Mackenzie was silent, fingers drumming on her knee.
“Look, Zee. Like I told you then, I—”
“I know. You couldn’t go on camera because of your job. And you wouldn’t review the timeline of that night, your impressions, anything related to the case because you’d gone over it all with the police. You had other priorities.”
“You should too,” he snapped. “This is a police matter.You have to move on with your life, like I told you when you asked me.”
“And what if I can’t do that?” A ripple of emotion crossed her face, a shimmer of anguish—there, then gone—hidden under quiet anger.
He didn’t know the answer, wasn’t sure he’d done much better than she had in accepting Aaron’s death.
She’d thrown herself into the podcast, and he’d watched her grow more brash about her theories as she told her viewers that the kingpin responsible for a huge portion of the drug trafficking in the Pacific Northwest, a man she referred to as “Bullseye,” would be brought to justice. She didn’t shirk from stating that she believed Bullseye—someone who fed on desperation and peddled pharmaceutical relief—was responsible for Aaron’s death as much as if he’d pulled the trigger himself. As far as she was concerned, Aaron was an innocent victim in the whole mess.
Gideon wasn’t as convinced, which was another reason he’d declined to help her investigation. Better for her to grieve the brother she’d known.
The FBI and DEA also had Bullseye on their radar, and Gideon imagined they didn’t enjoy her taking the case to the social media world.
A vein still jumped in her jaw.
Only another mile until he delivered his passenger. Might as well try not to inflame things further. He took a breath. “So you’re here because of your podcast.”
“I have a contact in this area.”
This area.His suspicions were correct. “That’s why you’re in town?”
A sly grin overtook her anger. “What? You don’t believe I’m here because I wanted to take your class?”
“Not in any way, shape, or form.”
She chuckled. “You always were a suspicious one, Gideon, that’s why you have a permanent furrow between your manly eyebrows.”
And you always knew how to disarm my defenses.Annoying, the way she commanded his attention. He could still picture her in that green dress, her eyes dancing in a way that would disappear forever in a matter of hours when her brother was murdered.
He recalled a similar gaze—her brother’s—on that sultry August night in California when Gideon had discovered Aaron wrecked in a ditch on the base where they’d both been sent for SERE training. He’d reeked of whiskey.
“Oh man, Gid. Glad it’s you. Not gonna rat me out, are you?”
And Gideon had made a choice that night, one with deep roots reaching all the way back to their high school trauma.
“I’m sorry, Aaron. I can’t do it again.”And he’d called it in. Aaron was remanded into the equivalent of Air Force jail until his discharge.
Publicly, Aaron laughed about it to anyone who had the bad taste to bring it up, as if the whole episode was a youthful prank, though Aaron had landed back in civilian life stripped of his pension and military benefits.
Mackenzie’s gorgeous silvery eyes, so like her brother’s, were hard now, stripped of their luster.
He shifted on the seat, kicked up the windshield wipers to full against the blasting rain. “When’s your meet?”
“Depends,” she said with a vague shrug.
They drove by the police station, a squat relic with ugly cement trim and putty-colored paint. Mackenzie scanned the building.
“My contact was arrested yesterday. She’s here being processed.”
Arrested. Interesting.So the cops would have forty-eight hours to charge the detainee or cut her loose. Was that why Mackenzie was here, in case the woman was released? Waste of time otherwise. No one would be let in unless they were a lawyer. His vague unease began to swell. “How do you know that?”
She hesitated. “Sources.”
“What sources?”
