Deceiving Lies (Forgiving Lies 2)

He huffed loudly and took the chair next to me. “It better be. Talk to me.”

“Before we get into what I need, please tell me Shawn isn’t on stars.”

“Kash . . .” he said in warning.

“Look, Sunny, I was glad he was the one to come at me tonight. But the kid is, what, fifteen? Bad enough you have him as the one going out to set up the deals, but even you can’t sit back and watch him waste his life on meth.”

Sunny rested an elbow on the arm of his chair and massaged his bald head as he answered me. “I’m not, and he’s not. I don’t want him setting things up either, he’s a good kid . . . but he was determined to get in a crew. I’m sure you’ve seen that. Has been since he was a little runt. So I took him under my wing so I could keep an eye on him, but I haven’t let him touch the product. He wanted more responsibility, and it would have looked weird making older members do grunt work when we have him. I have to do what I have to do. I know you understand that.”

I frowned because I did. Sunny and I shared a look that said everything. Neither of us liked the situation, but what could you do other than blow your cover? And Sunny’s was a lifelong cover, not something you could easily jump in and out of in a year and a half or so like Mason and I had.

“Enough about how I’m running my crew, tell me why you’re here.”

I got comfortable in my chair and folded my arms over my stomach. “Did you catch wind about Mase and me getting sent to Texas, and why?” When he nodded, I continued. “I met a girl there, and it’s a fucking long story, but short of it is . . . I’m in love with her. I’ll be in love with her until the day I die. She moved back here with me, knows all about my past undercover work, and knows about the job that went wrong that ended up sending us to Texas.”

“She got a drug problem?”

“No, Sunny, fuck.”

I rolled my eyes and kept my outward emotions turned off as I told him the rest. In the last few days, everything had changed. I’d done all I could to find her without the department’s knowledge. It’d been difficult, between going to work and doing my own investigations without letting anyone else catch wind. But it was about to get a hell of a lot easier. Starting today, Rachel and I would have been on vacation in Texas for Candice’s graduation, and then California to visit with her family for two weeks. When Chief asked if I wanted to still take the time off, or if I’d needed the work as a distraction, I’d chosen the time off. No one would be expecting anything from me, and I would be free to look for her more than I had been. He’d nodded and told me he understood it was a difficult time, that if I needed anything, to let him know.

I didn’t need a goddamn thing other than my fiancée back.

I’d gone to see living relatives that Juarez and the other boys had, and I’d spent days on the streets, talking to people. But I knew I was missing things, and that’s why I was coming to see Sunny now. He had a massive operation in Tampa Bay, the only reason it was still running was because he was a cop, and we weren’t about to shut him down because he was working at taking down suppliers that went much larger than Tampa Bay . . . that went much larger than Florida. So he knew pretty much everything there was to know, and if he didn’t know it, he knew who to talk to in order to find out.

“She doesn’t have a drug problem, but she was abducted two weeks ago right out of our bedroom. Mason and I were working a double homicide when it happened. Department has leads, but nowhere to go with them, and they haven’t gotten any closer to finding her than they were on that first day.”

“Shit, Kash. You serious?”

I stared at him, unblinking, not responding.

“Man, I had no idea. I can’t remember the last time I watched the news, and I haven’t checked in with the department in months. Are you—I mean, damn. Are you okay? I would be losing my shit.”

“Already have, and, no, I’m not okay. My future wife’s gone. And I just watched a video of her being tortured . . . a couple days ago, we received her hair covered in blood.” Bile rose in my throat, but I swallowed it back down. I was supposed to stay off the case, but her hair had been in a box made out to me. Mason and two other detectives had had to actually cuff me when I’d opened it in order to restrain me. “I’m not fucking okay. But I’m going to find her, and I’ll do whatever it takes. I think you understand how serious I am if I’m sitting here asking you for favors. I’m willing to do whatever.”

Sunny studied me before leaning in and saying softly, “A man that looks like you has nothing left to lose. Your eyes are dead, Kash, but you still have a job, you still have a family, you could still lose everyth—”

“No, if I’ve lost her, I’ve already lost it all.”

He sucked in air between his teeth and shook his head hard once. “Okay, how far gone are you willing to go?”

“Back to how I was undercover.”

“All right, then tell me what you need help with.”

I explained the spray-painted message left in the bedroom, the phone calls made to the department, the torture they’d been putting her through, and what they’d sent us. I told him about the demands the kidnappers had been making, and how well they’d been covering their tracks.

“I’ve gone to visit the family of some of the guys, but most of them have no contact, they’re scared of them. I know most of the guys had some women, some had baby mommas, and some had regular whores, but I can’t find any of them. I was hoping you knew something we were missing, or you’d be able to help me find some people who could persuade some of the crew to talk.”

Sunny drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair and dropped his head back as he thought for a bit. “I’ll have to get in touch with some people to find out more. For the most part, I left that gang alone because the two of you were headed in when they started getting bad, there was no reason for me to really pay attention, you know?”

“Yeah. I’d been afraid of that.”

“But I do know there’s a walker over on Seventh Street. RJ was hitting it for a while, and she was here getting her hits, they just called it even. What I’m getting at though, is she was a talker. So I know she was the main bitch of one of Juarez’s boys. She’d be buck-ass naked in my living room, just got done with RJ and getting ready to go walk. All the while she’d be t

alking about her man being in prison and how she was walking so she could support herself and their kids. Can’t remember the guy’s name though.”

“You know hers?”