Turn Me Loose

by Anne Calhoun

  He didn’t blink an eye. “And you are?”

  “Riva Henneman.”

  The door next to the interrogation room opened, and Ian stepped through. “Ms. Henneman,” he said, unemotionally, like the encounter at the restaurant had never happened. This was the Ian she knew, cold, distant, walled off. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to speak to you in private.” She chose her words carefully, striving for an even tone, working hard to give nothing away that would jeopardize Isaiah’s future.

  Without a word, he inclined his head. She followed him down the hallway.

  “In here,” he said, reaching past her to open a door with a glass window in it. His breath heated her ear, and she went still, electric tremors running over her nerves. To calm them, she focused on the sign next to the door.

  LT. IAN HAWTHORN

  He’d been promoted since she knew him. More authority. More power. More danger.

  The thought carried her into the small office. Neatly stacked manila folders occupied the right-hand side of the desk, and cables trailed through an empty spot in front of two large monitors.

  That must be where the laptop goes, she thought, nonsensically.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Was she really going to do this? Was she really going to risk her freedom and put herself in the hands of the man she feared and desired in equal measures?

  Yes. For Isaiah.

  But this time she held some of the cards. She lifted her chin. “I want to offer you a deal.”

  “That’s not how this works. You’re not his lawyer.”

  “I remember,” she said, then glanced down at her phone. “I’m just waiting to hear back from Eve. Her brother, Caleb, might be able to take Isaiah’s case. You know Caleb, right?”

  Was that a flash of amused respect behind his facade? “I’m listening,” he said.

  “First, I want your assurance all charges against Isaiah will be dropped. He walks out of here today, and you never talk to him again.”

  “Depends on what you’ve got, but I’m listening.”

  That told her Isaiah wasn’t the real target. She hesitated for just a second, holding on to the last moment in time when Ian respected the new person she’d become. “The name of Malik’s supplier. The man behind the pipeline of drugs into Lancaster.”

  He blinked, and the light in his eyes disappeared. “You have that.”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll tell you once I know you won’t go after Isaiah.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Why risk yourself for him? He’s in with a bad crowd. He’s going to get in trouble again.”

  “No, he won’t. Want to know why? Because the sauce on your salmon last night was Isaiah’s creation. He spent three weeks perfecting it, bought the ingredients with money I paid him to work in my greenhouse. The dirt under his fingernails is honest dirt. He wants to open a restaurant, and to do that he’ll need money. Small business loans. Grants. All of which becomes impossible if he has a felony conviction. He knows that. He’s committed to that dream, and he wants to get it the right way. The honest way. I’m willing to stake my life on it.”

  “It’s not your life at stake,” Ian pointed out.

  “Isn’t it? I have no guarantee you won’t come after me. I just told you I know the name of a major drug supplier. I get involved in this and someone says I’m using my farm as a cover for drugs? You arrested me for distribution. You’ve got an easy conviction.”

  He looked at her, and she knew that once they struck this deal, any privacy she’d had, no matter how flimsy, was gone. The LPD would crawl all over her business, the farm, her records, her relationships. Ian would ask questions, better questions than he’d asked last time.

  She waited for the next logical question. How do you know the supplier? Are you selling drugs?

  “This sounds like it could get very serious, and dangerous for you. Do you want a lawyer present?”

  “Thank you, but no. I don’t need one.”

  “You’re still fearless.”

  “You’re still ruthless,” she shot back. “Arresting Isaiah, threatening him with jail time unless he rolls on his brother. You think I don’t know exactly what’s going on here?”

  “You think you do?”

  Her smile wasn’t a pretty, happy thing, and she knew it. “I do. Having any trouble with corruption, Lieutenant Hawthorn? Cops helping dealers? Taking money for information, or to look the other way?”

  His gaze sharpened. “Don’t fuck with me on this, Riva.”

  “Let Isaiah go, and I promise you’ll get everything I know.”

  “I could just arrest you, too.”

  “You could. But you won’t.”

  “Because I know you won’t say boo to a fucking ghost if I do.”

  “Precisely. Caleb Webber will make sure of that.”

  He hauled open his office door and beckoned. The mountain of muscle left his position by the interview room and walked over. “Uncuff him, get him a soda or a sandwich, but hold him for now.”

  “Yes, sir,” the cop said.

  Ian closed the door again, seated himself behind his desk, and opened the laptop. He sat back and reached for a pen, spinning it around his first knuckle, a nervous habit she remembered from seven years ago. “Start talking. Let’s start with a name.”

  This was it. This was the moment she told the whole truth and lost any chance she had at Ian’s respect.

  “Rory Henneman,” she said. “My father.”

  The pen flew up and over his knuckle, careening into the top level of his inbox/outbox tray. She remembered him spinning the pen seven years ago and never, ever missing the catch. “Your father,” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “Rory Henneman.”

  She must have shocked the hell out of him for him to repeat himself like this. Normally he remembered an astonishing degree of detail. Clearly he hadn’t put together the obvious, which was that she’d known all about this seven years ago and not told him. “Yes.”

  “Is Rory short for anything?”

  “No.”

  He typed something into his laptop. Silence reigned while he waited, then his gaze sharpened, eyes tracking back and forth as he skimmed the results. She’d done this dance before; cops started with plugging names into national crime databases and narrowed from there. But he wouldn’t find Rory Henneman. He was too slick for that.

  “A couple of speeding tickets, both paid, and bunch of unpaid parking tickets in Chicago. Nothing else,” he said. He typed some more. “I’m getting hits for a Henneman Candy and Vending, out of Chicago.”

  “That’s him.”

  “Chicago?” Hawthorn was scrolling and clicking, gaze flitting back and forth between the dual monitors. “He looks like a visible, respected businessman.”

  “And you looked like a grad student,” she said. “While I looked like a first year. And Isaiah looks like a banger, not a budding chef. Let’s agree that people are sometimes not what they seem.”

  Hawthorn pushed back from his desk, linked his hands behind his head, and fixed her with a look she recognized very well. It was his command-and-control glare. She gave him a little smile.

  “Candy and vending businesses used to be fronts for the mob.”

  “Used to be,” she said.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  Her stomach twisted into knots, the kind she couldn’t easily untangle. “About a decade.”

  “So when I busted you, you were working for him?”

  “Yes. My job was to check out the local suppliers, see how organized they were, get a feel for the market before he moved into it. I knew what his plan was. It included paying police to look the other way, if he could.”

  “You didn’t tell me any of this.”

  He’d assumed she was a low-level dealer, a college girl looking to make easy money. His questions had been geared around getting evidence on the bigger dealer
s on campus, unaware of her father’s mission. “I truthfully answered every question you asked.”

  “I just didn’t ask the right questions.”

  A mistake he wouldn’t make twice. Ian sat forward, fingers poised over the keyboard. The eager spring sunlight highlighted the slashes on his cheeks, the webbing of lines around his eyes, the muscle jumping in his jaw. “What evidence do you have?”

  “Nothing right now.”

  He shoved back from his desk and strode to the door. He hauled it open and bellowed, “McCormick!” into the squad room.

  “Sir.”

  McCormick was the giant of a man standing guard outside Isaiah’s interrogation room. He moved quickly for someone the size of a small mountain, or maybe everyone was as terrified of Hawthorn as she was. “Charge him.”

  Riva scrambled out of her chair. “No, don’t! I can get it. It’s just going to take time.”

  “How.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a demand growled from the back of his throat. She looked at him, then at McCormick. Hawthorn held up a hand. “Don’t go far,” he said.

  When Hawthorn closed the door, Riva went on. “I can get you what you need to shut it all down. Just keep Isaiah out of jail while I’m doing it.”

  “You’re doing this for Isaiah. Giving up your father for a kid you barely know.”

  “A kid with a future,” she shot back.

  “Bullshit.”

  She thought about her mother, about the long silences, her glazed eyes during their FaceTime chats, her nervous fingers picking at her cuticles during circular conversations about lunch menus and floral arrangements. This was about more than Isaiah, but Ian wouldn’t care about her mother’s nervous breakdowns or her father’s role in them. “I should have done something about Dad a long time ago. I know that. I didn’t. I am now.”

  Ian leaned forward, and the fury in his eyes froze her to her chair. “Or you took the deal so you could pass along what you learned when you were working for me, and now you’re trying to get inside so you can help him slip away.”

  “No!” She met his gaze head-on, willing him to believe her. “I called Dad the night you arrested me, but Dad hung me out to dry. He said it would jeopardize his relationship with the supplier. That’s why I took your deal.”

  No response. His fierce, intent eyes studied her face. She tried again. “Did you really expect me to give up my father, my family, if you didn’t know about him? You set the terms of our arrangement, and I fulfilled them. You got exactly what you wanted from me. After you were done with me, I didn’t want to have anything to do with drugs or cops ever again.”

  Tension thrummed in the room. Riva fought down her furious questions, because getting angry would get her nowhere. How could he understand what it was like to feel powerless, to face someone with an iron grip on your present, your future? When had he ever been truly powerless?

  He glared at her, brows lowered. “If you quit working for your father, how are you going to get the information I need?”

  She let herself exhale. That was the easy part. “I’ll go back home and tell him I’m tired of working eighteen hours a day and being poor. That I miss him, and want another chance.”

  He sat down, typed something into the laptop. “Are you tired of long hours and poverty?”

  “No,” she said. “I love my life. I’ve worked hard for it.”

  “Why would he believe you?”

  “Because he’s a sociopath who believes the sun gets its heat and light from him.”

  “Why now? What’s your cover story?”

  “My mother’s involved in a dinner-dance fundraiser for a hospital-wing renovation. She wants me to come home and help her with a luncheon for the organizing committee.”

  He stopped typing. “Come again.”

  “I’m going to make lunch for a group of my mother’s society friends.”

  “I know what a dinner dance is,” he said. “And a luncheon. This is your plan?”

  “I’ll go home, fool my dad into thinking I want into the business, find his laptop, and get what you need. Do you have a better idea?”

  Ian typed some more. “Do you ever bring home friends?”

  “What?” she said, startled. “No. Why?”

  “Never? Why not?”

  “I don’t go home much.” Her heart started to pound. He couldn’t be thinking what she thought he was thinking …

  “Come up with a decent excuse, because I’m coming with you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ian had learned the pen trick when he was eleven, racing Jamie to see who could learn it first, so the spin and catch were part of some really fundamental muscle memory. He couldn’t remember the last time he missed the catch.

  He’d been a cop too long, and through too much personally, to be that shocked.

  But Riva had done just that, and he’d missed the catch.

  It didn’t take him long to put the pieces together: her father had been involved in the drug trade back when he’d arrested her. Through interrogations and stakeouts, through weeks of drug deals, she’d kept the whole truth from him. Protected her father.

  The lie of omission stung more fiercely than it should, and not just because she’d withheld critical information about known illegal activities. She’d withheld a key piece of information about herself. All those nights sitting in a car together, waiting for a dealer to show, intimacy drifting into the air with the soft rock music, and she hadn’t told him. He’d taken care of her, and she’d lied to him. But this time he would use Riva Henneman until he’d followed the pipeline of drugs back to the source and cut it off.

  “Come with me,” he said, using a curt tone to cover the emotional stew roiling inside him.

  “Where are we going?”

  Part of him wanted to ignore her question, throw her off-balance, but his better half won. “To see my captain.”

  She looked mutinously at his extended arm indicating she should precede him out of his office, but gathered up her purse and walked out. He kept one hand hovering at the small of her back, not quite touching as he guided her around the bullpen. As with everything about Riva, he was conflicted. The cop in him wanted to protect her as an asset.

  The man in him wanted to feel the bare skin of her back against his palm, to protect her, because she was his. His CI, his asset, his in a way that went beyond labels and tidy relationships. She’d always been his, the power he had over her as close to owning another human being as possible, and therefore never his. Riva had never chosen him.

  With a deftness born of long practice, he shut off his thoughts and rapped on the doorframe. “Got a minute, sir?”

  Swarthmore looked up from his computer. His iron gray hair was neatly buzzed in the only haircut Ian could remember on him. He wore a tidy goatee, carefully trimmed to the department’s regulations, and his brown eyes were sharp and guarded. He took in Riva with a glance, but paid more attention to the way Ian closed his office door. “What’s up?” he asked, gesturing to the two chairs in front of his desk.

  Ian sat down because he wanted Riva to be seated and comfortable. “We have an opportunity to get the supplier behind Kenny’s bid to take over the drug trade in Lancaster.”

  Swarthmore’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m listening.”

  Ian explained why Riva was at the station, her connection to Isaiah, what she was willing to give up in order to get Isaiah out of jail.

  “You’re going to go back to your father, infiltrate his business and his organization, and get the information?”

  “Yes,” Riva said. “It’s going to take some work. Right now I can’t hand you a laptop with all the financial details, names, places, dates in a spreadsheet. But I can get it.”

  Swarthmore studied her for a long moment, then transferred his unreadable gaze to Ian. “Ms. Henneman, thank you for coming in. I need to speak with Lieutenant Hawthorn. We’ll be in touch.”

  “I’m taking Isaiah with me,” she said, pushing he
r chair back.

  “Fine,” Ian said before Swarthmore could speak up. This was his op. He’d take that risk, and anyway, he knew where Riva would go. They could always pick up Isaiah again if they wanted him.

  Ian pulled his phone from his pocket and texted McCormick. She’s coming for Isaiah. Let her take him and go.

  Got it.

  Ian watched her walk away. Swarthmore raised an eyebrow when he finally returned his attention to his superior officer. “This is the stupidest stunt I’ve ever heard of, but if she wants to do it, we can’t stop her.”

  It was about to get a whole lot stupider. “I’m going with her.”

  “No, you’re not,” Swarthmore said.

  “Sir—”

  “For a dozen reasons.” Swarthmore overrode him and lifted a hand for good measure. “Starting with, you have no jurisdiction in Chicago.”

  “Sir,” Ian started again. “With all due respect, it is my job to take down the cartel that’s corrupted our department.”

  Swarthmore sat back and gave Ian a steely-eyed glint Ian knew far too well. “No. I know exactly what you’re trying to do, Ian. You’re trying to prove yourself. And you’re angry with Riva Henneman because based on what I just heard, she withheld information from you seven years ago.”

  Ian went still.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t remember her name?”

  Ian knew better than to answer that question. “I’m not angry with her, sir.”

  “You better be angry with her, son. If it’s not anger in your eyes, it’s something else that’s much more likely to land you in a big, stinking pile of shit.”

  “Sir, for all I know the CPD has an investigation running on Rory Henneman. She’s just my cover to get in there and see what’s what.”

  “That’s not what she said.”

  “I’m going to need her help,” Ian admitted.

  “She was a CI. She’s aiding an investigation. Have you told your dad about this stupid stunt?”

  The line between family and superior officer blurred that fast. “She walked into the precinct an hour ago,” Ian pointed out. “And you know I never take anything from the job to Dad.”