Ranger laughed, following the SAA. “Man, have you really lived if you haven’t had to shit in the woods at least once?”
Whatever Bulldog’s response was, Steel didn’t pay attention to it. He and Ghost stood facing each other. The defensiveness in Ghost’s stance made Steel wonder what it was that they’d found at the police station.
Every parent liked to believe that they knew their children, but the harsh reality was that children hid things from their parents as much as parents hid things from their children. Family dynamics were tricky that way. There were things, life experiences, that could only be had in a family, and yet there was so much left unsaid.
Was Ghost about to tell him something about Melanie’s life that he wasn’t ready to hear? Guilt for her murder had not dissipated since learning that Griffin Shaw had not been the one to pull the trigger. The possibilities that Melanie’s murder was not an act of vengeance against Steel did not mean he’d protected her any better. If anything, it made his guilt worse, because he hadn’t seen her murder coming.
And if her murder had nothing to do with him…? If it had been somethingshe’ddone… Steel wasn’t sure if he could cope with that. He could shoulder the blame, but he knew in his heart of hearts that he’d never be able to place that blame on Melanie, regardless of whatever it was Ghost was about to tell him.
“Keys looked at the footage again,” Ghost started, crossing his arms over his chest. Steel didn’t need to see the security feed again. He’d watched it so many times every second of his daughter’s murder was seared to his brain. “Starbucks and I went to the police station to get Melanie’s file while Cage andPapaw went to campus to look at the… At where it happened,” he reworded his original sentence. They found an ATM down the road that might give us a different angle of the shooter’s cage.”
Steel had never looked into whose car it was, because it hadn’t mattered. The assumption was that it would have come back stolen, so it was a waste of time to verify if the car was registered to one of Shaw’s aliases.
“What did he learn?” There was a coolness to Steel’s voice as he prepared himself for Ghost’s answer.
“Vehicle is registered to a shell corporation. But he’s working on tracking it down. What do you know about Rodney Baldwin?”
Steel’s brows lowered. “He was Melanie’s roommate’s boyfriend. There was nothing romantic going on between Melanie and him.” Steel was very sure of that fact. “Tina, the roommate, said he’d just left their dorm. He must have seen Melanie at the intersection and wanted to walk her back since it was after dark.” Baldwin’s death had been the very definition of ‘wrong place, wrong time’. “Why? Are you looking into him?”
“The police were,” Ghost said evenly. “In fact, they had more on him than they do on Melanie.”
Steel’s blood turned cold. “Why? Who was he?”
“We’re not sure yet. We’re still going through the files, but we do know that the lead detective, Spurs, he was talking to the gang unit.”
Melanie might have been a freshman in college, but she was responsible. A good girl. She once had Carlos give her a citation for jaywalking. She did her homework on time, volunteered at church, and advocated for household spiders. Sheneverwould get involved in a gang.
But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been the target of one.
“Was he a lure?” Steel asked Ghost.
Human traffickers used them to bait people, mostly women and kids, into compliance, made them trust the people so theydidn’t see the trap coming. College campuses were theperfecthunting grounds for traffickers. Young adults who were testing the limits of their newfound freedom, who thought the world was their oyster, and that they could do no wrong. Especially in a city college.
Had Melanie been the target of a trafficker? But then why kill her?
Ghost shook his head. “No, but they suspected he was running drugs on campus.”
A drug dealer? Steel had no patience for drugs. Too much harm, greed, and money came from them. Too much unknown. The skin trade was fucking disgusting and awful. He wouldn’t have even wished such a fate on Shaw, whom he could have categorized as his worst enemy up until a few days ago.
He had no idea which possibility he would hate more if he learned Melanie had gotten mixed up in one.
Steel pressed his thumb to the middle of his forehead. “Baldwin would have a supplier. Who?”
“They were still working on that,” Ghost said, uncrossing his arms. “If they figured it out, it wasn’t in the file.”
In the month since Melanie’s murder, the police would have been working the case, sure, but they also would have been working many others. While a shooting on a college campus was tragic, it wasn’t a mass casualty event. Forensics took time, and as much as Steel hated to admit it, he might have slowed the process down in taking the bullets from the police station. He’d thought they belonged to Shaw’s gun, which meant that the police hadn’t been able to run them for evidence.
Steel lowered his hand. “What do they think happened to the bullets?”
“Misplaced evidence. They think they got accidentally logged in another case and have techs searching for them in their evidence lockup. You and Scar left no trace of a burglary, so theythink it was their error, but they still have the initial finds from the bullets.”
Which likely wouldn’t hold up in court, but then again, Steel had no intention of bringing Melanie’s killer before a judge.
“Hey,” Starbucks poked his head out of the big room behind Ghost. “Keys says he’s got something.”
Ghost and Steel followed Star into what was likely once a living room or fancy sitting room. No couches or furniture of any kind were present. Keys was sitting on an upside down bucket with his laptop on a windowsill while the others were either leaning or sitting against a wall.
Turning, Keys nearly fell off the bucket. There was a good chance he forgot he wasona bucket and had tried to turn like he was on his swivel chair. Flapping his arms like a flightless bird attempting to fly, he was able to steady himself without falling flat on his face.
