“Maybe I’m just in a good mood,” he said, “for no particular reason.”
“Yeah,” Lem said, the word dragged out over his tongue. “That is not how we were raised, and you know it.”
True. Cade leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. The cuffs on his shirt rode up and flashed the heavy steel band of his watch around his wrist. “Fair enough,” he said. “Maybe it’s none of your business.”
Lem laughed and came the rest of the way into the office.
“Yeah, that sounds more like you,” he said as he threw himself down on the couch. There was a chair in front of Cade’s desk, but Lem liked to have room to sprawl. He slung his arms over the back of the couch and stretched his legs out in front of him. “It looks like the hospital finally brought Rilkes around this morning. The cops haven’t been let in to see him yet, but if I were them, I wouldn’t hold my breath that he’s going to be useful. Between the trauma and the induced coma, he’ll be lucky if he knows his own name.”
Maybe.
From the story he’d told in the club, Rilkes had come back from worse.
“Keep an eye on the situation,” Cade said. “If he does talk to someone, I want to know about it.”
Lem grinned, a wicked slant of his mouth, and put his hand over his heart. “For Cold Winds? I’ll go and charm the nurses myself.”
“Try to catch a surgeon,” Cade suggested. “They make more money, and you have expensive tastes.”
“Oh, and Night Shift officers are rolling in money?” Lem asked.
Cade felt himself blush. He scowled at Lem and tried to ignore it. It was one thing to be infatuated, another to act like he was fifteen again. Worse. At fifteen he’d had more sense and too big a chip on his shoulder to admit he wanted anyone to like him.
“Was there anything else?” he asked in a clipped voice.
Lem grinned at him but had the good sense to drop it. He sat up and pulled his phone out of his pocket so he could swipe his thumb over the screen.
“Yeah, I pulled what I could on Rilkes’s comings and goings over the last year,” he said. “Quick and dirty, but I grabbed his text messages and pulled location data from his cellular plan. Most of it is pretty mundane. He dated a woman for a while, but they broke up amicably enough, and he hasn’t left town this year. The Mexican place near him is going to get worried when his orders stop coming in, and he owes bits and pieces of money to a variety of people.”
“So that’s most of it,” Cade said. “What did you leave out?”
Lem looked smug. “Once a week, he texts the same mobile number. It looks like updates on a to-do list.” He glanced down at his phone and started to read from the screen as he swiped the screen up. “So he says stuff like, ‘Left the package where you asked,’ and ‘J is dating a redhead from work,’ and… drumroll please… ‘Went to Rankins. They said they paid your new guy.’ Rankins, by the way, is a car shop over in Mesa Verde that is a front for Joe Gazaryan, the Russian mob’s point man for drugs run up over the border.”
“So not quite as innocent as he claimed.”
Lem shrugged. “He was an errand boy,” he said. “And a good one. Never asked any questions. Except once.”
“Oh?”
“A week ago,” Lem said.
He unfolded himself from the couch and walked over to the desk. He handed the phone to Cade so he could read the captured text. Cade scanned it quickly and repeated it aloud.
“Did you send them?” he said.
“And the only time the other mobile messaged back,” Lem said. He flicked up to the one-word reply. “They told him ‘No.’ Not that it did him much good. The sender was in New Mexico.”
Piper had a burner phone. That was unsurprising but useful. Cade tossed the phone back to Lem, who nearly fumbled the catch. It didn’t wipe the smug look off his face.
“Nice work,” he said. “And the surveillance footage?”
Lem looked disappointed at the abrupt shift in topic. He scowled and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Nothing useful,” he said. “Plates were treated so they couldn’t be picked up, and they ditched the car in a blind spot a few streets over, so that made it harder to track them.”
“It was a long shot,” Cade admitted. “They’re Night Shift. They’re not known for making mistakes. Good work.”
Lem gave him an amused look at the compliment. “You need to marry that guy,” he said firmly, a finger pointed at Cade’s nose. “Lock him down. I don’t think you’ve been in this good a mood since….”
He trailed off and blew his cheeks out as he tried to think of an example. Finally, he gave up with a shrug.
