Page 108 of Rest In Pink

“Oh, no.Vince."

I tossed the suitcase in the back seat of the Gladiator and faced her. “Stop thinking like a Ranger. This isn’t cut and dried. One time we provided security for a Special Forces A-team at their firebase. Before you were with us. It was two months. Good duty because they built those camps well and they had their shit together. Ran good intel. The only problem was the locals. They had to deal with them. That was their mission. Get the locals to fight for us. That required that they negotiate. I watched some of those meetings. Sometimes the deals sucked. But that was the only way the SF guys could accomplish their mission.”

Rain was shaking her head. “You’re saying we make a deal with Mickey?”

“You said it yourself. The only people who know about the money are you, me, Faye and Pete. And they aren’t going to broadcast it.”

“Let him go? He killed Thacker.”

“The real killer is the one who paid Mickey fifty grand to kill. We didn’t know that before. So, we’re ahead of where we were. That’s the person we have to find.”

Rain was still shaking her head. She indicated my back seat. “It’s evidence.”

I knew that was a cardinal sin for her. Screwing with evidence.

“In what?” I replied. “Navy’s death was declared an accident. Margot got the insurance money. Nobody wants to reopen that case. Again. The only people who know about the money are me, you, Faye, Pete, and soon, Mickey. No one else is going to cough up a hundred K to give to Mickey. Faye doesn’t have it. Mickey’s not going to stop until he gets the money. How much more of Burney do we want to see in flames? Sooner or later someone else is going to die in one of his fires. Someone innocent of all this darkness from the past.” I took a breath. “And he’s got a real vendetta against the Blues. Liz said he was really evil last night, the way he called her Lizzie Blue and talked about Peri.”

“Liz Danger is a Blue?”

“She’s Dayton’s kid. If he’s after people with Blue blood, she’s in line.”

“Is that why you’re going to give Mickey the money?”

“In part. But the real reason? I don’t want him burning any more of this town, hurting any more of its people. I want him gone. I want my town safe.”

She stared at me. “You’re putting everything on the line here, Vince, for a town you’ve lived in for what, six, seven, months? This goes south, and it will, you’re done in law enforcement. Not just here, but everywhere. No one will touch you. You’ll probably end up in jail.” She spread her hands, indicating the town below us. “For what? For Liz Danger?”

I shook my head. “For everybody. For Liz, for the town, for the people in it.”

Rain was incredulous. “For Burney?Why?”

“You’ve got to make a stand somewhere.”

She stared off into the distance.

“Listen, Rain,” I said. “Go back to Cincy. Don’t be involved. I won’t say anything about you knowing about the money. And we know Pete and Faye won’t either. Just go. This isn’t your fight.”

“Oh, shut up, Ranger.” She faced me. “Burney isn’t my town.”

“I know and—”

She cut me off. “You saved my life. And you’re my friend. And Dave said that too. About making a stand. When we got hit on the LZ and we made that stand. What do you need me to do?”

“Can you hang around in Burney the next few days, close by?”

Rain smiled. “With pleasure.”

“Thanks.”

Her smile was gone. “And what if Mickey doesn’t take the money and leave, like Pete says he would?”

“You know what the Special Forces guys did when the people they were working with turned on us? Why they liked us Rangers sitting security on the meetings?”

“Why?”

“We wasted the motherfuckers.”

Chapter Fifty

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