Vice (Tortured Heroes Book 1)

by Jayne Blue

  “I see.”

  “I thought I was finished. It nearly killed me. That’s why I left Lincolnshire. I needed a fresh start. And Chief Lewandowski reached out to me. He offered me a way to earn back my badge working for the Northpointe PD undercover. That’s how I ended up at The Dive Bar. The local heroin trade … the Hot Shot that’s killing people around here … Devin, it’s running through your bar.”

  My brain buzzed. I pressed my forehead against the back of my wrist. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying The Dive’s been on local law enforcement and FBI radar for months. I was sent in to try and build a case against whoever was running it.”

  I couldn’t breathe. “And you think that’s me?”

  “No! God. No. I know it isn’t you. I’ve been trying to protect you. But Devin, I can’t. Not anymore. Not without your help. I promised you the truth. I have a lot more to tell and it’s going to hurt you. I can’t help that. But you need to hear it.”

  “Go on.”

  “We think your Uncle Cy is the main heroin supplier for most of the Midwest. He’s running an operation through your bar. The shit’s coming down from Canada across the Detroit River and into Northpointe. It’s deep, Devin. We tried to keep this local, but the feds are involved now. It’s too big to contain. And you need to know everything. You’ve put your trust in people who could really hurt you, baby.”

  I put a hand up. “Don’t say that. Don’t call me that. I don’t know what to think, Jase.” I’d heard these rumors my whole life. Uncle Cy made his money using less-than-scrupulous means. But this was more than that. If I believed Jase, he was using my club for his operations? Oh God. It was too much. It felt like my skull might burst.

  Jase told me he loved me again, but I couldn’t hear it. It had all been a lie. He used me to try and get to my uncle.

  “Maybe you should leave now,” I said. Again, it felt like the words were coming out of a different person. Like I had left my body and hovered somewhere over my shoulder, listening, seeing, but not participating.

  “I can’t. I won’t. Not until you hear it all. Kinney and Floyd are involved. Deep. Kinney’s selling, Floyd’s supplying.”

  “Floyd?” I couldn’t believe it. I’d known Floyd since I was a kid. He’d been my father’s last friend. The only one who hadn’t left when his drinking got out of control in the end. He was there after my mom left.

  “Last year, they’d put a tight case together. Your uncle was about to be indicted under RICO. Racketeering. He’s a kingpin, Devin. Do you understand what I’m telling you? But the case fell apart.”

  I unclenched my fists and stretched out my legs. Trembling, I rose to my feet and went to the other end of the couch. I needed to put something physical between us. Like a shield, absorbing the worst of the blow of Jase’s words.

  “Devin, I think you should sit down.”

  “I’d rather not. Is that all?”

  “No. I wish it were. Baby …”

  “I asked you not to call me that. Not now. I can’t hear that, Jase.”

  “Okay.” He made a move toward me but I backed away. Jase put his hands up and took a step back. “Okay. You’re not safe, Devin. Your uncle is dangerous.”

  “He told me the same thing about you.”

  Jase gripped the couch again. His knuckles turned white and for an instant, I thought he might rip the fabric apart at the seams. “Think, Devin. You probably know your uncle better than anyone, but you still don’t know him at all, do you? Do you really know everything he’s capable of?”

  I swallowed hard. Images slammed into my brain. Uncle Cy had threatened me. He didn’t want to relinquish control of the bar. If Jase’s story was true, it made sense. And something had definitely changed about Uncle Cy the last few times I saw him. I saw menace in his eyes he’d only ever turned on other people. Was he dangerous? As I exhaled, the truth burned through me. Yes. God. Yes. Uncle Cy was ruthless.

  “The case against your uncle fell apart because the government’s star witness disappeared on the eve of her testimony.”

  I heard Jase’s words, but couldn’t process them. They seemed to hang in the air like heat-seeking missiles. If I stopped moving, if I let their meaning sink through, they would find their target and destroy me.

  Her testimony … her testimony … her.

  “No.” I backed away from the couch, nearly tripping over the end table. I stopped only when I hit the edge of the kitchen island, knocking bar stools to the ground. I sank to my knees and Jase was there. He put gentle hands on my upper arms and looked at me with pain and tenderness.

  “No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I can’t hear this.”

  “You have to. God. Devin. I’m so sorry.”

  I looked up at him. I couldn’t focus. The lights in the apartment seemed to flicker and brighten. Air stabbed through my lungs as I struggled to focus and breathe.

  “Mandy was going to testify,” he said. “She was selling for him in the bar. Kinney took over for her when she left. She tried to get out. They had her in witness protection, but your uncle found her.”

  I shook my head. If Jase’s hands weren’t on my shoulders, I would have squeezed my palms over my ears to try and drive out his words.

  He found her. Uncle Cy found her. I knew it. I knew it all along. Everything fell into place. He lied to me. Bile rose in my throat. I shuddered and pushed Jase aside. I crawled to the potted plant two feet away and vomited into it.

  Shaking, I turned toward him. Jase crouched before me, his eyes filled with concern. God. I didn’t want it. I wanted all of it to go away. Snippets of conversations I had with my uncle replayed in my mind. I’d gone to him. I’d asked him for help in finding Mandy. His face went white the day I told him she’d finally reached out to me. I showed him her emails. Her texts. I downloaded the data from my phone so he could give it to his private investigator.

  “No!” I howled the word. “Jase. No. No. No. No.”

  “It’s not your fault. Devin, look at me. This isn’t your fault.”

  Except it was. People don’t have to tell you something’s not your fault unless part of it is.

  “What happened to Mandy, Jase?”

  He looked down. A tiny flicker in his temple gave me my answers. Still, I needed to hear the words. He could have said it gently, sugarcoated it. In the back of my mind I wondered if this was part of his training as a police officer. Surely he’d had to deliver bad news like this over and over again. A father who never came home after a wrong-way driver took him out on the freeway. A child who never came home from the bus stop just twenty yards away.

  “She’s gone, baby. Mandy’s dead. She was shot. I’m so sorry.”

  The drop was very far down indeed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Devin

  He never touched me. He waited for me to show him some sign that I wanted him to. I couldn’t. It was too much. It was as if my skin itself burned with this new, horrible truth. Mandy was dead. Murdered. I asked him where she was and he told me she was still in some morgue in Chicago.

  I asked Jase to leave. Go home. He’d be just across the hall but I knew he might as well be a million miles away. Or I was. But all of it was just too much. He said other things. He could help me. The police wanted to talk to me. He could protect me.

  Later, I said. Tomorrow. Not now.

  Jase’s phone rang and he held up a finger and turned his back to take it. His face went white as he talked to the caller and I knew it had more to do with me. He gave one-word answers and hung up the phone.

  “Devin, I can’t stay. I’m sorry.”

  “Then go. I just can’t, Jase. I can’t be around you. I need to think.”

  He nodded. “I can help you if you let me. I wish I could tell you to take all the time you need, but I can’t do that. This investigation is snowballing into something bigger. The feds are going to want to talk to you.”

  “What happens next?”

  “I set
up a meeting. You don’t have to be alone, Devin. I can be with you every step of the way.”

  “Is that what they told Mandy?”

  He took a step back and grimaced as if my words caused him physical pain. Part of me wanted to go to him. Even now. After everything he’d told me, it was Jase’s arms my body craved. My head and heart told me something else.

  “Just go, Jase. Please. I need … I don’t know … silence. Just for a while.”

  I thought he would argue with me. Tell me I shouldn’t be alone. He didn’t. Instead, he gave me a grim nod and took a step toward me. He reached for me, then curled his fists and pulled them back to his sides.

  “I’ll be back in an hour, tops. Just across the hall if you need anything.”

  I nodded and folded my arms in front of me.

  “Devin.”

  Looking toward the ceiling, I shook my head. I couldn’t hear it. Not now. Not from him. He said it anyway.

  “I love you.”

  A single tear finally spilled out of my eye, but I couldn’t look at him. I turned my back and walked toward the kitchen. At the last second I turned one last time to face him. “And Jase. You’re fired.”

  I saw the hint of a pained smile before I gave him my back again. He hesitated for a moment, then I heard his heavy footsteps as he walked out the door and closed it behind him.

  I don’t know what made me do it, but I had to go to The Dive. I needed to be in the last place I saw my sister. She’d worked a shift behind the bar on one of our busiest nights. The first time The HolyRocks played. She was happy. Smiling. Lying. She told me she had a date that night but none of it was true. She got on a train or a plane or something else before morning and I never saw her again.

  She knew. Mandy knew. I couldn’t even process everything I felt. Grief. Yes. But deep down, hadn’t I always known she’d meet her end this way? Hadn’t I always expected some phone call in the middle of the night that my junkie sister had finally overdosed, just like Bella did the night I first met Jase?

  Anger. That was it. I couldn’t even get to grief. Everyone around me lied and probably always would.

  The bar was dark when I got there. Two more hours until we opened. Business as usual. It was all I could do. Kinney had the night off so that was a blessing. But Floyd? Could I believe everything Jase said about him?

  I went back to my office and closed the door. Sitting at my desk, I crashed my forehead on top of it and tried to make the world stop spinning. I reached down and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Daddy’s favorite brand. I’d never opened it. I just kept it there as a reminder of one more person who’d let me down when I needed him.

  An hour passed since Jase left. Maybe more. He’d told me to call him if I needed anything. I wanted to. I wanted to need him. I wanted to let him wrap me in his arms and kiss my pain away. But that would be just one more lie to pile on all the rest. I ran my finger over his picture on my phone. I’d taken it here at the bar. His hands in sudsy water, he’d just flicked water at me.

  I heard footsteps in the hallway and set the phone down. The doorknob turned and I expected to see Jase. Hoped for it maybe, in spite of everything. But it wasn’t Jase at all.

  Floyd walked in, smiling. I rose to my feet and stepped around the desk.

  “You’re early.” My heart zoomed into my throat. It was three o’clock. Floyd was never here then. This was bad. Very bad. My phone rested face down on the desk in front of me.

  But this was Floyd. He was family. Whatever he did for Uncle Cy, his feelings for me were real. God. Did he know about Mandy? Was he part of that too? My nerves rang like alarm bells. Floyd walked toward me.

  “Sorry, boss,” he said. “Had some things come up at the last minute. I figured we needed to talk.”

  “Not now, Floyd. I really don’t feel well. I’m actually thinking about closing for the night. We’re never busy on Wednesdays anyway.”

  “Not like you,” he said, advancing on me. He was calm. Smiling. And I knew I was in deep, deep trouble.

  “Your uncle wants to talk to you,” he said.

  “So why is he sending you here to tell me that, Floyd? Did he expand your job description?”

  “Devin, don’t make this any harder for me or yourself than it has to be. Your uncle just needs to talk to you. You owe him that much.”

  “What? I what?”

  “Yeah. You need to hear him out. There are two sides to every story. You’ve got someone filling your head with a lot of lies. And not just someone … him. I warned you. I told you nothing good was going to come of your spending time with that piece-of-shit dishwasher.”

  He knew. Floyd acted like he knew everything Jase had told me. How could he? My head spun. The only thing clear to me was that I needed to get the hell away from Floyd now. Coming to the bar was a mistake. My first big one.

  I thought I could reason with him. That was my second mistake. But Floyd moved faster than I could have expected. He came at me, backing me against the desk. Only then did I notice he had something stuffed in his hand. A rag. He grabbed my arm and covered my mouth. I kicked and tried to scream. I made contact with his shin and he growled with pain but didn’t let go.

  I put up a fight. Some detached part of my brain told me that should be some consolation. Maybe Mandy never got the chance to. Did she know the end was coming when it stared her in the face? For me, the end came from the noxious smell of a dirty rag shoved halfway down my throat.

  Then the world went black.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jase

  I walked into the Northpointe Public Safety Building through the front door. Any other day of the week I’d call that progress. It meant each step I took brought me closer to earning the right to wear a badge again. Except now, my steps felt hollow. None of it would mean a damn thing if Devin wasn’t part of my life.

  Her voice haunted me as I made my way up the stairs to the fourth floor conference room. She’d crumpled to the ground and wailed like a hurt animal when I had to tell her the truth about Mandy. I’d give anything if I could take that pain away from her forever. I knew I couldn’t. I knew she might never let me close to her again.

  Gates met me in the hallway outside the chief’s conference room. Cutler wanted a status report after my meeting with Devin. Even that felt like a betrayal, but I knew this was bigger than my feelings for her. She could get hurt. Badly. And the only way I could really protect her from losing everything was to make sure they didn’t freeze me out of the case.

  “Should I ask how it went?” Gates said. He put a hand out and rested it on my shoulder.

  I shook my head. “No. You fucking shouldn’t.”

  “Hang up a sec,” he said. “Before we go in there.”

  He gestured toward the men’s room across the hall and I followed him in. He turned and leaned against the sinks and crossed his arms. “This is about the only place I’m pretty sure doesn’t have eyes and ears,” he said. “But even so, better to watch what you say.”

  “Yeah. I get that.”

  “Stan’s a decent guy. You need to know that. He’s one of the good ones, actually. I know you’re pissed at how hard he’s been riding your ass the last couple of weeks.”

  “No. I mean, I get that too. I know why this whole thing is personal for him.”

  Mitch nodded. “Ah. So he took you to meet Rachel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look. You and I both know there’s no way this shit doesn’t blow back on Devin Marsh. No matter what kind of bullshit the feds try to feed you.”

  I pounded my fist against one of the stall doors. “I’ve been down this road before down in Lincolnshire.”

  Our eyes met. Mitch didn’t have to say anymore. Just the fact that he wanted a minute to talk to me alone told me everything. We understood each other. They wanted Cy Marsh, but if they couldn’t get him they’d take what they could to save face and get their pictures in the paper. Running The Dive Bar out of business would be their conso
lation prize even if everyone knew it was a paper victory. They’d use Devin whether she cooperated or not. She had no ally but me. And maybe Gates. At least I think that’s what he was trying to say.

  “Any chance Kinney’s phone dump is going to make me happy?”

  Gates’s lab results were one of the items on the agenda today. He shrugged. “It’ll help with context if we’ve got Bowles and Kinney on the hook. I mean, if that’s all we’ve got. Kinney could flip but he’s probably isolated. Floyd Bowles … well … he could be important. I’ve got some numbers. There’s a few locations Kinney hits over and over again. An apartment on Wayside Street looks promising. That’s a richer part of town. I drove by there yesterday to do a little recon. Place was empty. Just a quiet little cul-de-sac surrounded by birch trees.”

  “Worth keeping in our back pocket anyway. You ready to get this shit over with? Things are dicey with Devin. She probably won’t even want to look at me anytime soon, but I want to be around, you know?”

  “You think she’s going to go to her uncle with any of this?”

  I shook my head. “No. She’s numb right now. She just needs to pull it together and act like everything’s normal. She fired my ass which was probably smart.”

  Gates laughed. “Well, at least it’ll get Cy off her back for a little while. And maybe you can collect unemployment if shit doesn’t work out here. Or I could put a good word in for you with janitorial.”