Chapter 5
Ryan
* * *
“Looks like we’ve come to a standstill again with this case,” Aaron declared. He set the folder he’d been reading from back on his desk and looked over at me.
I threw my stress ball up again and caught it. These days I found myself playing with this thing a lot more than I liked. It was a good distraction, though, for when I was at work, and I needed it. Aria was on my mind big time, and I already knew our case had tanked because some key evidence we found two weeks ago had been thrown out as irrelvant.
I didn’t know how anyone could consider fingerprints on a bag of cocaine irrelevant, but that was the kind of shit I was up against.
There was an incongruence between the tests done at the forenscics lab here and the one in Charlotte. For this particular case we needed both tests to be conclusive.
I set the ball down and rested back against my chair.
Aaron looked over to me and frowned. “Ryan, you could say something.”
“Like what? Those guys are always one step ahead of us. I don’t know what more we can do.”
Patterson St. James was the guy we were after, but to get him we needed hard evidence. That was difficult when he had so many high officials covering his tracks. It wasn’t the officials I was concerned with because that was out of my jurisdiction and well above my pay grade; it was him I was after. I just couldn’t get my hands on him and his drug ring. We knew there was going to be a shipment of some new stuff on the street; we just didn’t know when.
“What about another stakeout? At the docks this time.”
“No, not me. You can take Wilks or someone like that.” This was me drawing the line. I’d been a damn good cop, just like my father, and my grandfather. Like him, I went over and above my duties to get the job done.
But, he drew the line too, and he didn’t put his neck out more than he had to. A stakeout would be fruitless. The last one had been, and I wouldn’t be party to another meaningless mission, one that would take me away from home again.
Aaron was good to go running around town doing God knew what. He was single and had no responsibilities.
“Is this about Aria again?” he asked.
“Everything is about Aria.”
“So, if I get a hunch that a stakeout is what we need to do, you won’t come?” He tilted his head to the side.
“Not for a hunch, man.” I shook my head.
I was serious. I needed to keep my priorities straight.
“You know you were way worse than her,” Aaron pointed out with a lopsided grin.
“And you were right there with me.” He had been. We’d gotten up to crazy shit together.
“Look at us now, though: we became cops, detectives—respectable.”
“That’s us, Aaron.Sheneeds guidance.”
“What are you going to do when she goes to college? Follow her? Be her guide?”
I’d cross that bridge when I got there. It would be a big change for me, but I wanted her to go. I’d never gone because I had a family to take care of. I wanted her to go and have every opportunity she could get her hands on. I thought something like a business degree would suit her well because she could use it for anything.
Of course she didn’t agree, though. She didn’t agree, just like everything we spoke about.
“I still can’t believe you reported her missing. Man that was so uncool.”
“I know.” I’d had to suffer the wrath of Aria the whole weekend.
“You need to take a chill pill. You need a woman to distract you.”
