Page 31 of Hot & Bothered

Jace exhaled a deep sigh. “Only one of those things is true. He wasn’t my first arrest. I’d been a cop for two years at the time I arrested him. And we had video evidence from a CCTV camera of him beating a man unconscious with a wrench. But, yes, he was his sister’s only protector. She was eighteen and had just aged out of the system. They were both foster kids. He fell in with the wrong crowd, but was trying to keep his nose as clean as he could for her. He fell on hard times, ended up in debt to a gang leader, and had to follow through with anassignment. They used Michaela as leverage to get him to do their bidding. So he beat a guy to within an inch of his life.”

“And ended up in prison and Michaela got hurt, anyway.”

“Yeah.”

“I told him I’d look into the whereabouts of his sister.”

“You did what?” Jace exclaimed.

“I don’t know. I panicked. He had me cornered in a dark parking garage. Yes, I had my keys and my pepper spray, but I was still spooked. And I also felt bad for him.”

“He’s a hardened criminal who nearly killed a man, Peyton.”

“His sister didn’t kill anyone, though. She’s a victim of circumstance.”

“Do you even have jurisdiction to look into Michaela?”

“No,” she said sheepishly, opening up the bar of chocolate and breaking off a square, then popping it into her mouth. “I was hoping you could look into it.”

Jace exhaled deeply again. “Jesus Christ.”

“He said something else, too.”

“What?”

“He said that if I don’t find her, he has nothing to lose.”

“Fuck,” Jace muttered. “That was a threat.”

“I know it was. He said you wouldn’t like it if someone you cared about got hurt.”

“Son of a bitch,” he said, more under his breath than anything.

“I’m sorry.”

“You did nothing wrong. You tried your best to deescalate a situation and, from the sounds of things, it worked—sort of. I’ll see if I can get tabs on Michaela.”

“You may want to involve the Harty Boys. They have … unorthodox means of finding people and getting things done. I’m sure you know about Rayma getting kidnapped when she was seventeen and that the guys found her in a house down in Vegas. It was a human trafficking operation.”

Jace grunted. “Yes, I know about that. But it’s still not something you should be telling a cop, Peyton. I know what they do, and most of the time it’s for the greater good and we turn a blind eye. But the more ignorant I am to their comings and goings, the better.”

“Right.”

“Do you understand what I’m saying? That the more ignorantIam, the better. But I know that they’re good at what they do, and it’s for the greater good.” He slowed down his speech and enunciated certain words.

The lightbulb in her rattled brain finally flicked on.

“Got it. Right. Got it.” She nodded.

“I’m coming to pick you up from the office tonight. Don’t leave until I’m there, okay?”

She wasn’t about to argue with him after her encounter with Tiberius. “Okay.”

“Try not to let this bother you. If he wanted to hurt you, he would have. And you’ve bought us some time now, which is good. We’ll see if we can get a lead on Michaela, and I’ll let Vic PD know what he said to you.”

Her smile was small and forced, not that anybody was in her office to see it anyway. She broke off another piece of chocolate and popped it into her mouth. “Okay.”

“It’s going to be okay.”

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