Page 7 of Bourbon and Secrets

When I finally pull into the police station, the morning light is bright enough to highlight all the ways the place has changed. Before I left, it was a few blocks back and half the size. The Fiasco Police Department has gotten an upgrade. I imagine it’s more than just taxes paying for this. We had two of the biggest businesses housed right here in Fiasco—bourbon and horse racing. The men who ran both, I’m sure, had some hand in making this place look the way it did. This building used to be the old post office, but now it’s a state-of-the-art facility that houses the police department, 911 dispatchers, and even an FBI field office, according to the signs that hang just above the entryway. It looks like a smaller version of Grand Central Station during that quiet slip of time between the last train and the first.

“Excuse me, I’m here to bail out my sister. Maggie Calloway,” I say to the front desk officer. There’s nothing friendly about the way he doesn’t respond. Glaring and judging, his mutton chops are the only part of his demeanor that appears light-hearted.They match the coiffed hair that’s been combed and styled. Putting a toothpick in his mouth, he turns back to his computer, typing away.

“Are my eyes deceiving me?” a familiar voice calls out from behind the front desk. “Faye Calloway walking intomystation. Are you finally here to say yes to that date?”

I know exactly who it is before I look up.

“Cortez.” I take in his dark hair and eyes, his face that’s only gotten more handsome. He has the kind of bone structure people bring to their plastic surgeon to mimic. Dark hair, bright smile. “Still looking like a snack,” I say with a smile. We were both always great at flirting.

Alex Cortez charmed his way into my pants when we were in the police academy together. You never forget your first.And the only. But flirting didn’t equal chemistry, and I realized that quickly.

“Hey, baby girl,” he says, coming around the front desk and wrapping his thick arms around me. That nickname isn’t one I expected. “You look incredible.”

I glance at his chest and notice there’s no badge and that he’s not wearing the full khaki uniform like the other officer who’s eyeing us from behind the counter. “Are you working or...?”

“Decided to move up and was able to stay local.” His smile takes over his whole face with that response. “You’re looking at one-fourth of the FBI unit for Montgomery County. They wanted to open a field office, and since Fiasco PD had the space for it, my change from plain clothes to FBI had me moving from the cubicle pit to an office.”

I raise my eyebrows at that. Del had folded me into the surveillance for Blackstone, so I know what I’ve been doing has been filtering to the FBI. I just didn’t think about who my contact would be while I’m here. “So you’re working with Del?” I ask.

With a wink, he confirms, “Yes, ma’am. Well, more like Del did me a favor by suggesting a private investigator when we were grasping at straws for this case. Then he mentioned your name. He shared your surveillance. Your work is pretty damn impressive.”

I try to mask the smile that compliment pulled from me.

“Always hoped we’d end up working together,” Cortez says with a lightness to his voice. Giving my arm a squeeze, his brow furrows. “You’re here early.” He searches my face before he asks, “Maggie?”

I nod, lips pursed. “Del called and said she was picked up last night. What kind of shape is she in?”

He moves back around the counter and types something into his computer. I toss my license, the bail bond, and my social security in front of him.

“She was sober by the middle of third shift. She was her usual sunshine self when I told her I couldn’t give her anything for her hangover,” he tells me.

Huffing a laugh at his sarcasm, I take in the man in front of me. Someone familiar, but different. A friend. Maybe more at one point. But a stranger from a life I haven’t participated in for years. There’s no ring on his left finger.

“I’m not married, if that’s what you were looking at.”

I smile and find his brown eyes studying me right back.

He clears his throat, and the humor that was there a moment ago lifts when he says, “I heard when she came in, it was pretty bad. But I don’t think she was drunk untilaftershe had gotten shoved around.”

Maggie’s the Calloway sister everyone knows, the one who stepped up and took over the farm when Mom passed. The daughter who stayed and took care of a woman who needed therapy and not just a bunch of cornfields and farm animals to heal. The folks of Fiasco respected that, and I became thevillain for leaving. They have no idea what transpired—the deals I made. The things I did to make things okay. But right now, my sister isn’t okay at all.

Violence is easier to digest when it doesn’t touch you personally. I have to ask, “Any idea who might be responsible?”

He makes a few notes, and then steps away for a moment. I watch as he moves toward the back of the precinct and gives some of the papers I had to sign to one of the other officers. When he comes back, he doesn’t return to the computer, instead he walks around the desk and signals for me to follow him. When we move past the waiting room and down the hall, he clears his throat. “Listen, Faye.” The small sigh that follows has me bracing for whatever he’s about to say. “Your sister is trouble. You’re not going to find many people in Fiasco who’ll think otherwise. And trouble has a tendency to find trouble.”

I don’t agree and that doesn’t answer my question. “Trouble can mean a lot of things, Cortez. Don’t forget what I’ve been hired to do.Thatfeels an awful lot like trouble.”

“Fair enough. Wrong thing to say,” he says, backing off.

“Let me handle things with my sister and get settled before my first performance.” I lean in closer and pull out my phone to make this interaction feel casual. There isn’t anyone within earshot, but anything regarding Blackstone isn’t public knowledge. “We should plan a place to meet that isn’t here, obviously.”

He smiles, taking a few seconds to respond. “You asking me out for drinks, Faye?”

I ignore him, because as much as I like flirting, Cortez is a colleague now. Granted, a colleague who has seen me naked, but much like everything else familiar around here, that’s in the past. This is business, and I intend for him to stay in that category.

The door buzzes open. My sister leans against the wall, looking like someone I wouldn’t have recognized if I walked by her on the street. It takes almost everything in me not to rush to her and a single second to confirm that my plans may not have changed, but now they need to be adjusted. There’s no way I can leave her by herself if she’s in any kind of danger. Her hair is either wet or greasy and her black sweater has been stretched out at the neck and hangs from her shoulder. She has one gold hoop in her left ear, the other one missing. Her tight light blue jeans have a large rip in the knee that’s dirty and a little bloody. And yet the mess of it all is eclipsed by the fact that her right eye is almost swollen shut, accompanied by a nasty ombre of purples and blues, and her split lip that’s puffed and angry. Streaks of red run down the front of her neck and disappear into the collar of the sweater. It’s like someone clawed at her front. I bite down hard to keep my emotions in check.

“Jesus, Maggie,” I say on an exhale.

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