Page 170 of Nothing More

She would trust him, put her faith in him…

Right up until the moment she needed to intervene.

Poor Toly, she thought, before his kisses burned away all rational thought: he really had no idea what he was getting himself into, falling in love with one of Devin Green’s children.

Thirty

“I need you to see what you can find out about Mikhail Morozov,” Raven had said before she left the precinct. “He’s the key to all of this.”

And so Melissa was scrolling through databases, punching his name into every one she could think of. She’d gotten several hits, but when she compared the mug shots to the photo Raven had texted, they all proved to be the wrong Mikhail Morozov.

Across from her, Rob said, “Hey, did the phone records come in yet?”

“Uh…” Shit. She was supposed to be putting evidence together for the prosecutor – for a different case. For one oftheircases, one that had nothing to do with the Russian mafia or favors to biker princesses.

Hetsked, but she knew he didn’t mean it.

“Shut up,” she muttered, and pulled up the appropriate doc on her screen. “I’ve got the phone records right here.”

“What else ya got?”

When she shot him a look, he got up and walked around their pushed-together desks to stand beside her. She checked for onlookers, and then opened the database she’d been mining.

Rob leaned in close to get a better look. “That him?” he asked, quietly.

“No.” Back to the phone records. “I’ve found five Mikhail Morozovs so far – one wanted for larceny, another for aggravated assault, and three here on work visas without criminal records. None of the photos match what Raven sent me.”

“He may not be here under his legal name.”

“Yeah.” She slumped back in her chair with a sigh. “Why would he be? That’d be helpful.”

Rob turned so he sat on the edge of her desk, expression thoughtful. “Okay, now,” he said, still speaking too low for a casual passerby to hear. “I’m gonna say something you might not like.”

“Don’t you always?” she quipped, but without any heat. She was tired; it turned out playing both sides of the law wore a girl down.

He held up a hand.Hear me out. “I’ve got no problem with your…extracurricular activities.”

She snorted. “You make me sound like a stripper.”

“And I wouldn’t judge if you were one of those, either.” He grew serious. “But as someone who’s seen a lot of hopeless cases, I think you may be looking at one.”

She gave him a mulish look out of pure reflex, and then gave in to the urge to massage at the back of her neck where it had gone stiff. “Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. At first, when I thought it was just a matter of running some samples, I thought that, when the DNA came back, we could convince Raven to cooperate with us, or go to Homicide, maybe. I thought we were dealing with a garden variety stalker or something. A good ol’ fashioned serial killer. But…” She lowered her voice another notch. “This mafia stuff…”

“That’s not something you just walk into. There’s a whole department for handling organized crime, and no offense to you and me, kiddo, but we donothave the skills for that.”

She sent him a narrow look. “I’m not sure how I feel aboutkiddo.”

He patted the top of her head, biting back a laugh. “Get used to it.Kiddo.”

“Ugh. You’re buying lunch.”

“Don’t I always?”

“No. There was – that one time…”

“Uh-huh.”

They settled back at their computers to spend the rest of the morning prepping their case for trial – left a voicemail for the witness, since the prosecutor wanted Melissa, specifically, to walk through the testimony with her – and donned their coats to head out just before one. They’d left their unmarked on the curb, and a familiar, hat-wearing figure stood against it, shoulders hunched against the cold, hands in leather gloves when he pulled them from his pockets.