact. Seems she was more interested in being with the title, regardless of the package it came in.”

Reese nodded to Davis before he clarified. “The reason I transferred was because her fiancé ended up becoming the DA for my precinct. Annoyed the shit out of me every time I had to work with him. I didn’t give a damn that he was marrying my ex, but I guess it made him feel special, which meant he always gave me shit trying to flex his position. I needed a change, so I transferred here. A new city where I’m not attached to anyone or anything and plenty of cases to solve.”

“Was it a coincidence that he was assigned to your precinct?”

Davis scoffed. “Doubtful. If I had to guess, her father pulled some strings at her request. He’s very connected in New York. She wanted me to be reminded of what I passed up, like I gave a shit.”

“That’s a fucking blow to the ego. You regret not getting your law degree?”

“Fuck no. I like being on this side of things. Being on the other side blurs the lines. Lawyers bend and twist the rules to get the results they want. We deal in facts. We let the evidence guide us. They manipulate the truth, which doesn’t always mean the good guys win or the bad guys pay for their sins.”

“We deal in the facts to solve our cases, but the evidence sometimes tells a far different story than the one that truly happened. We don’t always find the truth either.”

“Agreed, but once we hand it over, we can confidently walk away knowing we did our part. That’s what makes this side the lesser of two evils. We use the evidence to tell the story; they use it to tell the story they want to be told.”

“A good detective, that is. Not all of us play by the same rules,” Reese added. Davis agreed. Some functioned by the letter of the law, and others saw nothing wrong with cutting corners or misrepresenting the facts.

“I’ll drink to that.” Davis lifted his beer and tipped it toward Reese. Reese returned the gesture, finishing the one he was working on while Davis drained half of his.

“You want another one of those?”

“Might as well make this worth my while since it’s on your dime.”

Reese chuckled amusedly. “Damn, and here I was thinking I was good company when it’s really the free beers keeping your ass on that stool.”

Davis grinned and shrugged. “We’ll consider it an even split for now. But I’m starting to think that Parker might have rubbed off on you with the talking too much thing.”

Reese threw his head back and laughed. “Motherfucker, I knew that shit would be contagious, and you didn’t have to call me on it.”

“Hey, you wanted me here. You’ll have to live with what you get.”

Reese held up two fingers to signal for another round. Once he got acknowledgment from the bartender, he nodded, lifting his beer.

“I guess I do, don’t I?”

A few hours later, Davis felt a little buzz as he parked in his driveway. Wasn’t the wisest decision driving home after six beers and two glasses of cognac, but he had always been able to handle his liquor. Even with the buzz, he was still in complete control of all his faculties.

Davis opened the glove box and removed the flash drive. Once he’d dropped the contents of Williams’s safety deposit box by the precinct to be properly bagged and tagged, he’d requested a copy of the flash drive. Davis was hopeful there would be something on it he could use. They’d dusted for fingerprints, and the only ones present belonged to Williams, which had Davis eager to find out what he was hiding. By the time CSU finished and made his copy, Davis had a little less than half an hour to get to Charlie’s to meet Reese. Finally home, he was motivated to see what he had. He stepped out of his car, hit the locks to secure his vehicle, and navigated inside the house, moving through the motions of his regular routine.

Car keys were tossed on the coffee table, and the remote was in hand shortly after, allowing Davis to flick on the TV more out of habit than with the intent of watching. He had a flash drive to check out, which meant the TV would end up being background noise.

A quick trip to his room to grab his laptop brought Davis back to the kitchen, where he removed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and then folded his long frame into one of the small wooden chairs of his kitchen dinette to power up the device.

While he waited, he downed the bottle of water, then keyed his password before lifting from the chair to get another bottle, tossing the empty one in the trash. When he was seated again, he plugged in the flash drive and clicked on the file as soon as it illuminated on his screen.

---