Page 20

FOURTEEN

Killian

I might’ve looked casual—elbow hooked over the back of the chair, fingers tapping my coffee cup—but I was keyed up beneath the surface as Caleb presented his findings.

I couldn’t blame it on the nightly visits from Jamie or the constant sex my body couldn’t believe it was having.

I was trying to concentrate on the map of people on the wall in the Cave, but the espresso beside me had gone cold fifteen minutes ago, untouched as I stared at photos and forced myself not to think about Jamie.

Across the room, Caleb stood and paced in front of the big screen, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened just enough to signal he was past polite.

“In summary, I’m still unpicking threads from the access codes Robbie recalled,” he said, pointer flicking from one cluster of names to another, “and correlating it with what Enzo, Rio, and Jamie pulled from John Mitchell’s system.

Layers of garbage routing, but there are consistencies.

All linked to one word. Lyric . And Lassiter?

His name keeps orbiting the edges enough that it trips my searches. ”

Sonya sat silently nearby, laptop open on her knees, eyes narrowed and tracking fast. I didn’t need to prompt her. If she had something, she’d say it. Caleb, on the other hand, always circled his point like a hawk.

“And?” I said, voice clipped.

Caleb clicked the remote. The screen changed to a timeline with financial trails, maps, and key org names.

“We know that Edward Lassiter’s a walking press release on paper.

Weekly church, spotless home life. Mortgage-free.

Tax-sheltered. No personal debt. Every public move paints him as a golden boy for federal justice.

Potential political moves. He has the Kennedy sheen, and at first glance, it seems real.

But look here—” He zoomed in on a financial path winding through three shell companies, one of which was tied to a community resilience nonprofit in Arizona.

“They’re moving money through adoption assistance charities.

International ones. Two of them were flagged when I searched on that Lyric tag. ”

“Any movement of minors?” I asked.

“Three cases. At least. No names are in the open, but the pattern is there. Same donation amounts. Same transfer timing. The IRS flagged it, then backed off. Someone fixed it, and the name I got was from Robbie’s list, Emmerson Dran at the FBI.

This Lyric tag is tied to the movement of minors, using charity fronts and international adoption organizations as covers.

Their operation is sophisticated, including shell companies, encrypted transactions, and digital laundering. It’s a maze.”

Before I could speak, my phone buzzed hard across the table, a call transferred from Sylvia.

“AUSA Lassiter for you, sir,” she murmured in introduction.

“Lassiter?” I said, and the room went deathly quiet. Caleb waved at me and flicked buttons so we could record on multiple devices. “Thank you, Sylvia, put him through.”

“We need to meet, McKendrick,” Lassiter said without preamble.

I glanced at the clock. “Can I ask?—”

“Scarlet Grapes,” he interrupted. “An hour.” Then the phone went dead.

All three of us were quiet.

“What the hell?” Caleb muttered .

Sonya raised an eyebrow. “Why is the man at the center of our takedown calling you ?”

We exchanged glances. “I have no idea.”

Caleb stalked over to me, fists on the table. “Unless he has proof you were at that fire? If he does, Killian, you can’t meet him. It’s dangerous.”

“You know I’m going,” I said, and Caleb muttered and started to pace again.

“Go into it with your eyes wide open,” Sonya said, “and get your game face on.”

Caleb passed something to me. A small, sleek Pride lapel pin. “Wear this,” he said.

“Mic?”

“Records locally, uploads remotely.”

I pinned it to the lapel of my charcoal suit, fingers pressing it flat. Then, I rolled my neck, slowly and deliberately, trying to bleed some of the tension out of my spine.

“I’ll be less than a minute away if you need me,” Caleb added as he slipped his jacket on, carefully over the sidearm now holstered at his hip, his training as an operator with Delta Force in every line of him.

“Okay, but do not approach unless shit is going south.”

“Got it.”

Lassiter sipped his water as if he were tasting fine scotch, then set it down and steepled his fingers.

The top button of his shirt was undone, his tie loose as if he’d pulled it free in the car and forgotten to fix it.

He looked sharp, dangerous even—polished with just enough fraying around the edges to suggest the pressure was getting to him.

Maybe he was nervous, or he knew where I’d been and was angry.

It took everything I had not to think about what he’d done to Robbie, and the violent urge to leap across the table and shove a glass into his smug face clawed at my gut.

Calm. Collected. I breathed once, slow and deep. See what he wants first . Taking down one man left us with nothing. We needed to know how far the rot had spread.

“I’m in need of your brand of investigation,” he began.

“Go on.”

“I recall the work you did on the Hillway-Spencer case.”

The Hillway-Spencer case? That was why he was talking to me now?

The team had provided evidence to exonerate Zachary Hillway-Spencer, which was a case that Lassiter had been prosecuting.

Of course, we’d sent the deep dive stuff to the defense anonymously, but we’d also had to work damn hard to let Lassiter come out of the mess smelling of roses, because if he’d found out about my extracurricular work, we were finished.

“That was a long time ago,” I said conversationally. “What about the case?”

“I know it was you.”

“Me?” I tried for innocent, but he rolled his eyes.

“One of the defense team suggested that the information to clear Hillway-Spencer had come from my side of the bench. With your constant doubt over the client’s guilt, I assume it was you, or at least someone you knew, who’d pulled out the information that not even my best investigators could find.”

“Not me,” I lied. He pretended to believe me, knowing I’d never admit to such a thing. I made a mental note to get Caleb to close that down—opposition thinking it was me that passed them information was a step in the wrong direction.

“Whatever,” Lassiter said. “There was a fire at some downtown club a few nights ago. The Bonehook,” he said, voice gravel-thick but casual, as if he was discussing the weather. “Do you know it?”

I kept my expression neutral. My training kicked in—relax the jaw, don’t blink too long, breathe evenly, don’t act too surprised.

“It’s near the bail bond office in El Sereno,” I said smoothly, and there were no lies there.

He made a slight, disdainful sound in the back of his throat. “Low-class. Low-rent. But… a friend of a friend had some money in it. Investment, I imagine. Cash flow. That sort of thing.”

I nodded, slowly. “Okay?”

“Your office,” he began, and I tensed, although I kept my expression even. “Quite aside from what you may or may not have shared on the Hillway-Spencer case, you fixed things for me.”

Fuck, did I regret that now.

“My legal team supported you with the information we’d found in discovery,” I said.

It was all lies. We’d dug so deep we’d discovered way more than would ever be seen in a typical search.

Not that Lassiter would have known that.

We hadn’t worked for him as the lead prosecutor on the case, but I’d thought Hillway-Spencer was innocent, and we were more than happy to pass over what we knew in our most subtle of ways.

My worlds colliding was just fortunate. “I didn’t fix things for you. I’m not some fixer.”

Lassiter’s expression narrowed and cleared—too quick for me to even think about it usually, but now that I knew things about him, or at least suspected him, that expression was telling.

“Of course not,” he said, flashing a smile that never reached his eyes.

“I didn’t mean fix in a bad way, but my friend’s friend has certain charitable endeavors that would be severely impacted if this Bonehook loss isn’t accounted for. ”

There it was again— friend’s friend. Twice now. It was too specific to be casual and too vague to be honest.

“What specifically do you want from me?” I asked.

“Not me, I don’t want anything,” he said hurriedly.

“But I want to help ensure any ties between my friend’s connections and the club are…

removed,” he paused, smoothing his expression.

“Legally, of course. It’s a messy business, and I’m sure it’s far beneath what you usually deal with now that you’ve established yourself after working that case with me. ”

I didn’t blink—I was where I was now by being me, I didn’t owe Lassiter anything.

He cleared his throat and continued. “Anyway, the charities affected…” Any minute now, he was going to add think of the children , and yep, I was going to beat him if he went there.

“Yes, the charities—” He lifted a hand, vaguely, as if he might swat the detail away, “—whoever started the fire might be connected to another man who recently died. An unfortunate house fire. And at the club, they took a laptop.”

My gaze didn’t flicker. “A laptop.”

The laptop. It had been relatively clean at first glance—aside from the typical drug deals and human trafficking activities—but there’d been nothing on it linking to Lassiter, and the memory sticks had been corrupted.

Given our new interest in the man, I made a note to have Caleb dig deeper and pull out more than just the surface level.

Had he missed something on the laptop, and was it possible to examine the memory sticks more closely?

He was listening to this, and knowing him, he was probably already on it.