“Come on, Lacey. Let me take you home, and we can meet up in the morning when we’re getting ready to take you to work so we can hopefully get one step closer to finishing this once and for all,” I said, stretching out my hand, and I felt her fingers entangle with mine while we bid Hawk goodbye.
I drove her home, trying to get her there before the sun came up. We were both exhausted, but I walked her up to the door, ready to kiss her goodbye until we were able to meet again, but she unlocked the door, checking inside to make sure the coast was clear before she dragged me into her bedroom with her.
“You’re not heading back out there looking that exhausted. Come on, we can sleep it off and get down to business as soon as it’s time,” she said, and I smiled.
It felt so nice to curl up next to her, to get some uninterrupted sleep, even though it wasn’t going to be much. I was finally able to push aside my worried that something was going to happen that we wouldn’t be able to control. Having her there made everything better.
She rested her head on my chest, drifting off to sleep just as the sun began to stream in through her bedroom window.
* * *
We wokeup feeling even more tired than before we’d gone to sleep, but we both knew we needed the rest because we had absolutely no idea how the rest of the day was going to go. Lacey got up and headed straight for the shower, realizing that Mona was still fast asleep.
I knew that she still had yet to tell her about everything that was going on, but I was just glad that we were finally starting to move in the right direction, that we had mended our nearly broken bridge, and we were one step closer to having a future together. I could only hope that we would be able to finish this once and for all very soon, because Lacey and I had a lot of lost time to make up for.
Twenty-Six
Lacey
I got out of the shower to see a comfortably sleeping Moves curled up in my bed, and I knew that today was going to be difficult for us both. I was still trying to process the fact that the man who’d given me my job, who’d taken a chance on me and seemed to trust and respect me, was involved in such disgusting behavior.
I wondered for a moment if that was why he had put me on the case in the first place. He probably wanted to keep me distracted so that I wouldn’t actually find out the real truth about what he’d been up to because he’d know that I would never be able to let it go. The DA knew me well enough to know that I was always going to stand for the innocent, that I was going to protect those that did not deserve to be put behind bars, and he’d used that against me.
It made me angry thinking that I had felt like a failure for not finding the evidence he’d asked me to seek out, and now I knew that it had probably never even existed to begin with. He had sent me on a wild goose chase, knowing good and well that I wasn’t going to find anything substantial. The whole time he had just wanted to keep me distracted enough until he could snatch the case out from under me.
I knew him well enough to know that despite his dirty cop behavior, he was going to have to keep a record of his movements somewhere or somehow. There had to be evidence in that office that would help incriminate him, and even if it wouldn’t be admissible in court for me sneaking into his office to find it, I knew there had to be a way to get it in front of the right set of eyes.
He’d played me for much too long, and I wondered how many of the cops in the Department were involved in this. I knew that once we had the evidence we needed, we could start devising a plan of attack, because someone was going to have to bring him down, and I wanted that someone to be me. It hurt my heart to know that I had spent so much of my time trying to help convict an innocent man, when the DA himself knew that he hadn’t had anything to do with stealing that vehicle.
I could feel the blood boil beneath my skin, but I could only imagine how Moves felt through all of this. He’d been trying to protect his own from the very beginning, and I was starting to understand why he had been so apprehensive about me when I had told him I was a lawyer. He didn’t know where my loyalties were, and all he was trying to do was keep his friend out of prison, especially since Chalupa hadn’t done anything to deserve what happened to him.
I promised myself that I was going to help them all, that we were going to find a way to get to the bottom of this before the DA had a chance to cover his tracks. He was a smart man, but he had absolutely no idea that I had caught on to what he was doing, and that gave me the advantage I needed to get what I could and get out before anyone could suspect a thing.
Moves drove me down to the office where I got off his bike and walked the rest of the way so no one would catch me with him. I didn’t know how many eyes were on me, or how many of the people I’d seen on an everyday basis were just out doing the DA’s dirty work. It made me so angry that a man who was supposed to be protecting the people of La Playa was making deals with the worst kind of people out there.
Moves had told me everything I needed to know about what kind of people Las Balas truly was, and how they would stop at nothing to get what they wanted, even if that meant sacrificing one of their own. The thought of the DA so much as having a conversation with a man like El Diablo made my stomach turn, but it ignited something inside of me that I hadn’t felt for a very long time, and that was determination. I was finally back on track, and my life felt like it had purpose again. That was all I could’ve ever asked for, because there was a moment where I had been starting to let myself slip, where everything I’d come to know had been proved to be a lie, and I had to figure out how to bring the truth to the surface.
I was greeted by the receptionist the minute I swiped my keycard and got inside the main offices. I noticed that the DA’s assistant was roaming around, but she seemed pretty distracted, and I knew that there was the possibility I could sneak past her with the ruse that I was dropping something off for the DA that no one was allowed to touch.
I ventured off into my office, making sure to stay out of sight of Richard as well, because I didn’t have time for a friendly conversation. I wasn’t even sure if he had been in on this too, and that would truly hurt my heart to find out, but he didn’t seem like the type. Richard had been the kind of man that had always fought for what was right, and I didn’t think that he would be able to stand for such malicious behavior.
I reached into my bag, pulling out a file with the word ‘confidential’ stamped on the front, trying to make it look like it wasn’t the file that the DA had given to me at the very start of the case, and that it was something new that only he could have a look at.
I took a deep breath, moving toward the DA’s office, until his assistant tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hello, Lacey. I can take that from you,” she said, reaching for the file in my hand, but I snatched it away.
“I was told that I had to place this on the DA’s desk, and it can’t leave my hands until then. Give me a minute?” I asked.
She gave me a hard look for a few seconds, but just when I thought my heart might burst from the suspense, she finally nodded and turned away.
I made my way over to his office, opening up the door and setting the file down on his desk. Then I waited for a minute, making sure that the coast was clear before I began to search through his things. I ran through his computer files to find that his accounts were still open, and I noticed that there was quite a substantial amount of money that had been deposited within the last few days.
I snapped a few photos with my phone, knowing that this was the kind of thing I could certainly get fired for, but I didn’t care. I’d promised Moves and Hawk that I would do whatever I could to bring the real criminals to justice, and to fight for the freedom of their dear friend who’d gotten caught up in the middle of all of this.
I ran through his drawers as quickly as I could, noticing that there wasn’t anything else apart from the bank statements that could indicate that he was getting an obscene amount of money from Las Balas. I’d never pegged him as the type of man who would get involved with something like that, because he’d always prided himself on the fact that he always put the law before anyone or anything else. I supposed his priorities had changed over the years, or it was quite possible that I never truly knew who he really was, and this was the kind of man he had been all along.
I was blinded by it all, just trying to do my job, allowing it to consume me, and it wasn’t until he’d assigned me this case that I began to realize how dirty the people in this very office could be. It made me sick to think that the DA would ever allow himself to be bought like that.
