Page 3 of Avenging Kelly

I was stunned. “H-huh?”

Sinclair and I were good friends. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It couldn’t be true.

“We’re looking into the accident for his parents—if it was an accident. The driver didn’t stop, or so the Sinclairs were told. We have one minor lead: a black 1978 Plymouth. Probably an old cop car. There’s a convenience store across from the restaurant that had their security cameras aimed toward the door and caught the impact through the front windows,” Dom explained. My heart was breaking at the news.

“Casper is running it through image-resolution software to see if he can get a clearer image of the driver or maybe identify the back license plate, but so far, no luck. The store owner has to turn over the original video to the police this morning, but he agreed not to disclose that we have a copy,” Dom confided, which didn’t surprise me.

Casper—Lawry Schatz—was a wizard at his job, having worked for the CIA once upon a time. I had every confidence that if there was anything in the video, he’d find it.

“I’ll be back in New York tomorrow. Is there anything I can do from here?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure what the hell that might be. The need to be useful in any capacity was overwhelming.

“Not really, I guess. Hell, I don’t know what to do for anybody. It’s like we’re all on autopilot,” Dom responded, not really a surprise. It still hadn’t sunk in for me.

“Okay, I’ll come in when I get home. Are, uh, are we doing anything as a group? I mean, for the family?” I asked.

“We’re going to figure out who killed Mathis and make sure they’re punished,” Dom responded. I guessed that was just about as much as a group like us could come up with to help the family through such a horrible loss. He was their only child.

I ended the call and turned to see my mother and Dallas standing there, staring at me as if they were waiting for an explanation. I exhaled.

“When you worked with Austin Torrente on that bounty last summer, did he mention Mathis Sinclair?” I asked Dallas.

He’d helped Austin—f/k/a Bruno—find an accomplice to a killer who had broken out of prison and threatened to kill a former primary of ours, Tanner Bledsoe, the husband of country star Kelso Ray. The bastard had two coconspirators, one who ended up dead there with him, and one who took off when things got too hot. I’d suggested my brother help us out, and they found the guy over the US-Mexican border hiding in a shitty cabin. How Dallas hadn’t killed the fucker was still a mystery.

My brother could be a mean bastard with a short fuse, and he lived for the chase. That was why I’d put in a good word for him in the first place, and that was why he’d come through for me.

Dallas snapped his fingers in front of my face to get my attention, not one for patience. “Austin mentioned a bunch of guys. What’s up? Can I help?”

“One of them got hit by a car last night on his way to our traditional Christmas Eve dinner I skipped,” I answered, hearing my mother’s gasp at the news.

“Oh, how awful! His family must be devastated. Was he married? Did he have children?” Mom asked.

Good heaven, will she never let it go?

I knew Mom was sincere in her empathy, but I also knew that Dallas, thirty-nine, was as tired of hearing about when was he going to get married and give her grandchildren as I was coming to be at thirty-six.

“No, Mom, he wasn’t married. And as far as I know, he wasn’t anyone’s father, but Mathis was an incredible guy. His dad’s a minister at a church in Queens, and his family runs a community center and after-school program for the kids in the neighborhood. Mathis was a cop before he joined GEA-A,” I responded as I grabbed my phone and went outside to call Ace. He and I had worked several cases together recently, so I felt as though I could ask him questions I didn’t want to ask Dominic.

I heard two rings before they answered the phone. “Yeah, man.”

“Hey, you heard about Mathis, right?” Ace was a partner to Duke—one of Duke’s two partners—who was Gabe’s brother and an uncle to Dom. Duke had taken his turn at the helm of GEA-A, so I was certain Ace knew something more than what Dom had told me.

“Yeah, man. We were at the Seven Fishes dinner when the police called Gabby after they found his business card in Mathis’ wallet. Gabby called Sister Florence to be there when the police came to tell his parents. Word has it his mother had to be sedated because she was so upset by the news. The funeral’s gonna be—”

“I heard about that from Dominic. I’ll be home tomorrow. You know anything else?” I asked him.

“Got a look at the car and the moment of impact, but that’s about all we’ve got. Casper has the footage cut out, frame-by-frame, and it didn’t appear as if it was an accident. The car swerved into the other lane and then up onto the sidewalk to hit him.” That piece of information made my gut twist.

“You want me to ask Corby to pick you up?” Ace offered.

“No, but thanks. I’ll get home and drop off my stuff before I come in. I’ll get the first plane I can and call you when I have flight info,” I vowed before we signed off.

As my brother joined me outside, my mother yelled at him about letting the storm door slam and breaking the glass, per usual. “You need me to go with you? I got nothin’ going on right now,” Dallas offered.

“What about the ATF? You finished your assignment with the Scorpions, right? What’s next?” I asked.

“Fuck them. I turned in my resignation the day after the trial was over. I’m better at staying alive on my own, rather than being relocated by those assholes. The brass who run that piece-of-shit agency couldn’t give two shits about the people who put their necks on the line for the greater good every fucking day. They just wanna take us apart for how we do the fucking job,” Dallas answered.

Clearly there was more to the story than he was ready to tell, so I stopped asking questions. Dal hadn’t given me the third degree when I left the DEA. Nobody knew the real reason, and none of my friends at GEA-A had ever asked. We all had our dirty little secrets.

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