Page 11 of Fighting Conviction
After Eagle.
Devil shook his head and focused back on the argument at hand.
Investigator Burgess crossed his arms and shook his head with an exaggerated exhale. His theatrics and idiosyncrasies always tripped a wire in Devil’s brain, putting him on alert for the older man’s reactions. Burgess had crazy-ass moods. At least he seemed more subdued this time. Still not a damn bit useful, though.
“I know, gentlemen. I’m as angry as you are. I want to get these bastards even more than you do.” Investigator Burgess raised his voice at the end and pounded his fist on the table for emphasis. Devil scoffed. Men like him always use volume to try to prove a point.
“I highly doubt that,” Jaybird muttered under his breath.
Burgess’s scowl made his graying eighties pornstache dip down at the corners of his frown. “Haven’t you figured anything else out? Anything we can go off of? You’re the professional security agents.” He paused and narrowed his eyes. “Maybe the question is whether y’all’ve been holdin’ up your end of the deal?”
Ah, there it is.
“Is that what you really believe, Investigator?” Hawk asked, positioning his body to face Burgess head-on.
The goal was to share information and swap what they knew, but it hadn’t panned out that way. According to Jules’s friend, an assistant district attorney, they’d kept the details of the case between two officers to make sure no one was compromised. Investigator Burgess and—after some of Jules’s wheeling and dealing with the sheriff—Officer Henry Brown. Thank God, too. Jules trusted him and it was good to have a man on the inside. Especially when the alternative was a trigger-happy, slimy fuck.
If Devil had his way, they would’ve kept the shithead out of it altogether. But Hawk, Snake, and Phoenix, their wheelman, had won out against Jay and Devil in a vote as to whether they should involve the authorities.
So there they were, Hawk, Jaybird, and Devil playing the luck of the draw with Burgess, wondering who would fold first. Hawk and Burgess stared at each other for moments longer, both probably trying to determine if the other was bluffing.
“Well,” Burgess started, trying to find his defenses. “I mean—”
“Come on, sir,” Officer Henry Brown piped up from his corner behind Burgess. “If they knew somethin’, don’t you think they woulda told us?”
Burgess whipped his scowl back to Henry, his eyebrows pinching closely together to create a unibrow.
“I don’t like what you’re suggesting, Burgess,” Hawk growled. “We know the Ascot, Rusnak, and Strickland law firm is involved in some capacity, since Andy Ascot was wrapped up in it and was murdered helping us save those girls. Plus, Ellie and Sasha were kidnapped from a party thrown by a multitude of firms, one of which was A.R.S..”
“We already know all that,” Burgess grumbled.
Of course he did. Hawk wouldn’t give real information. Like the fact Ellie and Sasha were recruited by someone who’d given a fake name. Whoever had lured them into the trap had planned ahead, thinking of every possibility the naïve girls hadn’t.
They also didn’t know how deep the root had rotted in Ashland County’s elite, but they had a hunch Mitchell Strickland was involved based on a dying man’s final words.
The stalemate went on for minutes. Officer Henry finally cleared his throat to get his superior’s attention. “Um, sir?”
Wrenching his eyes away from the stare off with Hawk, Burgess shook his head and punctuated a heavy sigh with a coughing fit at the end. “Listen, boys, I know we got off on the wrong foot with all this shit…”
Jay scoffed at the understatement and Burgess sent him a cutting glance before powering through.
“But I came to see the error in my ways. If we could get our resources together, I’m sure y’all know more than what you’re tellin’ me. You have to. You were the best of the best, after all, weren’t you?” He smiled stiffly.
Unease slithered in Devil’s veins and he rolled his shoulders to lean forward, out of the relaxed pose he’d feigned for the past half hour. He glared at Burgess’s ruddy face, now growing pale, and spoke low. “And what do you mean by that… exactly?”
There was no way he should know about MF7, and any record that the BlackStone agents had been members was redacted, sealed, and burned. The government washed their hands of the clandestine military group and purged MF7 from history as quickly as fucking possible after their last mission.
All anyone knew was that each member of MF7 had been a soldier in one of the military branches and they’d all been medically discharged from their posts for psych reasons. With some government-led clerical magic, their records had been made to say they were discharged around the time they were each initially recruited, backdated after their disaster of a final mission in Yemen where the men had walked into a trap while trying to save a group of women from being trafficked.
Only Nora, a computer nerd as brilliant as Snake, had ever found out the group’s name. They still weren’t sure how she’d been able to finagle that information. The woman was a vault.
“Oh, um… you boys were military, right? The best of the best? Better’n a little ol’ Podunk local sheriff’s department, amiright?” He laughed harshly until he coughed himself into a fit. Amidst the hacking, he reached for his water bottle and patted his police-issued uniform until his coughing ebbed and his shoulders relaxed. He pulled out a lighter from another square in his vest and flicked it on and off in his fingers.
“Right.” Devil nodded and leaned back in his chair, taking note of the investigator’s hand beginning to tremor while he fidgeted.
“With that party… You know, the one where you’re-uh” —he pointed to Jason— “sister and her-uh-friend were kidnapped? What do y’all think about them throwin’ another shindig? Think they’ll be bold enough to try again?”
The three BlackStone men stilled. Devil forced himself to make at least some small movements to avoid drawing attention to the concern stiffening his muscles.
