Page 2 of Wicked Sin

“Yes, ma’am.” I don’t argue. I don’t read trash news, but sometimes the verbiage that starts there makes its way into the common lexicon. I know better.

But how often does an honest-to-god celebrity file land on my desk? Less often than you might think for Los Angeles. Now it’s my turn to sigh.

Ms. Dashford Reid is famously—or infamously—known for recording herself giving the Vice President of the United States a sloppy, giggly happy ending, and then leaking that to the press. Years have passed, and the VP in question didn’t run again.

The scandal will forever live on in Wikipedia entry references, I guess. And everyone’s collective memory, because the Dashford Reids don’t do shame. They don’t hide.

Except now that I think about it, I didn’t even know she lived on the west coast.

And the last I remember of her was thelastscandal about her family when her sister Hailey was involved in the takedown of Gerome Lively.

Her father’s arrest today made headlines, of course. I saw it while I had my coffee and flipped through the news sites.

But his daughter wasn’t anywhere on the screen in the footage of the comings and goings from lawyers’ offices and courthouses.

None of the Reid daughters were visible. Only the son, who stands to take over the family business if his father goes to jail.

Whenhis father goes to jail. He surrendered to a special prosecutor charged with investigating Russian interference into our—everything, really. Elections, lobbying for industry, lobbying for foreign countries, shaping foreign policy. Shaping domestic policy. You name it, Washington D.C. has Russia smeared all over it.

And it’s Morgan Reid’s third time facing serious charges.

This time, the feds are going to make sure they stick. It doesn’t matter what his top-notch crisis management firms do this time. The man isn’t going to skate.

“So what’s the so-called tip, exactly? Because I just passed my psych eval with flying colors. I’m as good as loaded into the undercover unit. I can’t get tangled up with a long-term case. Might be better off handing it to—”

“This isn’t that.”

I laugh out loud because we both know there’s no way to promise that. I open the file. Address. Workplace.

Workplace? The Blow Job Princess has a job?She doesn’t need to work, surely.

I scan down the cover page. The next two pages are so heavily redacted they’re illegible. Fucking Secret Service. The same name is scrawled at the bottom of each of the pages. Perry Newcomb, Financial Crimes Division. That makes me wonder if this is related to her father’s criminal difficulties after all.

But the fourth page has enough of a communiqué that it becomes clear why they’ve punted this task to the LAPD.

Our princess was a tad hostile with federal agents.

Fantastic.

And according to an anonymous tip—probably a crank call, after her father’s arrest—she had cocaine and meth in her car.

“Drugs? Do they think she’s dealing?”

“That would seem to be the angle.”

“She’s loaded. Why’d she be dealing? One call to Daddy—”

“I get it. It doesn’t smell right.”

I flip back to the cover page, looking for something that twigged in my mind. Her job. She’s working with a local non-profit for survivors of sexual violence, L.A.S.T. It took a minute for that to register, but it’s an odd choice for someone who—

The captain chuckles at me, and I glance up. Past the nameplate on her desk—Captain Deandra Woods—to her knowing gaze.

“What?”

“You’re struggling with this one. It’s all over your face.”

I frown. “She’s a contradiction, that’s all. Hard to make sense of her.”

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