The Best Friend Zone

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it. How’d she take it?”

Drake chuckles, his blue eyes shining under a crop of dark-blond hair. “You think I’d risk her finding out? I made sure she wasn’t around to see me do the installation. Waited until she took off on that bike built for two with Tory.”

“How the hell does that old lady have the stamina to ride that thing all over town?” Ridge asks with a grin. “She has to be pushing seventy.”

“That’s just Granny,” I tell him. “She’s always acted half her age.”

“She looks like it too,” Ridge answers. “For a senior, she’s fit as a fiddle. Shit, if I ever need a sassy old ballbuster in one of my films, I’d consider casting her.”

I can’t help laughing at the thought. Since he’s back in Hollywood part time for what he swears will be his last big acting run, I think he might be serious.

“That might bring you more trouble than it’s worth. Her brain’s still sharp as a tack. She tells it like she sees it and doesn’t worry about the bruises.”

We all get a chuckle out of that, some of the truest words ever spoken in this bar.

Then Grady’s expression flattens behind his dark beard. “So you’re convinced this Heckles prick is some kind of spy? He’s looking to sell info on you to Bat Pickett?”

I nod. “That’s the only reason for him to have come here asking, and then snooping around Dean Coffey’s place. You said that beat-up truck was here a couple times.”

Grady nods. “Can’t forget that shit. Thing left a pile of rust I had to sweep up from the lot.”

“Clue us in, Faulk. Who’s this Bat Pickett dude, anyway?” Ridge asks, taking a long pull off his beer.

As soon as he heard I’d asked Drake to put up cameras at Dean’s place, Ridge called and said whatever it was, he was in.

The man can’t help returning a favor. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Fine.

I’d done my job enlisting the Feds to help him with some demons chasing down his wife and father-in-law.

It’s been a few days, and there hasn’t been hide nor hair of Marvin Heckles anywhere in Dallas.

Carolina didn’t know shit, either. She shrugged off my questions, and the minute she started trying to pull down her leopard top to flash those fake-as-hell tits, I was done.

What else is new?

All I got was the fact that she’d picked him up at a dive bar out by the interstate, a couple towns over, before they came back to the Bobcat.

“Bart Pickett, aka Bat, is a good-for-nothing drug dealer rotting in an Oklahoma prison,” I say, angrily inhaling my beer. “Trouble is, he’s got bad money buying good lawyers who’ll sweet-talk their way to parole. He won’t stay locked up forever.”

“You put him there?” Ridge asks, sitting up taller.

“No.” I take another swig of beer. Anything to do with the witness protection program is technically classified, but I can tell them the gist of the story. “I made the bust that put away his brother, Jake Pickett, about three years ago.”

My gut churns hellfire at the memory.

The deaths that shit caused.

The sacrifice.

Justin Franklin was the best partner I’d ever had, and telling his widow he’d been shot and killed gutted me. I would’ve rather been garroted ten times than rip her heart out, but somebody had to deliver the bad news.

I tip my beer and let it pour down my throat, hoping to wash away memories so bitter they make my eyes burn.

“You okay, man?” Grady grunts out.

“Yeah. Jake was killed less than a year after he went to prison. Drowned in a dirty sink by a rival drug gang while they were doing laundry,” I tell them. “No easy task. They build those things real shallow to prevent that sort of shit.”

I shudder just picturing it, remembering how freakishly tall the Picketts are. It must’ve taken half a dozen men built like bulldozers to hold him down in a basin hardly any deeper than a mixing bowl.

“Bat was the younger brother. He took over their meth trade after Jake went to jail. He was a little smarter, a little better at hiding his street operation. He abandoned his brother’s shady repair business. Nobody could get him on logistics, but he orchestrated a complex prison hit on the men who murdered Jake. Bat got himself arrested after an investigation found a link to him bribing those dudes to take out his brother’s killers.”

“Fuck, that’s intense,” Drake growls, his blue eyes flashing. “But the man’s locked up. That’s good news, right?”

Just like all of us here, he’s seen his fair share of violence.

“It won’t stay that way. Plus, Bat looked up to Jake like he hung the stars from everything I’ve heard. He won’t forget anybody who had a hand in getting his brother murdered, even indirectly. He won’t give up on revenge. Once he’s out, he’s coming straight for me.”