Entangled Heart (Ashby Crime Family)

My future sister-in-law was proof of that, and I nodded, willing to hear the man out.

“You’ve never spoken to any of the women or children he’s rescued, and I assure you that number is far bigger than the number of victims left out on the street. The ones still being trafficked think he’s exactly who we need them to believe he is, a crooked priest and a pervert. The other ones, the ones who made it out, they know who Richie Mueller is.”

Shit. I couldn’t believe it. I literally could not fucking believe that Mueller was a good guy. More than that, he was a goddamned hero. “Fuck.”

Shiner smiled. “Thanks to good ol’ Richie, thousands of women and children have new identities, some have received U.S. citizenship, scholarships, counseling and whatever else they needed to help them start over and forget the past they were forced into.”

“Okay, he was a great guy,” Beck said dismissively. “Why weren’t we looped in on this earlier? We’ve wasted valuable time.”

“Have you?” Shiner’s amused grin faded, and he sat back, arms folded, waiting for Beck to explain.

“It seems to me that you didn’t need any of this intel to figure out who might want Richie dead.”

He was right, of course. Even if someone had found out he was a Fed, it would only matter if they were a criminal or crooked law enforcement.

“We’ve been looking at trafficked girls as a possibility,” she tossed out half-heartedly.

“And that’s a good line of inquiry.”

“We still should have been informed,” she insisted. The woman didn’t know when to quit.

“Maybe,” Shiner said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You know now and that means you understand why we need to find the person—or people—who did this, like yesterday. This was a decades long investigation for the Bureau, and we need to know if we’re burned completely. I’m counting on you three to figure it out as soon as you can. Take the binders with you.”

I knew a dismissal when I heard one and stood, following Marshall out of Shiner’s office with Beck staying behind, probably to try and argue her point.

She stomped out of the office, angry and full of piss and vinegar as we stepped into the empty elevator. She turned to Marshall, steam coming out of her ears. “Did you know?”

“You know I didn’t,” he said plainly. “Shiner is right, this doesn’t change anything.”

“Bullshit,” she growled and turned to me. “This gives the Ashby fucks a prime motive to kill Bonnie and Agent Mueller.”

“How do you figure? You and Marshall didn’t know he was a colleague. How the hell would Bonnie have found out?”

That wasn’t the answer Beck wanted to hear. As soon as the elevator doors opened, she marched out, her heeled boots smacking against the tile floor until she was outside lighting a cigarette.

“She gets carried away sometimes,” Marshall said with a shake of his head.

That was a gross understatement, but I kept that to myself. “I wonder if it has anything to do with her father working for the Ashby family back in the day.”

A flash of shock crossed Marshall’s face, but he gave no other indication that he hadn’t known that information before now. He shrugged it off with a quiet, “Maybe.”

My phone rang, and I picked it up right away to hear Sarge barking in my ear. “Ellison, there’s a body that might be connected to your current investigation. Behind Lucky Lopez,” he barked and hung up.

I turned to Marshall and told him the news. “Let’s go. Beck needs to cool down without the chaos of a crime scene.”

“Fine by me.”

We drove through the Green Zone mostly in silence, which was odd. “You work in Nevada long?”

“Long enough,” he grunted. “I know the players and many of the victims. Have for years. Why?”

“You think Jasper and Sadie are prime suspects in this?”

He shrugged. “Persons of interest without a doubt. But the Ashby beef is with Ronan Rhymer, which is only Mueller by default. Unless somehow Bonnie Ashby figured something out.”

“That’s what I keep coming back to, Bonnie Ashby. She’s the bug in the ointment and her presence at the murder makes no sense. Unless Mueller killed her first. Because with her background in the Catholic Church, she would have figured him out easily.”

Marshall shook his head and killed the engine in front of Lucky Lopez. “Not necessarily. No one knew he was a Fed. Not even the Feds. Ready?”

“Yeah.” Ready was a relative term, I was quickly learning. Growing up the way I did, dead bodies didn’t make me queasy, but doing this job as a cop was a far fucking cry from that.

“Shit,” I groaned when I caught sight of the body.

“Need a minute?” Marshall’s question was equal parts sympathy and amusement. “Don’t puke on my crime scene.”

“I know her. Tits Stepanova. She lives in the Green Zone and works, well worked, as manager at Lucky Lopez.” And she hadn’t just died in an attempted robbery or rape, she’d been fucking mutilated.