It All Falls Down: Rose Gardner Investigations #7 (Rose Gardner Investigatons)

by Denise Grover Swank

  While there was a lot of truth behind his words, I knew some of it was bullshit. But if Neely Kate detected it, she didn’t let on.

  “What did you find out?” I asked, slightly peeved he hadn’t mentioned it right off the bat.

  “There’s a big drug deal goin’ down this week. A South American shipment is coming in.”

  “Is James part of this?” Although he’d told me he didn’t have a hand in selling serious drugs, I’d since learned it was a lie.

  “He’s the one who set it up,” Jed said in disgust. “He’s the go-between for the South American cartel and Hardshaw. It’s been in the works for months.”

  “How did you get this information, Jed?” Neely Kate demanded.

  “Maybe the same place you got your information about Rufus Wilson’s girlfriend,” he retorted.

  I highly doubted that.

  She propped her hands on her hips and shifted her weight to the side. “You’re seriously not gonna tell me?”

  Witt and I both took a step back.

  “You’re not tellin’ me where you got your information,” he snapped.

  I didn’t want to be the cause of a major disagreement. “Actually—”

  Witt cast me a glance before turning to Jed. “Did you find out about the drug deal from Rufus Wilson? If so, maybe Malcolm found out and killed him.”

  “No,” Jed barked. “But it would have made things a hell of a lot easier if I had. At least we’d know why he was murdered.”

  “Do you have any details about the deal?” I asked. “Time? Location?”

  “No. They haven’t pinned it down yet, but my source says they’re waiting until the last minute before they name a location and a time and date.”

  “Does Joe know?” I asked, barely stopping myself from asking if Mason knew too.

  “No,” Jed said. “And we need to keep it that way.”

  “Why?” I demanded. “They need to be stopped.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Hardshaw’s coverin’ all their bases. Word has it they’ve got a foot in the door at the sheriff’s department.”

  I shook my head. “No. Joe would know. He took great pains to make sure any corruption was rooted out after he took over for the previous corrupt chief deputy.”

  “Rose, we both know all sorts of people have sources in the department, and rumor has it the sheriff might even be one of them. Hardshaw and Skeeter will put the hard sell on the department to keep their nose out of it or else.” He gave me a dark look. “Do you really think Joe’s gonna leave it be?”

  My stomach flip-flopped. “No.”

  “Hardshaw will go out of their way to make sure the sheriff’s department doesn’t intervene. Which means they’ll be sure to eliminate any chance of that happenin’. Do you catch my drift?”

  I felt like I was going to be sick. “I want to have a vision.”

  “Good idea,” he said, holding out his hand, palm up.

  I took his hand and squeezed my eyes shut. First, I asked, When and where is the Hardshaw meeting? But all I saw was the gray haze that suggested the future was too unsettled to be seen. So I switched gears. What will happen if I tell Joe about the meeting?

  The vision instantly took hold, and I found myself holding someone who was sobbing into my chest.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Rose,” I said in Jed’s deep voice. “We’ll help you through this.”

  Vision Rose pulled back and looked up at me with red, swollen eyes. “Joe’s dead. How can anything be okay? We never should have involved the sheriff’s department.”

  The next instant, the image shifted, and I was myself again, staring up at Jed instead of the other way around. “Joe’s dead.”

  Neely Kate gasped.

  “What was the question?” Jed asked.

  My hand began to shake, so I snatched it back. “What would happen if I told Joe about the meeting. I told you it was a mistake to involve the sheriff’s department.”

  “So we agree to keep it from him?” he asked.

  I nodded. Had Joe died by James’ hand like in my other visions? If I kept this from him, did that mean he’d be safe?

  “If we’re not tellin’ the sheriff’s department,” Witt said, “what do we plan on doin’ with this information?”

  “Nothin’,” Jed said. “We’ll let them march on in, do their deal, then leave.”

  The three of us all started talking at once.

  “What the hell?” Witt demanded.

  “You can’t be serious?” I shouted.

  “You are so not gettin’ any tonight,” Neely Kate growled.

  Witt shot her a look of disgust and shuddered. “TMI, NK.”

  “Jed,” I pleaded. “Have you at least told Dermot?”

  “No. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet.”

  “But—”

  Jed’s gaze darkened. “Let’s say I tell Dermot. What then? We’re all gonna go in with our shotguns and bust up Hardshaw and a group from a South American drug cartel, all of them armed to the teeth with automatic weapons? It’ll turn into a bloodbath.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” Witt countered. “Not if we ambush them.”

  “Which will take plannin’ and trainin’,” Jed said. “Even if we could get the factions together, we’d still lose because we can’t agree on anything. We discovered that last fall when we tried holding our meetin’s. Then throw in the not knowing the location…” He shook his head. “It’ll never work.”

  My stomach churned as I thought about my visions of Denny Carmichael. In them, I’d always been on his side. Was this why? “Carmichael will do it.”

  All eyes turned to me.

  “Last summer, I had visions of me helping Denny, and at the time, I was sure we were fighting James. I couldn’t conceive it at the time, but now…”

  Jed studied me, then said, “It doesn’t matter. We don’t have a location, and by the time we get it—if we get it—it will be too late.”

  “No,” I said, an idea coming to me. “I know how to get it.”

  “I don’t like the look on your face,” Witt said.

  “Neither do I,” Neely Kate said.

  “How do you propose getting it?” Jed asked in a neutral tone.

  “I’ll force a vision.”

  “And who are you gonna force a vision of?” Neely Kate asked. “Jed? Me?”

  “No,” I said. “I need to go straight to the source.” I swallowed my fear, but it lodged in my throat, cuttin’ off my air so I had to force out, “I need to go see James.”

  Chapter 7

  That caused quite an uproar, all three of them arguing with me at once, although it wasn’t much of an argument since I just stood there and waited for them to settle down.

  When they finally realized I wasn’t arguing back, they stopped shouting, one by one.

  The door opened, and Marshall popped his head in, bewilderment on his face. “What’s goin’ on in here?”

  No one said anything, and then Neely Kate gushed, “We’re rehearsing for community theater auditions for Newsies.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Huh. I thought they were gonna perform Hello, Dolly! this season.”

  How on earth did he know that?

  His gaze swept the room, it paused on me, and he smiled. “Hey, Miss Rose.”

  “Hi, Marshall. How have you been?”

  “Not too bad,” he said, giving the scowling Jed a double-take. “Lookin’ at buyin’ a dirt bike.”

  “You don’t say,” I said. “As someone who played a part in previously savin’ your life, I feel it would be remiss of me if I didn’t tell you that dirt bikes are dangerous,” I said the saving his life part staring directly at Jed, reminding him that I was no shrinking violet. I’d mixed with plenty of dangerous elements in the past.

  Of course, things were different now. I was a mother. But as a mother, I wanted more for Hope. I wanted her to grow up on my birth mother’s farm, feeling safe and loved, and if this drug deal went thro
ugh, it would only be the first of many. Our county would become like the others that had been poisoned and tainted by Hardshaw’s presence.

  Marshall, who finally seemed to realize what he’d walked into, shot another look at his bosses, then said, “I think I better get back to work.”

  “Yeah,” Jed grunted, still glaring at me. “That’s a good idea.”

  Still, Marshall hesitated and turned to me. “Everything okay, Miss Rose?”

  I gave him a warm smile, touched that he was willing to risk his boss’s wrath for me. “It’s a simple misunderstanding that I hope to clear up.”

  “Okay,” he said, clearly still hesitant to leave me in the lion’s den.

  “I’m good.”

  “Okay,” he said again, then headed back out and closed the door.

  “You have to know this is an idiotic idea,” Jed grunted.

  “I’ve had worse,” I said. “We all have.”

  “This isn’t Fenton County bullshit, Rose,” Jed said. “This is big time. You get messed up in this, there’s no coming back. You’ll no longer be playing at being a criminal, you’ll be one.”

  “So why can’t we tell Joe?” I asked, my hand on my hip. “Why can’t we let the proper authorities handle this one?”

  “Because they can’t stop it,” he said. “Without a location, they can’t do a goddamn thing.”

  “Which is why I need to get one for them,” I insisted.

  Neely Kate gave me a look of disbelief. “So let’s say we agree to this crazy idea. How are you gonna approach him?”

  I frowned. “I haven’t worked that part out yet.”

  We all stood in silence for a few moments.

  “After it settles in a bit,” Witt said, “it’s not a terrible idea.”

  Jed and Neely Kate turned identical looks of outrage on him.

  “She has a point,” Witt said, his hands out at his sides. “And she has access no one else does. He’ll meet with her willingly.”

  “Skeeter isn’t the man he was a year ago,” Jed said, the pain of loss bleeding through his words. “He’s harder. Meaner. Our friendship means nothing to him. He might have a sliver of affection left for you, Rose, but I wouldn’t count on that saving you, and I mean that in the very literal sense. If he figures out you have a mind to betray him, you run the very real risk that he would kill you.” He gave me a sharp look. “Don’t forget that your visions always end with you sayin’ what you saw.”

  A shiver ran down my back. “I’ll figure somethin’ out.” But I didn’t know how to engineer a meeting, let alone come up with a believable excuse for whatever I might blurt out. Last time I saw him, I’d snuck into his secret house, using the garage door opener he’d given me, but I was sure he’d changed the code by now. And I couldn’t just march into the pool hall. Not without a good excuse. That left our meeting place behind Sinclair’s, but I had no way to get him a message to meet me. He’d changed all his phone numbers. There was Carter, James’ lawyer, but I didn’t trust him anymore as a go-between.

  Jed held up his hands. “Let’s just hold off on this for now. Witt’s right. Your idea has merit, but it’s dangerous. Joe would never agree to it, even if he knew the stakes, and what about Hope?”

  “Obviously, she can’t come with me.” I wanted James as far away from her as possible, especially since Dermot had suspected the only reason James wanted me for forty-eight hours before her birth was because he’d hoped to steal her and use her as leverage. Although I still wasn’t sure I believed that, I wasn’t taking chances where she was concerned. I pushed out a breath. “We can’t wait too long before we make a decision.”

  No one said anything. It felt like a suffocating blanket was being wrapped around us. We’d hoped Hardshaw was gone, but they’d never left—and now they were bringing another dangerous enemy to the table. “Maybe we should take this information to Denny Carmichael.”

  “And what do you think he’s going to do with it?” Jed asked. “He’s not going to kick them out of town. He’s only going to kick Skeeter out of his chair at the table and replace him.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Carmichael genuinely hated the idea of Hardshaw moving in, and he made his own drugs. I couldn’t see him wanting some South American cartel replacing him. At the same time, my vision aside, Denny Carmichael wasn’t someone I wanted as an ally. He was a bully and a brute. A murderer. A man who hurt people for the enjoyment of it.

  “We’re forgetting something else,” I said. “We can’t ignore the timing of Kate’s message to Neely Kate. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that she sent it right before the big deal. She said she would make sure Neely Kate was happy, no matter what it takes.” I held my best friend’s gaze. “We all know she hates Hardshaw, and she knows they tried to hurt you. What if she’s got something planned for the deal?”

  Jed released a few expletives and started to pace.

  “Maybe Neely Kate should text her back,” I said. “In fact, as unstable as Kate is, she might be pissed that Neely Kate hasn’t responded yet.”

  Jed stopped pacing and turned to Neely Kate. “How long ago did she send that message?”

  “About an hour or so.”

  Jed gave a sharp nod. “Text her back. Something noncommittal like you’re already happy.”

  Neely Kate shot me a glance, and I lifted my shoulders into a small shrug. “Anything you send her is risky, but that makes the most sense.”

  She nodded, then bent over her phone, tapped out the message, and pressed send. “Okay,” she said, glancing up. “Let’s see how long it takes her to answer.”

  Less than five seconds, it turned out.

  Neely Kate’s phone made a whooshing sound, and her eyes widened as she glanced down at it. “She already responded.”

  “Well?” Witt asked. “What did she say?”

  “She said ‘but you don’t have everything you want.’” Fear covered her face as she lifted her gaze to Jed’s. “Is she talkin’ about our adoption?”

  There was another whoosh, and she checked the screen again. “She said, ‘there’s danger afoot, but not to worry, NK. Your big sis has things in hand.’”

  “Definitely the drug deal,” Witt said.

  “Sounds like it,” Jed agreed. “We might be better off lettin’ her do her thing.”

  I snorted. “Remember that time we let her do her thing, and she kidnapped Mason, killed Hilary, and bombed a building?”

  “To be fair,” Neely Kate said, “we didn’t let her do any of that.”

  I shot her an exasperated glare.

  “Okay, you have a point,” she conceded. “But she’s crazy with a capital C, and the smart kind. If anyone can pull this off, she can. But that means we need to stay far, far away from it.”

  While part of me wanted to agree, I wasn’t sure letting Kate handle this was the best plan. “The drug deal aside,” I said, “I still need to find out if Bobby knows what was on that flash drive.”

  I had a sudden spark of memory of a couple of years ago, being hunted by Daniel Crocker for a flash drive I didn’t have, for information I didn’t possess, and felt a pang of sympathy for Bobby. Even if she knew more than I had, she didn’t deserve to feel hunted.

  “Do you want us to try to convince her?” Witt asked.

  “No,” I said, running a hand over my head as a wave of exhaustion overtook me. “I had a vision of her coming to me, so I guess I just wait, but it’s not easy.” And I still didn’t know what to do with her once she came.

  “So all of this is brewing around us, and we’re doin’ nothin’?” Witt asked in disgust.

  “You got a better plan?” Jed asked.

  Witt’s shoulders slumped. “No.”

  “Okay,” Jed said. “We need to get back to work.” He walked over to Neely Kate, pulled her into an embrace, and whispered something into her ear. The moment looked so intimate, I turned to walk out, leaving them to their privacy. Witt was already out the door, and I followed him, surprise
d when he didn’t go into the garage, instead beckoning me to follow him into the waiting room.

  “Are you content to keep this from Dermot?” he asked quietly, his gaze on the doorway behind me.

  I frowned, worried where this conversation was headed, yet not willing to nip it in the bud. “No.”

  He turned slightly so we were eye to eye. “You are Lady. Jed was your muscle. Remember that.”

  I gasped. “You’re suggestin’ that I take charge and put a stop to this?”

  “Someone needs to. Jed’s not thinking logically, Rose. His judgment is clouded. He’s worried he’ll screw up their adoption.”

  “It’s a legitimate concern.”

  “Of course it is,” he said, “and maybe that’s what Kate meant when she said she’d take care of things so NK will be happy. Maybe she’s intervenin’ to keep Neely Kate and Jed’s hands clean.” His eyes darkened. “But I’m willing to get filthy dirty. I want to make those bastards pay.” He cocked his head. “Tell me you aren’t willing to wallow in it too. Your suggestion about going to see Malcolm proves it.”

  My stomach twisted. What we were discussing was betrayal.

  “Rose…Dermot, Carmichael, you could unite them to kick these bastards out of the county once and for all. While they respect Jed, they follow you. And you know damn well everyone will be better off if you lead the charge than if you leave it to Carmichael. That man’s rotten to the core. He can’t be allowed to lead.”

  “Jed would never go for this.”

  “You saw what would happen if you tell Joe,” he countered. “We can’t bring this to the sheriff’s department, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything.”

  “Let me try another vision,” I said, reaching for his arm. When he didn’t pull away or protest, I closed my eyes. I wanted to test if I saw the same thing about Joe, but I decided to see if I could get information about the meeting first. After I was plunged into the same gray haze, I asked what would happen if I told Joe about the Hardshaw meeting.

  Suddenly, I was standing in front of a casket, staring down at Joe’s face. I jerked myself out of the vision and started crying as I said, “Joe’s dead.”