Page 63 of Hawk

“Trafficking, drugs, ex—”

“Dammit!” I punched the wall, then suddenly realized where I was. “I’m sorry,” I said to Kristy. “I shouldn’t have shouted, but I thought we’d gotten all this sorted. I told her that I have never been involved in people trafficking or any shit like that.”

Kristy sat up straighter in bed and reached towards the water pitcher. I lifted it up and poured some water in her glass.

She took a drink and then was silent for a long time, and I thought maybe she wasn’t going to say anything, before she finally spoke. “She told me that she liked you, that you were more than what you seemed on the outside.” She shook her head and let out a sad sigh. “She likes you, really likes you, so I can only figure that Eric’s gotten in her head. Again.”

Yeah, that was what I suspected too. “What’s this Eric like?”

She grimaced. “He’s bad news, he works Organized Crime and doesn’t like criminals. I think when he learned she was seeing you, it made him pissed. He wants her back.”

Well, fuck. “That makes sense.” In fact, it made a lot of fucking sense. It had to be him who orchestrated all of this.

“You have to talk some sense into to her, Hawk. Because Eric is such a straight edge cop she sees his word as literally law. I don’t know what evidence he’s given her, but maybe if you speak to her? I told her not to listen to him, but I know what she’s like. She’s gonna go home and look through those photos and start spiraling again. I don’t know if things can be fixed between you guys romantically, but she’s my best friend and I’m going through a difficult time right now. I can’t lose her.”

I nodded. “Did you get any news yet?”

Her smile brightened. “Not yet. Any day now,” she offered, and held up both hands with her fingers crossed.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. Now please, go make my best friend see reason. Use guilt if you have to.”

My lips tugged into an amused grin. “Yeah, thanks.”

***

I made short work of the drive to my place. I didn’t want to argue with Laura, that wasn’t part of my plan, but the minute I walked through the door and saw her face, that all disappeared.

“What happened to talking about things?”

She folded her arms and scowled up at me. “That’s why I’m here and not at my place.”

I kicked off my boots and walked through to the living room. “There’s still an active hit on you. Do you have a fucking death wish or something? Do you think I’m such a huge piece of shit and a horrible human being that you’d prefer to drive home by yourself, like a sitting fucking duck?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t be so dramatic, Hawk. I needed to come home. I wanted to think, and I can’t think when you’re there looking all—”

“Looking all what?” I said with a raised brow.

“Aaargh!” She reached for the open bottle of wine and poured herself another glass. By the level it seemed as if she’d had a few.

“Tell me what happened, darlin’ I’m not a mind reader, if you’ve got worries, then you gotta tell me.”

She sat there shaking her head, then grabbed her wine glass and upended it. Thumping it back on the table she muttered, “Fine,” and reached down for something at the side of the sofa. “This, Hawk. All of this is evidence of things you said were lies!” She tipped the contents of the folder over the coffee table. There was a bunch of photographs and some papers.

“Who gave you this?” I asked, knowing full well who she’d got it from.

“Does it really matter? The evidence is here,” she spat out.

“We’re back to this again? I thought we cleared that up, that you saw beyond the things I do, to the man I am.”

I pointed at the photograph of me and Mrs. Winchester, “That was taken after we’d paid her a visit. I’d dropped by to check if she needed anything else. The cash I’m passing to her? That’s because she needed money to pay for the repairs. The bakery’s bank account was in her husband’s name, and it was gonna take a week or so before she could withdraw cash.”

Laura just glared at me.

“And this?” I pointed to the photograph of me with three underage hookers. “One of our brothel girls had told us about a place operating downtown, and we’d raided it and found a bunch of trafficked teenagers. Sheriff Cross is just out of shot, we called him as soon as we got the girls out.”

I was about to open my mouth to say something else when I stopped. All of these photographs looked like surveillance shots. Someone had been watching my club, none of this showed us doing anything wrong—if you knew the story behind the shots—but someone was getting a bit too interested in us.

---