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Ronan hit the turn signal and hooked a right into the precinct lot. He didn’t know for sure what he’d do with the truth… but he needed to know. Maybe he just wanted to ask whoever had done it how his father looked as the life drained from his face. Maybe he wanted to shake their hand, hug his brother for doing what Ronan never had the guts to do—for finally saving their mom.
Maybe he wanted justice. But damn if he knew what justice meant when it came to his father.
“If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead,” Charles said. “How’s that for truth?”
“What a coincidence. He is dead.”
“I meant he’d have been dead a lot earlier.”
“That’s not better.” Ronan slammed the car into park. “Gotta go, Charlie.”
“Wait—”
He kicked the door open. “I’ll catch you at the next gala.” Then he hit End and shoved the cell into his pocket as he hustled up the walk and into the precinct.
Paddy looked up as Ronan approached their back-to-back desks. Paddy raised his hands in mock surprise. “Where’s my coffee?”
“What?”
“The coffee you were supposed to be getting?”
“I… forgot.”
“Mm-hmm.” Paddy pursed his lips. “I’m sure you did.”
Ronan peeled off his suit jacket and slung it over the back of his seat. “Fine. My brother called. Threw me off my game.”
Paddy’s gaze softened. Paddy didn’t know he suspected his brother of something so deviant as homicide, but his partner knew what an asshole his father had been. And Paddy also knew about his mother—Rosalie Duffy was in the system, so she’d popped up on Ronan’s background check. It wouldn’t shock him if everyone here knew that his mother was a whore.
Correction: used to be a whore. When it suited his father’s business interests. When they’d met, she’d barely been fifteen.
Paddy tossed a file onto Ronan’s desktop as Ronan slumped into the chair.
“Flatfoots found the murder weapon three streets over—covered in blood, no prints, tossed in a trash can,” Paddy said. “There wasn’t enough time for either Waylon Pierce or the bartender to hide that blade.”
Ronan flipped open the file folder and scanned the text. “We know those two didn’t do it. Not enough blood on them, plus what you just said about the knife.”
Jenny did have blood on her hands… but no one else knew that.
You’re letting her slide, withholding evidence, but can’t leave your own brother alone? The worst Charlie did was slay a dragon.
“Yeah, your girl isn’t going to jail today,” Paddy drawled. “As much as I’m sure you’d like to handcuff her.”
“She’s not my?—”
“Whatever.” Paddy kicked his chair around the desk until it was beside Ronan’s. He tapped the file. “Her lipstick was on our vic’s mouth. You saw it as well as I did. At first, I thought Mercer was a customer—got a dance, a kiss, maybe followed her to the back where something went bad between him and the killer. Then the killer cut and ran. But?—”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ronan finished. “I checked the street-side cameras—Mercer didn’t walk in the front door. Either someone let him in the back, or he knew it’d be unlocked.”
Ronan had checked the electronic video feeds the night before while sitting vigil in front of that motel, his dick so hard it made his entire abdomen ache. He’d run Mercer through his laptop software, too—advanced tech that tended to find things their police database didn’t. But he hadn’t found any connections between Mercer and the club itself, though he had verified that the man’s mother claimed residence a few blocks over.
“And another dead end,” Paddy went on. “Mercer wasn’t an informant. I’d heard whispers, but I couldn’t find any cop who actually worked with him. Which makes sense because he grew up an Air Force brat and still moved nearly every year like clockwork.”
Like clockwork… or like he was running.
“So we’re back to square one. We know he entered the club from the back, kissed a girl, and got himself stabbed. And the only person back there besides the two we ruled out was the girl in Waylon’s office.”
Paddy cocked an eyebrow.