But it had quickly become something else. An obsession. A compulsion I couldn't shake no matter how hard I tried.
I knew everything about her life. Knew she'd taken over at The Flame three years after I'd left, buying it from the original owner with a loan from her uncle and her entire savings. I knew she'd turned it from a dive bar into something special. It was now a neighborhood institution with live music on weekends and the best damn jukebox in the city.
I knew she still took her coffee black with two sugars. Knew she still bit her thumbnail when she was nervous. Knew she'd cut her hair short for a while, then grown it back out, and that she'd gotten a small tattoo on her left shoulder blade, a flame, for the bar, that she probably thought no one knew about.
I knew about the men she'd dated. Not many. A lawyer who'd lasted six months. A firefighter who'd stuck around for almost a year before she'd ended it. A few others who hadn't made it past a handful of dates.
None of them had been serious. None of them had stuck.
That shouldn't have made me as satisfied as it did. I'd given up any right to her the night I'd walked away. But knowing she hadn't found someone else, hadn't moved on, hadn't replaced me.
It was selfish. It was fucked up. And I couldn't help it.
And then her father had died.
I'd gotten the alert within hours. Heart attack. Massive. He'd been dead before the paramedics arrived.
I'd sat in a hotel room in Singapore, staring at my phone, and felt the world tilt on its axis.
Frank Ramirez. The man who'd taught Betty how to throw a punch. Who'd shown up to our apartment once with a shotgun and a glare that could've melted steel, demanding to know myintentions toward his daughter. Who'd eventually, grudgingly, accepted me as worthy of her, or at least close enough.
Frank Ramirez, who'd loved Betty with a fierce, protective devotion that I'd recognized because I felt it too.
He was gone. And Betty was alone.
I'd almost gone to her then. Had gotten as far as booking a flight, packing a bag, making it to the airport.
And then I'd stopped.
Because what the hell was I supposed to say?Sorry I disappeared for eight years, but I heard your dad died and thought I'd swing by?She didn't need me showing up and making her grief about us. She didn't need me dredging up old pain on top of the fresh wound of losing her father.
At least, that's what I'd told myself.
The truth was simpler and uglier. I'd been a coward.
I'd been afraid to face her. Afraid of the hatred I'd see in her eyes. Afraid that seeing her again would shatter the careful walls I'd built around my heart and leave me bleeding out with no way to stop it.
So I'd stayed away. I'd watched from a distance as she buried her father in a cemetery on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, standing alone by his grave with a broken umbrella and a face that looked like it was carved from stone.
I'd watched, and I'd done nothing.
I'd never forgive myself for that.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to push away the memories, but they clung to me like cobwebs.
Sleep wasn't coming. Not tonight. Maybe not any night until this was over.
I pulled out my phone again and opened the file I'd compiled on Lang and Briggs. Two decorated cops with spotless records and enough corruption underneath to make a cartel boss blush. They'd been running protection rackets, shaking down localbusinesses, taking cuts from drug dealers, and planting evidence on anyone who didn't play ball.
And four weeks ago, they'd murdered a man named Chris Greene in the alley behind Betty's bar because he'd threatened to talk.
Betty had been taking out the trash. She'd heard voices, looked out, and witnessed the whole thing.
Because of course she had. Because she couldn't just mind her own business, couldn't just close the door and pretend she hadn't seen anything. No, she'd called 911 like the brave, stubborn, infuriating woman she was.
And now she had a target on her back.
I scrolled through the incident reports. The threatening text. The vandalism at the bar. The car that had followed her. The break-in. And finally, the SUV that had tried to run her off the road.
