Page 10 of Duplicity

FIVE

Five minutes before the end of the day bell, Catalina’s desk phone rang. “Officer Alvarez.”

“It’s me.”

Cat frowned. “What do you want, Romeo?” She rolled her eyes, not in the mood for her brother right now.

“Something afoot at the high school?”

Surprisingly, he didn’t make a comment about the rough area the school was located in. “Just learning, as per usual.”

Romeo snorted.

“Day off?”

“I’m on nights this rotation. Four months of not seeing the sun except while I’m trying to sleep.”

“Come to the dark side. We have cookies and daylight.”

He snorted.

“Anything new on the streets?” Things had been pretty crazy in Benson with the Russians. A limo bombing the past summer. A medical center that turned out to be connected to organized crime. A drive-by mass shooting aimed at cops where both she and Romeo had ended up helping out in the aftermath. Thankfully unscathed by the flying bullets, they’d triaged a friend who had been bleeding badly.

She’d mostly managed to hide her reaction to the blood and the sounds.

The next day, she’d gone in and seen the department therapist. She kept that up weekly for a couple of months and had her last one the previous week. Since the shooting, she’d kept attending the group she went to for trauma survivors, even if sometimes she only got to it once a month.

Romeo said, “Got some chatter about a new dealer coming in from Canada.”

She gripped the phone and leaned back in her chair. “A new substance?”

There had been so much shifting of power in the criminal world in Benson over the last year or two that it was hard to keep up with who was the latest bigshot.

The last kingpin had terrorized a lot of people before he was finally taken down.

“Not that we know of. Same old poison.” Romeo sounded like he was walking, maybe taking his dog out. Her brother got home at seven in the morning when he worked nights and usually slept until one. She needed more sleep than that, but he’d always been wired to need less.

Should she ask him the question burning in her mind? This was just her brother. There weren’t many people in the world she could share her true feelings with, but with Romeo, she could.

At least, some things.

He’d agreed with her that the conviction of her “shooter” seemed too easy, but he also wasn’t as determined as her to find the real killer. He seemed satisfied to let it lie. Like everyone else.

“Rome, what do you know about Vanguard?”

“Why do you ask?”

Cat said, “That doesn’t matter. Just tell me what you know about them.”

His voice grew breathy. He must have switched to running, which meant he had his headphones in and his phone in his pocket. His dog was an old lab, but she still loved to run.

Pretty much every female in existence loved Romeo Alvarez. It had been annoying in high school when all her friends just wanted to know if he was single. Romeo hadn’t cared much about whether he was or not, he went out with whoever whenever. Thankfully, adulthood seemed to have mellowed him—some.

“Vanguard does great work. They have teams all over, not just in Benson. But the crew that works locally are solid. All the ones I’ve met.”

“You know a guy named Silas Norris?”

“Nope. Never heard of him.”

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