Page 20 of Fallout

“And who is that?”

They walked up to the officer at the door. “Who that is has yet to be determined.” He lifted his chin. “Jesse. Hollingsworth.”

She made the same head tilt motion. “Alvarez.” Then, she looked at Jasper. “You know Romeo?”

He frowned. “Your mother named you Romeo?”

“’Cause she’s got class.” Alvarez grinned. “Besides, the ladies love it.”

Samantha laughed. “Sure, bro.”

Jasper said, “Whatever you say.”

“Anyway, the interim ME is in there. Doctor Carlton is still on maternity leave.”

“Got it.” They stepped into the building, a warehouse with rows of dusty floors. Old metal desks, and a set of double doors, which opened up from the office to a room with a thirty-foot-high ceiling. Birds in the rafters.

He slowed a fraction, spotting two homicide detectives. As they approached the two men and the doc by the body, Jasper asked, “Didn’t an EMT get stabbed in here like a year ago?”

Eric Hummet pointed at him. “Good memory. It is the same building, and we’ve been watching activity here since. A confidential informant of mine said something was going down a couple of nights ago. Then last night, the neighbor called in odd noises and suspicious activity.”

Lucas Westbrook straightened out of his crouch. “Which is usually someone double-crossing someone else, just to get back at their rival.”

“And in this case?” Samantha asked.

Jasper followed that up with his own question. “Who would cross this guy? Not a rival. Maybe someone who found themselves working for him and doesn’t like it?”

“Risky proposition.” Eric winced. “This guy was tortured.” He waved at a chair with cut rope on the concrete beside it.

“ID?”

Lucas shook his head. “We’re waiting for prints to come back.”

“Do you mind?” Eric and Lucas both shrugged, so Jasper walked around the body and took a look. “Cause of death?” He expected the ME to reference some kind of massive trauma since the body was intact.

It wasn’t a total surprise when he said, “Heart attack would be my guess. There are some signs of a cardiac event.”

Jasper got all the way around to see the victim’s face. “I know who this is.” He straightened. “We were looking for him a few months ago. He was an accountant for the Russians.”

Eric said, “Before the limo bombing, after which the family just imploded.”

“It makes you wonder”—Lucas glanced between each of them—“if this kingpin was pulling strings behind the scenes this whole time. Taking out the competition that was a bigger threat, the Russians, before he went after the dealers and the bangers.”

“Elyan…something. I’ll dig up the file and send you the case number.”

“’Preciate it.” Lucas held out his hand, and they shook.

Eric did the same. They chatted with Samantha for a few minutes, talking about changes in the department over the past few months. Their captain, Dennis McCauley, had been shot in the line of duty in the hospital, ironically, a few months ago and had recovered enough to come back on light duty.

Liam was liking his new job with the Northwest Counter-Terrorism Taskforce, working under Homeland Security and taking down dangerous criminals.

Blake worked with Intelligence.

SWAT had some new team members. Their sporadic callouts were the highlight of Jasper’s month.

Jasper got a lot of white-collar cases. Robberies. And assignments where he had to work with the FBI, which included Eric’s wife, Stella. He tried not to show his dissatisfaction, that low-grade hum that seemed to live inside him. It might not be all about work. Part of it could be about Destiny and how powerless he’d been to help her. It could also be that he’d been offered a job by Vanguard and had turned it down out of a sense of loyalty to the police department. But if he’d taken it, he would be working with Destiny every day now.

Samantha’s phone rang. “Jesse.” She frowned. “Slow down. Tell me where you are. I’ll come to you.”

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