Page 73 of Westin

“Tell me they forced you into it!”

He focused on her, his eyes moving slowly over her face. “Oh, Lee, my beautiful Lee. You were always so idealistic. All those undercover jobs, all those slimeballs always shoving their hands up your skirts, yet you still somehow held on to your morals.” He moaned, arching his back as he coughed, more blood splattering on the surfaces around him. “How was I supposed to turn down all that money?”

Something broke inside of Lee. Westin could see it, something about the expression on her face, the very way she held herself. His words destroyed something in her.

“Fuck you, Will,” she whispered. She stood up, placing all her weight on his chest as she did, then releasing the pillow that had been keeping the air from sucking into his chest wound. He grunted again, but he was actually smiling even as more blood bubbled up out of his mouth.

“Do you think it’s over?” he asked, the blood spilling, getting over everything. “It’s not over. They’re coming for you.”

“They’ll have a fight when they do,” Westin informed him. He took Lee’s arm and pulled her away from him, but before he could, she kicked him, landing a kick right to his ribs. He grunted again, but then he began to laugh, the sound one Westin would not soon forget.

“We have to get out of here. We have to warn Clint.”

Lee stooped to pick up Will’s gun, sliding it into her waistband where the other had been. Then she grabbed the Hispanic’s, and then Clint’s where she’d left it on the floor behind the couch. Westin got their jackets, tossing hers to her before opening the front door. He peeked cautiously around the frame. Lee slipped up behind him and pressed one of the guns into his hand. He didn’t have a lot of experience with handguns. His preferred weapon was a shotgun. But he knew how to use it. One did not work the oil fields in Texas without learning how to use a variety of weapons, guns in particular.

Together, they stepped onto the porch and made a quick beeline for his truck where it was still parked in the spot he’d left it the night before. He pulled out a little too fast, mud flying up under the tires as they slid through the slush that used to be a lovely layer of snow.

They didn’t see anyone at first, even as Westin directed the truck over the small rise that led to the trail back toward the main section of the ranch. But less than half a mile later, he spotted an ATV in the distance.

“That’s not one of ours.”

Lee came to attention, leaning forward slightly to attempt to get a better look. It was a single ATV with what looked like only one person on board. It was headed in the opposite direction to them, but there was no doubt whoever was driving it had spotted them. There was nothing between the two vehicles. No cover.

“Who is it, Lee? Who’s coming for you?”

“Razor.” It took a little while for the puzzle pieces to come together, but once they did, it created a picture Lee hadn’t wanted to see.

Two years ago, it was a cartel out of California. They were supplying fentanyl, cocaine, and meth to neighborhoods from Sacramento to Los Angeles to Portland to Salt Lake City. Lee and Will had traced them back to that low-level politician, had taken out the whole operation with the evidence they had. It had come together beautifully, every piece fitting in a way that was rare in her line of work. But she hadn’t thought twice about it because it was good. They’d made a dozen arrests. The fentanyl overdoses had stopped. They’d achieved what they set out to achieve.

Fast-forward two years. Cops in Arizona knew there was a gang moving drugs and weapons through Phoenix but they had yet to figure out who was running the operation. They’d made arrests, but it was always street-level dealers, never anyone high enough in the hierarchy to do damage to the operation, to stop it from moving in their city. They brought in the DEA to root out the leadership and take them down. In a matter of weeks, Lee and Will had gotten close to one of the lieutenants, Fang, to put together a map of the leadership. Everything pointed to this guy, Razor, as the head of the whole operation. He was their target, and Fang was going to lead them to Razor.

And then everything went to hell and Lee was on the run, trusting her partner to get her somewhere safe. Instead, he walked her right into the monsters’ den.

Until Clint had pointed out the illogical aspects of Will’s actions after Lee was discovered stealing files from Fang’s computer, she had not suspected him of any betrayal. Will was her partner, had been her partner though some truly difficult cases. They’d leaned on each other, had each other’s backs. She would have followed him blindly through the desert without question. But Clint had forced her to step back and take a look at the things he’d done and said from the moment she’d left that nightclub, and that had made her take a closer look at other things Will had done over the past few months, and continued, dominoes falling all the way back to the California cartel two years ago.

It started there. But when? And why?

It was hacking his computer that had put her on the right road. Finding that bank account. The audio files, the things he’d kept that would have easily incriminated her as much as they would him. He was preparing. Setting her up. But what pushed it over the edge was something she’d found in an unexpected place: her own files.

They routinely recorded interviews with suspects. All law enforcement tended to do that now. It was just safer for the cop as well as the suspect. In one of the interviews she and Will had done with that low-level politician, he’d said something that she didn’t make note of at the time, but which haunted her now.

“You have no idea just how widespread this is. You think that by taking me out of the equation you’re doing something good for mankind. The thing is, you crush one cockroach under your foot—there are hundreds crawling around inside your walls that you don’t see. It’s never going to end. It’s everywhere. You think you’re the one in power, but I’m the one holding the razor.”

Even now, taking it at face value, it seemed like the rantings of a man who knew he was caught. But what were the chances he’d use that word? Razor. Why that word? Why not power? Or knife? Or almost anything else? Why that one, simple word?

Lee went back, dug through the information they’d gathered on this politician. Turned out he hadn’t always lived in the city. He was a transplant from Phoenix, Arizona. He had family in the city, one of whom was a co-owner of the club Fang managed. And that man was married to a woman who had family in Salt Lake City. And that woman? Her cousin was a widow by the name of Mollohan.

And when Lee went back to look through the files from Fang’s computer, she came across a recorded phone call during which Will said the name Mollohan.

“Have you heard from Mollohan? When’s the drop?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Good. It’s all coming together. All we have to do is get rid of that other problem.”

“When do we do that?”

“She’s talking about wanting to do it after you leave the club. Make sure you leave early tomorrow night.”

---