Make Me Up (Killer Style 3)

“He’s good people,” Cam said. “You can trust me.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“He saved me, Reggie—the detective working your case—and God knows how many more over the years.” Without waiting for her response, he walked through the open door.

She had two choices. Run…or stay and figure out how to fight. She was done running. Instead she straightened her shoulders, jutted out her chin, and stalked into the judge’s house, ready to take on whatever came next.

The walls in the hallway were lined with pictures of high school kids—black, white, brown, male and female—in graduation caps and gowns. The kids in the pictures had hairstyles that gave away the number of decades covered from the front door to the kitchen twenty feet away, where the judge and Cam stood on opposite sides of a granite island.

One picture near the end made her do a double take. He might have been twenty pounds of muscle lighter, but there was no mistaking the shit-eating grin on Cam’s face as he stood in a blue cap and gown, holding what she assumed was his diploma. Stuck in the frame’s bottom right corner was a wallet-sized photo, its corners curling inward. The uniformed Cam in that photo wasn’t grinning. He had the Army’s just-out-of-bootcamp blank stare and grim line to his jaw. She didn’t know that guy, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

She brushed her fingers over the photo’s curled edge. She’d never considered his past before, or wondered where he’d come from. Instead, she’d taken one look at his panty-dropping exterior at the hospital a year ago and made a snap judgment. Then she’d disregarded everything about him that didn’t fit into her assumptions—exactly what people had done to her for her whole life.

God, she’d been a bitch. Sure, he was a pretty boy with a reputation, but there was more to him than the notches on his bedpost—and it was past time she realized that.

“Of course you can stay,” the judge’s voice carried into the hall. “My door’s always open.”

“You do have a habit of picking up strays,” Cam replied.

“They make the strongest champions.” The judge looked up, catching Drea watching from the hall. “But I don’t think your friend wants to hear about that. Why don’t you find those manners you seem to have lost and introduce me?”

She stepped into the large kitchen, an embarrassed flush at being caught eavesdropping burning against her cheeks.

Cam came around the island to her side and slipped his wide hand across the small of her back. “Judge Harris Evers, meet Drea Sanford.”

Harris let out a small “huh” before giving her a firm handshake. “Glad to meet you.”

Remembering the manners her mother had ingrained in her, she returned the older man’s firm grip despite the butterflies dive-bombing her stomach thanks to Cam’s touch. “It’s very gracious of you to let us barge in at such a late hour.”

“Not a problem.” His bones popped when he sat down at the table in front of a well-chewed pencil, a half-finished crossword puzzle, and a large glass of milk. “At my age, a full night’s sleep has become a bit of a myth. So what brings you home?”

Cam pulled out a chair, turned it around and sat backwards in it. “Diamond Tommy Houston.”

Harris’ lips disappeared behind his full mustache. “I take it you need information?”

“Anything that could tie him to Natasha Orton,” Cam said.

The judge took a sip of milk, then used a cloth napkin to pat the liquid out of his mustache. He leveled a considering look at Drea that had her squirming in less than ten seconds. It must be the same way he stared down defendants, because she was ready to confess to the time in middle school when she’d stolen a tube of cherry bomb lip gloss from the Estee Lauder counter at the mall.

“And it’s important enough to bring you here in the middle of the night?” Harris asked.

She joined the men at the table. “Yes.”

The judge fished a small notepad out from underneath the crossword and picked up the pencil. “Then let’s get to it. Tell me everything.”

It took about fifteen minutes to take the older man from Natasha Orton’s seizure to the mad dash from her apartment. The whole thing was so ridiculous. She specialized in contouring and proper lip liner application, not poison and sharp shooters.

Harris tapped the pencil against his pointed chin. “So which Orton is dirty?”

She snorted at the absurdity. The Ortons were filthy rich and probably cheated on their taxes, but they’d never come off as sketchy. A pain in her big ass? Hell yes, but they weren’t the Bonnie and Clyde of the Harbor City elite by any stretch of the imagination.

“I did deep background on both of them while we were at Drea’s apartment,” Cam said. “The wife enjoyed plastic surgery and making her fellow socialites cry. The husband has a predilection for nineteen-year-olds, according to records from his first divorce.”

The judge quirked a bushy eyebrow. “Prostitutes?”

Cam shook his head. “College students.”

“That cuts out the human trafficking angle that would bring in Diamond Tommy,” Harris said. “What about their businesses?”