Scowling as I pushed myself from my chair, I kept my mouth shut but not my mind.
Fuck you, Burke.
NIKKI
Practically falling into my car at the end of my shift, I’d never been more thankful to have a day off coming up. Not because I’d had to work particularly hard today, shifting boxes and checking labels didn’t exactly stimulate my mind or body, I was exhausted because of being bored and left too long with mundane tasks that allowed me too much time to think.
And I suppose some emotional exhaustion I wasn’t yet willing to admit to because it had been years, and things were getting on top of me. I didn’t want to give up, but the weight of all the unanswered questions sat heavily on my shoulders.
I refused to believe I was looking too much into my father’s death. Granted, an insulin overdose was a clever way of going about it, but he simply wouldn’t have done it. There were several insulin pens strewn around his desk where I had found him slumped over, but it would only take one fast-acting insulin to put someone into a coma and practically guarantee his death.
Dad would have known this. So why go to the effort of using three or four?
Would he have had the strength to keep injecting after the first one?
And Officer Kim, while I didn’t particularly care for the man, had a wife and children, and him dying in exactly the same way, the scene looking to be almost a duplicate of my father’s, was too much for me to ignore.
It wasn’t too much for the detectives to ignore, though.
Still, I was no closer to anything. They wouldn’t allow me access to Kim’s financial records to double-check if he was getting payments from somewhere other than work. I had even hoped there’d be some mark left at the crime scene—a calling card of sorts warning others who may get too greedy, if indeed that was the issue.
But these were professionals, and what would be the point in faking suicide if you were going to leave a clue indicating otherwise?
Kim’s wife and children had left the city after the funeral, and Mary Anne wouldn’t talk to me or tell me where she was going or why. But the fearful look in her eyes when I asked her who her husband worked for, and the way I was quietly shuffled out of the wake, told me all I needed to know.
I needed to keep my head down for a while. Unfortunately, the reality was if I kept rattling cages, I was going to lose my job.
Or worse.
And I couldn’t get rid of the additional fact niggling at the back of my neck, like insects on my skin—what about others I hadn’t noticed? If not for the connection made with both Officer Kim’s and my father’s medical history, maybe I, too, would have missed the potential this was something more. But how many other people had been killed by whoever was doing this? It was no secret there was a constant power struggle going onbetween crime groups, always battling for the largest slice of the proverbial pie. I can understand why my father would have been a target. He owned a lot of real estate—useful real estate—that simplyhappenedto be signed over to God knows who right before hecommitted suicide.Nope, I didn’t buy it.
Even though my day off tomorrow wasn’t for pleasure, hopefully it would be enough for Burke to calm down and not be such a dick when he was assigning jobs.
My thoughts switched to Cade as I ran my hands down my face. It couldn’t hurt to ask him about tomorrow. Tucking my phone between my shoulder and ear, I turned the car on to let it warm up while I waited.
He answered with, “Angel,” and damn, his voice was smooth, even over the phone.
“Is that your fuck-me voice?” I asked.
Cade chuckled, and my spine tingled. “Maybe.”
“Are you free tomorrow?”
“I can be.”
“Would you like to come with me to the cemetery?”
“Kinky.”
I chuckled despite myself. “No, nothing like that. Look, this may be a weird ask, but tomorrow is the anniversary of my dad’s death, and I usually go visit him. I don’t particularly want to go alone.”
“It’s not the weirdest date I’ve been asked on.”
I could hear the smile in his tone, and I returned it. “That’s a story I need to hear but another time. Is that a yes?”
“Yeah, that’s a yes.”
“Text me your address. I’ll pick you up.”
