He shook his head. “Don’t say you’re sorry. You insisted on coming here, remember? But it’s fine. I’ll take the heat.”
She bit her lip. “If we need to amend our statements, I’ll say it was my idea to come here, and you tried to stop me.” She glanced at him, then quickly looked away. “I doubt they’ll arrest me for providing a false statement.”
“It’s fine. I’ll take the heat,” he repeated. “We’re in this together.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “You need to save yourself, Jarek. Rex won’t fire me for lying to the police. I’m going to feel guilty if you lose your chance to become a detective over this.”
“I won’t.” At least, he hoped not. Regardless, he wasn’t going to cut her loose. He glanced at his watch, eyeing the time. It was going on 10:15. “We should head back to the safe house so I can call Greg Yost.” At her confused look, he added, “He’s with the DEA.”
“You know him personally?” She sounded surprised.
“We only met once and that was last year.” He kept an eye on Wynn and Parker, who were setting up a few evidence markers to take some photographs. “I don’t know that he’ll remember me, but it’s worth a try.”
“I like it. Hopefully, he’ll agree not to communicate with Bond and Schnor.” She gingerly put a hand to the back of her head. “I wouldn’t mind stopping for ibuprofen, but I think we should go to the warehouse prior to contacting your DEA pal. The more information we can provide, the better.”
He frowned. “I think we need to talk to him prior to that. He might already know about the warehouse and the Liquid Gold company.”
“If he knows, why isn’t anyone watching the place?” Di appeared skeptical. “Think it through, Jarek. If Bond and Schnor are dirty, they could be hiding the Liquid Gold source of drug trafficking from your department and the DEA.”
It was a good point. “Okay, we’ll hold off until later.” He turned toward her. “How bad is your headache?”
“I’ve had worse.” The corner of her mouth tipped up in a rueful smile. “Nothing a few ibuprofen can’t handle.”
“Tylenol is better for head injuries. It doesn’t cause internal bleeding.” He straightened as Wynn and Parker returned to where they were waiting. “What did Andrews say?”
“Other than lamenting the way the two of you seem to have a death wish?” Wynn asked sarcastically. “Not much. He’s not coming to the scene, says he trusts us to document the evidence according to protocol. He ordered us to send him copies of our reports and mentioned that he’ll review everything in the morning.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing like being a detective from the comfort of his bed. “Okay, then we’re going to get out of here. Di needs meds for her headache sustained when that guy slammed her head into the ground.”
“She still got the upper hand,” Parker said. “Pretty impressive.”
“I was trained by the United States Army.” Di crossed her arms over her chest. “If you don’t need anything else, we’d like to head out to find a drugstore.”
“There’s only one open this late,” Wynn said. “It’s up on Rogers Street.”
“Great. Thanks.” She turned away. Jarek gave his colleagues a nod and quickly followed her back to their rental car.
“We’ll get those meds.” He slid in behind the wheel. “Are you sure you want to check out the warehouse yet tonight? Getting some sleep would help your headache.”
“I’m fine.” She turned in her seat and rummaged for the laptop. “I was thinking about how that guy found us at the port authority dock. I know we weren’t followed, so I’m wondering if Liquid Gold has a contract with a trucking company.”
“A trucking company could be the true source of the drug trafficking,” he mused, following her train of thought. “I actually found a warehouse that’s owned by Davos Delivery Services. If they’re the one running drugs, the owners of the coffee company may be unaware of what’s going on.”
“Well, the drugs were lining the bottom of the crate of coffee so that’s hard to believe. But I guess it’s possible they were added during transit at some point. Davos Delivery Services is an angle we shouldn’t ignore.” She worked the computer, then frowned. “I can’t get a signal to search.”
“We can still stop at the rental house,” he said. “Just long enough for you to clean up and take those meds while we do a little digging. I didn’t pay as much attention to the location of the Davos warehouse.”
“Okay.” She didn’t look happy. “But I still want to check out that one and the one owned by Liquid Gold. It’s clear these attacks aren’t going to stop until we get the guy behind them.”
“Yeah, I know.” He hated to admit she was right. Even if the guy who’d assaulted her was in charge of making sure the drugs were transported according to plan, that responsibility hadn’t stopped him from going after Di.
Hernandez or someone else from the K2 Bloods gang must have placed a hefty price on her head. Offering enough cash that guys would risk going back to prison or worse being killed to do the job.
If Di had wanted to kill the assailant, she could have.
Instead, she’d saved his life.
He knew she’d been forced to kill Afghan soldiers during their deployment. He had no doubt she’d killed whoever attacked her, cutting her cheek with a knife. That was war, and he was impressed that she’d held back here as a civilian.
