“But I don’t want to pretend it’s not happening,” she adds.
“Good.” Because neither do I.
I need to get up, get ready for work, and leave her apartment.
But what I need even more is ten more minutes with her in my arms.
Chapter 24
Alex
I already didn’t want to pull myself out of Liv’s bed this morning, but when I got to work, I realized how much Ireallydidn’t want to be here the moment I walked into the bullpen. Someone screwed up the coffee-to-water ratio in the pot, causing the whole place to reek way too strongly with an over-the-top coffee scent. And by the sounds of everyone in here, they’ve been drinking it.
It seems like everyone and everything is a fucking mess in this place. Papers are stacked where they shouldn’t be and case files are spread across desks that I’m pretty sure don’t belong to anyone on those cases.
I’ve got a headache and I just got here.
I slide in the chair behind my desk and give myself a moment to settle. Today should feel familiar; it’s just another day at work. But not only was I with Liv last night, we also now know what we’re dealing with. This case isn’t just trafficking and violence, it’s about control and precision. It’s a system built to break people in ways that don’t leave clean evidence behind but does leave immeasurable mental and emotional scars. And somewhere inside that system is a man who thinks he’s untouchable.
“Tell me you’ve got something,” Mason says, dropping into the chair across from my desk.
I don’t look up right away, still scanning the report in my hands: financial logs pulled from a flagged account tied to one of the shell businesses in the area, a realtor who had been connected to the now-abandoned apartment building that caught fire with trafficking victims inside. Then I toss it into the pile in front of him and finally look up. The look in his eyes tells me he hasn’t drank any of the overzealous coffee and that he’s sick of what it’s doing to the bullpen as well.
“Depends on what you call ‘something’.”
He flips it open, skimming fast. “Wire transfers,” he mutters. “Layered accounts. Offshore routing… Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“This isn’t street-level.”
“No.” It’s not. This is infrastructure. Clean money feeding dirty operations, cycling back through legitimate fronts so well built they don’t trip alarms unless you know exactly where to look. But now we do.
“CI confirmed it,” I say, leaning back slightly. “Money’s moving through at least three shell companies. Real estate, logistics, and some kind of medical supply distributor.”
Mason’s head snaps up. “Medical?”
“There it is.”
Now it fits. There’s access, knowledge, and a supply. Succinylcholine doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Someone’s sourcing it, legitimately, or close enough to it.
“They’re covering their tracks,” Mason says, flipping another page. “Small shipments that are spread out. Nothing big enough to flag on its own.”
“But together?”
He exhales sharply. “Yeah. Together, it paints a picture.”
A damn clear one.
“Oh, and that receipt your girlfriend, dropped off-”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I interject.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it came from a pharmacy that happens to be owned by the family of your favorite person in the world.”
“You know I hate York.”
“You still knew who I meant,” he beams at me like the bastard he is.
