Same group. Same guilt. Yeah, I’d be running too, Cole. I’d be running too if you knew someone like me was coming for your club.
Then I opened the tab for Lane’s profile.
There was nothing about the murder.
“What the fuck... ”
Thank goodness the door to my office was shut right now. If someone had walked by and seen or heard that on my first day? Talk about unprofessional.
I reread the profile, desperately trying to see if I had missed anything. Maybe the charge had been reduced, or maybe a deal had been struck to erase it from public records.
But no.
Disturbed, I pulled up the case file for the actual murder and began reading.
What had seemed clear and what aligned with my own knowledge was that on the night, the founder of the Black Reapers, the father of Lane and Cole, died from natural causes. A shootout had taken place at the founder’s home between the Black Reapers and a rival club, the Fallen Saints. Shannon was there, and she had died.
No one, however, had testified about the crime. No one had said anything that suggested who had done it. The few quotes from the case said the same thing—“tragic that it had happened, but if a citizen crosses between us, that’s what can happen.” The type of bullet didn’t help, either, as everyone had used the same gun save for a couple of people, who used different bullets than the one that had killed Shannon anyway.
And on top of that, whoever had chambered the bullet had done so with a glove on, as there were no fingerprints.
So not only had Shannon gotten involved with what I considered a flat-out gangster, she had gotten involved with the most violent kind—who was also the smartest kind. If it wasn’t so tragic, I would have given her some serious grief for sticking with him.
As far as I was now concerned, the only thing I knew for sure was there was no good reason for Lane to have brought Shannon to his father’s place that night. That just felt like asking for the death wish that was granted by the Fallen Saints. Maybe I could not technically accuse him of murder as a Deputy District Attorney.
As a friend of Shannon’s, though, he was the guiltiest person in all of this. And I was going to make his life hell.
But how?
The most obvious way was to put political and police pressure on them by monitoring the club members as much as I could. Ideally, Cole could have been a good target given the family connections, but seeing as how he had vanished, that was out the door. So instead, I’d have to resort to the club in general.
I knew going to their shop might do some good. That carried its own risks, but I didn’t think the Reapers were dumb enough to attack me or threaten me if I visited in broad daylight. It sure carried a lot of potential rewards—I would get to see who might crack, who might realize a crime had occurred that night, who wanted to help out.
It would also get me the chance to see Lane and interrogate him in a way that had felt inappropriate at the graveyard.
The only problem, I remembered as I read the report on him, was how the file suggested he was often absent and distant from the club. It said his detachment made it difficult to prosecute him, as he would not have had a hand in a lot of the goings-on of the club. In typical gangster fashion, the small fry would take the heat for the big guns.
But that just means there’s a whole host of opportunities to get the small fries to turn on him.
And then I’ll have my vengeance for Shannon for what happened to her.
A knock came at my door. I jumped, having immersed myself so much into the personal issues that I’d forgotten I had an actual job to do. I felt like this wasn’t the greatest start to my job, but at least it was the first day when I wasn’t expected to have the perfect work ethic and get everything done.
“Ms. Sanders?” a young man on the other side said, wearing a policeman’s uniform. “Beth wants to see you in her office whenever you get the chance.”
The boss wants to talk. I suppose this will be our welcome to the team moment.
“Okay, thank you,” I said. “Let her know I’ll be there in five minutes. Just wrapping up some paperwork here.”
“You got it, ma’am.”
Ma’am? Oh, heavens, I’m not even thirty yet.
But I guess this is the reward I get for law school?
I sat back in my chair for two more minutes, trying to stay focused on how I would handle this personal case. The answer felt so obvious as soon as it came to me that I felt stupid for not thinking of it before.
I had the entire district attorney’s office at my disposal. How could I not use it? Obviously, the DA would not give me literally every single resource on hand— that would constitute poor management on her part.
