Page 76 of Hard Heart

“I’ll let her⁠—”

Raelene’s words were interrupted by a siren, and I stiffened. What the hell was that? Raelene was looking around in confusion too.

“Some kinda incident, ma’am,” Jones explained. “Just you sit tight, and a CO will come git ya.”

“How serious an incident are we talking?” I asked.

“Mebbe a fight. Or some fool tryna escape.”

Levi wouldn’t be stupid enough to get involved in either of those things, so why couldn’t I relax? The blaring siren was giving me a headache, and the knot of nausea kept growing, growing, growing.

“You’re plenty safe in here,” Jones assured us, but even Raelene was looking at me strangely.

“I know,” I choked out, then jumped as the door opened.

“What’s going on?” I asked the guard. “What’s happening?”

“Lockdown. Don’t worry; it’s not us. The trouble’s over at Unit Four. Elias, you know the drill.”

“I do, sir.”

The moment the door closed behind them, I began pacing. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It’s not Levi, I told myself over and over. He’s an artist, not a troublemaker. And he wouldn’t try to escape because getting him out was my job. I’d told him that.

“You okay?” Raelene asked. “I don’t think we’re in any danger. They have procedures for this.”

I couldn’t lie to her any longer. It was only a matter of time before my involvement with Levi came out, and I might as well get fired sooner rather than later. That way, I could make the trip to Fairfax right away. Start the hunt for Stark and the Audi. Levi hadn’t said how much money was hidden in Blackstone House, but if it was enough to cover the rent for a couple of months… Were there any jobs going at Jackson’s? And how much did feet pictures sell for?

“Levi Sykes is in Unit Four,” I muttered.

“Come again?”

“The Sykes case—I started looking at it. I know you said not to, that he was a crackpot conspiracy theorist and getting him out would be impossible, but the more I read about it, the more interested I became, and…and I went to see him.”

“How did you manage that? You didn’t lie about your credentials, did you?”

“It’s a long story.”

Raelene perched on the table and folded her arms. “Doesn’t look as if we’re going anywhere in a hurry.”

No, it didn’t. I forced myself to sit, to stop pacing, but my insides were vibrating with fear.

“Okay, well… I spent Christmas with my roommate’s family, and they live a stone’s throw from the murder scene. So we thought we’d do a drive-by, just out of curiosity, and we ran into some, uh, bikers.”

Raelene’s annoyed expression morphed into “What the hell?”

“They scared us half to death. But we got talking, and one of them was related to Sykes’s cellmate, so I wound up on his visitor list.”

I decided not to mention the initial phone call. I was in enough shit without dragging my partner in crime down into the mire with me.

“So you’ve met him in person?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And he wasn’t what I expected.”

“You’ll have to elaborate.”