Page 94 of Bourbon and Secrets

She moves into the kitchen and fills two glasses of water. Passing one to me as I follow, she says, “Then tell me about some of the places you’ve been.”

“You’ve been to Nashville, right?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

She nods. “Spring break right before graduation. A few of us drove down for a week.”

Maggie kept school local, since University of Kentucky had an equine program and computer programming. She was talented and had an eye for both. Mom had been adamant that she wasn’t going into the horse training business for Finch & King. It was a point of contention between them.

“I also did some private investigating work that brought me all over. Louisiana for a little while, and then up to the Pacific Northwest around Bend, and then Seattle. I spent a good part of a year in New York doing work on a case where the woman had been murdered, but the client was adamant she hadn’t.”

She smiles, looking down first when she says, “Like I said, badass.” And the compliment pulls a sense of pride forward. She stares back out the window, changing the subject when she says, “What’s New York like?”

“Loud. Busy. Different from how it is in stories and the movies. The lights of Times Square are overwhelming, just like the crowds there. The tree at Christmas time in Rockefeller Center is just a tree. But for some reason, surrounded by buildings and an ice rink, it feels more like Christmas than anywhere else.”

“Mom missed you at Christmas. I think not seeing you that time of year really was the hardest for her.”

My chest aches, making me want to break down and cry, because it was one of the hardest parts for me too.

The chiming ringtone of her phone interrupts the conversation. “Shit,” she says with an exhale as she types furiously away at the screen and then pockets it. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Everything okay?” I hope that she’ll tell me, but I don’t expect her to.

Grabbing her bag, she opens the front door, and says, “It will be.”

As I watch her pull out of the driveway, in my truck, I know that something needs to break here. I hate that she was forced to carry the truth of what happened that night. And that the only option she had was to stay quiet. I left her with that instead of talking to her and leaning on her the way she needed the same from me. The lashing out, gambling, all of it makes more sense to me now.

What choices exist when the end never changes?

Maggie's endings have been people leaving her. Not anymore. There’s no way I’m going anywhere knowing there are still loose ends. And knowing that Waz King isn’t just a creep, but a murderer, a manipulator, and the source of what broke my family apart. That isn’t going to be the end of our story. The thing that I did best is find out little secrets that have the power to fuck people over—and Waz has plenty.

Chapter 33

Faye

There area few things in private investigations that always work well for me: asking the right questions, giving people the space to insert their foot in their mouth, and a great distraction. And Cortez was distracted at the rodeo, which is how I lifted his phone and added the screen mirroring app. I knew he didn’t come to the house to see me that day—that had been obvious. But I read the exchange between him and my sister all wrong. It wasn’t personal or sexual. It’s business.

MAGGIE

Go fuck yourself, Cortez.

CORTEZ

Maggie, you fucked up. You’ve been fucking up. And now I need you to do the right thing. Get me what I need.

MAGGIE

And if I don’t?

CORTEZ

We’ve already gone over this. Then we forget about our agreement. We’ve got plenty of evidence around your “web design” business. What you’ve been doing is called grand larceny, btw.

But you and I both know that’s not what we’re after.

She told everyone she was a web designer, but Maggie isn’t building landing pages or rebranding websites. She’s been manipulating the coding that ran off-track betting in Kentucky for Finch & King, siphoning off funds in a way that I will probably never comprehend. She was hired by them to do “web design.” It had been the same story as Foxx Bourbon, but neither company was rebranding their website—they were cover jobs. Foxx had her selling specialty bourbon on the secondary market, but Finch & King had her manipulating the off-track betting systems to increase their winnings. And she did all of it without even having to step foot inside of the racetrack. I knew this from what Maggie had shared. But if that was what Cortez was investigating, the case would be with the district attorney, and their arrest warrants would have been issued. But that wasn’t what was happening, which meant whatever they were after was bigger than that. She was an FBI asset.

That’s what Blackstone brought to the table. They needed someone involved in Finch & King’s business who was dirty enough to threaten and turn him into a source.

I shove the doors to the precinct open and scan the space behind the front desk.

---