Page 76 of What's Left of Us

Conklin knew?

I rack my brain for a name, when something clicks.

Son of a bitch.

I push off the wall, heat rising under my skin like someone just lit a fire. “Thanks for the intel.”

“What about my deal?” Welsh calls out.

The district attorney might offer him a lesser charge if the information helps me, but I’m not sure I want to give him that. Welsh is the kind of asshole who deserves to rot behind bars.

“I’ll call the DA when I can. I’ve got more important things to do.”

“That’s it?” he yells.

Dickers follows me into the back office. “Do you know that name? It’s not one I’m familiar with and I’ve read up on the dealers in our area. If he’s a repeat offender, it’s not anyone we’ve arrested before.”

I grab the file that he gave me, opening to the fifth page.

There’s smeared black ink next to Jakob Volley’s name where Conklin put something in quotations. I thought the first word might have been “little” or “title,” but it was hard to tell what the letter next to it was.

But now it’s obvious.

Jakob Volley is Little J.

“Son of a bitch,” I growl, throwing a pen against the opposite wall and scraping a hand through my hair.

We’ve been close the entire time.

“Hawk?” Dickers says cautiously.

“Don’t talk to anyone about this,” I tell him, slamming the file closed and putting it back into my bag. “I already lost one man thanks to this asshole. I won’t be losing another.”

Grabbing my bag, I walk past a stunned Dickers and toward the back exit.

He follows behind me. “We still have two hours left of our shift,” he calls out. “What do you want me to tell the sergeant on duty if he realizes you left?”

“Tell him whatever the fuck you want,” I say right before the door closes between us, and the cold night air bites into my face.

The night Conklin was shot, I’d managed to pull us out of range from the shooter at 123 Cover Creek Road. It’d been the adrenaline that enabled me to work past my own injury to try tending to his. As he bled out on the ground, he looked at me with fading eyes and said one name.

Del Rossi.

That was the last thing he’d ever said to me.

It could have meant anything.

But I knew it had to do with Volley.

And if Del Rossi is using, it makes him even more unpredictable. It makes him a flight risk.

*

The good doctorpretends we never ran into each other at the store—like the momentary interest I saw in her eyes never existed. It’s probably safer that way, so I let her control the narrative.

I’ve got bigger things on my mind anyway.

“You seem tense,” she notes, sitting in her usual seat across from me.

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