And if there was one true thing I knew about Addison Beck, it was that her job meant everything to her.
“They’ll know I was just talking shit, playing the bad cop to get a witness or suspect to talk. It’s called routine investigative work.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Maybe, unless I confirm that we did fuck. I have footage of you all dressed up and coming into my office for a good thirty or forty minutes. That’d be pretty hard to dispute, especially considering your obsession with my family. With me.”
Beck folded her arms and scoffed. “Oh, please. That’s bullshit.”
I tucked the phone back in my pocket. “I guess that means you don’t want to make a deal?” I shrugged. “Too bad. I thought you were smarter than that.”
She opened her mouth to speak, frowning when I cut her off before she could say a word.
“You want to know about your old man, I’ll tell you the truth. The whole truth, whether you want to hear it or not. I do that and you take the two million and get the fuck out of Nevada forever.”
She stared at me, those icy blue eyes trying to figure out if I was lying or not. “If you ever come back, I promise to forget that you’re a federal agent. Got it?”
She nodded but said nothing, looking wholly dejected.
I dropped down on the stiff sofa listening to the cushions sigh. “Jack worked for us. He drove trucks, eighteen wheelers mostly, and he was a good man and a loyal employee.”
“You knew him?” Hope swam in her eyes, desperate to know every detail I could remember.
“Some. I was a kid, but I remembered him being around. A lot. Especially after Colm died. There might have been something between him and Sadie but I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that she genuinely liked him, considered him a friend.”
Beck shook her head, trying to process the details I provided. That wasn’t my problem, so I kept talking.
“When that shipment went missing and Jack along with it, she didn’t even consider that Jack had betrayed her. Betrayed the family. That’s how loyal he was.”
Sadie had been worried and then angry after the first week of his disappearance. “We scoured the roads and everywhere in between for him. For a full year we searched for him. Then we found him.”
Beck gasped and looked up from her hands. “You found him?”
I nodded. “He was hiding in a trailer park out in the desert between here and California. He worked as a handyman for the park and picked up odd jobs that paid him in cash.”
She looked up. Life had returned to her eyes, color to her skin. “What happened to him?”
“The Crusaders highjacked his truck and shot him. He was worried Sadie wouldn’t believe him since he’d survived. He was more worried The Crusaders would come after you if they knew he lived.”
Sadie had been furious that The Crusaders would come after her employees. It was the last time they made that mistake.
“We nearly burned down Glitz and Vegas to avenge his so-called death and then set him up off the grid where he could live in peace, and his little girl wouldn’t be in danger.”
Beck nodded as she took in everything I said. I waited with very little patience for her to put the pieces together. “You mean…he’s alive?”
I nodded. “He is. Alive and healthy and maybe even happy. And I’ll tell you where when you leave the Tri-City area for good. Forever, Beck.”
She nodded, seeming to go for the deal, but I didn’t buy it. When she looked back up at me, I saw in her scheming blue eyes she wasn’t accepting the deal. Not yet. “I need to think about it.”
I knew what she was thinking. “You won’t find him, Beck. I know you’re thinking of trying to do it yourself so you can fuck me over, so I’ll just wait for you to tire yourself out searching for him. And when you’re ready to accept my deal, you know where to find me.”
And once she did that, accepted the money, and left town in disgrace, it would be one less fucking thing on my plate. One less woman making my life difficult. One more woman not driving me crazy. That would give me time to focus on the two women who drove me utterly crazy, and I couldn’t pay them off.
Sadie.
And Mo.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mo
I stood above my mentor, my protector, the woman who saved me. The woman who’d given me a job when I first came to the bright lights of Las Vegas.
It was hard staring down at Sadie, seeing her so small and frail. The typical hospital blankets had been replaced with a soft wool houndstooth blanket. Her skin was pale. Her blond and silver hair brushed straight back so that she looked more like an old lady instead of the bad=ass boss bitch she was.