“No promises, but I’ll see if I can work something out,” she said. “Talk to me tomorrow morning, first thing, and I’ll tell you where we are.”
She hung up, then, and Jericho turned around. Wade set his bottle down carefully on the counter. “You’re not making it easy to keep you alive,” he said mildly.
“It’s not your job to keep me alive.”
“It doesn’t seem to be anyone else’s, either.”
“I did four tours in Afghanistan, and was a beat cop for five years in a pretty rough neighborhood. I can take care of myself.”
Wade shook his head sadly. “That attitude right there? That’s what worries me.” He shrugged and headed for the door. “I’ll do what I can. But you could help me out a little, couldn’t you?”
“By sitting around doing paperwork all day?”
“That would be super, yeah.” He turned back with his hand on the doorknob. “Hockley and Montgomery are clean. They’re assholes and they’ll use you without hesitation, but they’re clean cops. Mike DeMonte’s a fucking psychopath—he can play nice when he feels like, seems like a good ol’ boy, but don’t trust him. Not at all. His uncle’s almost as bad. The two of them are the ambitious ones in the club, and they’re the only ones with any serious brains. As for the guys coming in from out of state? I don’t know as much about them, obviously, but they’re the real deal. Ties to a Chicago organization run by a guy named Anders Pilman, from what I’m hearing. You should look him up, maybe.”
Jericho stared. If the information was accurate, it was valuable. Too valuable for Wade to be sharing for free. “And how do you fit into all this?”
“Me? Fuck, Jay, I’m a little fish trying to stay out of the way of the sharks. Just likeyoushould be. I don’t fit in at all.” He left then, pulling the door shut gently behind him.
Wade wasn’t involved in any of this? That was pretty hard to believe. Maybe the feds would be able to tell Jericho differently, if Kayla persuaded them to talk to him. Or maybe they’d make him believe Wade was telling the truth. He had no idea which result to hope for.
