“Troop!” Ranger bellowed.
I smirked as I started for the steps. “Now you know how it feels to be ignored, asshole.”
I heard him grumble something, but it was lost on me. I turned off the lights and closed the basement door behind me, but I didn’t go so far as to lock anything. Ranger probably would have, but she had given me no indication that she’d be bolting for any doors.
Not after the cliffsides she had witnessed firsthand that would catch her fall if she dared.
“Finally,” Dutch said as I emerged from the stairs, “get over here. We need to talk.”
I held out my arms and smiled. “So? How did it go?”
Ranger’s face fell into one of stone. “Tell him what you just told me.”
My smile faltered. “Tell me what.”
Dutch thrusted his tablet toward me. “See anyone you recognize?”
I walked toward him and snatched the tablet out of his hand. My gaze dropped to the screen, and the second that chubby little dickweed stepped out of the SUV, my jaw hit the floor.
“Tommy Gun Griggs? Where the fuck did you--?”
Dutch pointed to the screen. “See that cop?”
My eyes widened. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
Ranger folded his arms across his chest. “Her fiancée is as dirty as they come, apparently.”
I watched the scene unfold as my heart stopped in my chest. “Do you know what they’re talking about?”
Dutch thumbed over his shoulder toward his backpack that he still wore. “I got the audio on a separate recording. They’re obviously speaking in code, though. Talking about mountains and lakes and finding a river, or some shit.”
I wrinkled my nose. “They’ve been working together long enough to have a code?”
Dutch shrugged. “That was my initial thought, though. Who the hell talks in code with someone they’re just starting to work with?”
“A code has to be developed,” Ranger said.
I shoved the tablet into Dutch’s chest. “Do we think Naomi knows anything?”
He turned the tablet off. “That’s what I need to find out. I need to know if she knows, and if she does, I need to knowwhatshe knows.”
Ranger turned on his feet and started into the kitchen. “Let’s put everything out on the table and see what we’re looking at.”
I walked over to Dutch and leaned into his ear. “Does he know Naomi’s gone?”
Dutch shot me a look. “You can answer that question for yourself here in a second.”
I had no idea what in the fuck he meant by that, but when he started laying things out on the kitchen table, I understood why he said what he did. There were pictures of that man smiling. Pictures of him at work, making jokes with friends. Hell, even taking orders from his boss as if nothing had happened. Even the audio with Tommy Gun himself didn’t seem panicked. Not after they kicked him to his knees. Not after Tommy punched that fucker in the face—which I was completely jealous of, by the way—and certainly not after Tommy and his men had left him there in that alleyway by himself.
“He never once mentioned Naomi?” Ranger asked.
Dutch shrugged. “Unless she’s somewhere in all that code they were slinging around, no. He’s not acting like a man whose fiancée’s been abducted.”
Ranger clapped his hands together as a rare smile spread across his cheeks. “Well, if he’s dirty as fuck then chances are he doesn’t wanna blow his cover with his own damn boss. But, either way, we’ve got a fuckton of very damning evidence on our hands. We could work this to our advantage.”
Dutch shook his head. “Why the fuck isn’t he concerned? Shouldn’t he be concerned that his woman is missing?”
Ranger scoffed. “Who the fuck cares? We’ve got the damn police precinct on their knees with this one. You think he’s the only dirty cop? Hell, no. Because if there’s one thing I know about dirty cops, it’s that when there’s one you see—.”
