No Rep (Madd CrossFit 1)

I, on the other hand, stood back and watched the two of them interact, knowing deep in my heart that this day would forever be one of my best memories.

My two favorite people in the world, side by side, laughing and carrying on like they’d known each other their entire lifetimes. Knowing that they loved me was everything right then.

Everything I never knew that I needed.

CHAPTER 23

There should be sympathy cards for people that have to go back to work after vacation.

-Text from Madden to Taos

TAOS

I woke to Fran in my arms, curled tight against my body, with her head pillowed on my bicep.

My eyes went to the clock on the nightstand behind her, and I frowned.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, moving just a little bit deeper into my arms.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

I wasn’t sure what had woken me, but all of a sudden, I felt like there was something that I needed to do. The only problem was, I didn’t know what.

What I did know was that there was something that was niggling at the back of my brain.

Fran rolled over and reached for her phone on the nightstand, her frown filling her face.

“No calls or texts on my phone,” she said. “What about yours?”

I leaned over and looked at my phone that was set up on the opposite nightstand.

That was when I saw the missed calls that were filling the call log.

“Shit,” I grumbled as I stared at the missed calls from Chief Wilkerson, Easton, and Schultz. “I think there was another murder.”

I was wrong, though.

What it was, was a potential lead.

“Got something we think you should come look at,” Chief Wilkerson said the moment that he answered the phone. “Have a blue and white already sitting outside your house to keep an eye out. Come on.”

I reluctantly started to pull on my pants that I’d left on the floor beside the bed.

“Sorry, I was sleeping, and didn’t realize that I’d turned my phone on silent,” I said as I pulled them up over my hips.

“No worries,” he said. “But get here.”

After giving Fran a kiss, who sighed as I said I had to go, I grabbed a t-shirt, my gun, a pair of shoes, and walked out to my car.

When I arrived at the station, it was to find everyone up and much less perky-eyed than I was.

“Nice Crocs,” Schultz said.

I looked down at my American flag Crocs and shrugged. “I was in a hurry. Normally I only wear them to the gym when I’m working out.”

Schultz grinned, then jerked his head toward the board at the corner of the room.

I went with them, staring at the face of a stone-eyed man that looked perpetually pissed off. Even though he was eating ice cream next to a beautiful woman.

“This is the assistant to the hair chick,” Schultz said.

“Why do y’all keep calling her that?” I wondered.

“Because that’s her name. Or her company’s name. The Hair Chick. This is Raymond Pasqual. He’s a thirty-eight-year-old man.” Easton paused. “Look familiar?”

I frowned as I studied the man. “No. Should he be familiar?”

“Maybe not,” Chief Wilkerson said. “But this guy should.”

He moved to the chalkboard where he pinned up a photo of another man.

This one that was very familiar.

A man that, until recently, I’d done very good at shutting out of my every thought.

“Monk.”

“Monk,” Chief Wilkerson confirmed.

“Son of a bitch,” I hissed. “And how are they related?”

“Monk is Raymond Pasqual’s brother-in-law,” Easton said as he twisted the board around with all of the writing, pictures, and diagrams on it.

That’s when I saw all of Monk’s information, there for all to see.

Monk was my case. My career-defining case that set me on the path to being known as the best detective there was in the area.

Monk had, for lack of a better word, gotten off scot-free for three murders until I was able to find information on him. And that information I’d found had put him away for close to life without the possibility of parole.

What was that information? I’d found a woman that was willing to testify to some things that she’d seen while helping Monk perform certain tasks for a particular clientele base that wanted to off their spouses.

He’d helped kill what we thought was hundreds of people, all for men and women that wanted their spouses dead for one reason or another. And the informant had been unwilling to the nth degree.

In fact, the only thing that’d kept that informant in line was a child that Monk had control over. A child that I’d saved from a car wreck. A child that, it’d been found, had brain cancer, after a routine CT scan of his head.

A child that was immediately flown to children’s hospital in Dallas where he was ‘safe.’

The mother had heard of me and had broken down and told me everything about her boss who’d been holding her and her son hostage, forcing them to do things they’d never wanted to do.