Lost and Found

by Allison Brennan

  But it was only over the last two months that she had been able to add anything substantive to it.

  “Wow,” he said. “Why haven’t you turned this over to Richardson? Isn’t he working with the feds on this?”

  “He is. They are. Supposedly.” She didn’t know because no one would tell her anything. “He has most of this, and John swears he’s not corrupt, but considering the players involved, I don’t trust anyone. What if John is wrong? What if John gets hurt because he trusts the wrong person? Richardson isn’t talking to me… John is acting weird. I know what I’ve found”—she waved toward her closet—”isn’t hard evidence, but it’s a hell of a lot of circumstantial evidence. And yet… nothing. No arrests. No one has talked to me. If anything happens to John…” She couldn’t finish the thought.

  Her brother was one of the best cops she knew—and very by-the-book. Richardson had seniority—he’d been helpful when Jason was being railroaded for murder, ensured he was cleared and kept his job—but what if Richardson’s efforts to assist Jason were because Scarlet had known too much about Jason’s plight? What if Richardson had a bigger agenda? What if someone had gotten to him? He had a family—he could be threatened. He could be used.

  Something tickled the back of her mind, then Jason asked, “So John and Richardson know all this?”

  “Most of it. But the last few weeks…” She took a deep breath. “Mercer isn’t talking.”

  “Prick.”

  Tony Mercer had been a corrupt cop Scarlet helped take down with Jason’s help. Mercer had ordered the hit on a fellow officer—who happened to be Jason’s girlfriend—and framed Jason. When Mercer went to jail, he lawyered up and hasn’t given the feds or Richardson anything about who he worked for, who else was corrupt, or how the Vartarians were connected. Knowing the powerful family was behind the murder of a cop and proving it were two different things.

  “Richardson and John have more access than I do—I can’t believe after I gave them a wealth of circumstantial evidence they couldn’t make a case in what? Two months?” She tapped the big question mark she’d taped on the top of the wall. “Who is in charge?”

  Jason just shook his head. “I assumed Diana Vartarian because she’s in charge of Armor Plus. You don’t think it’s her?”

  “I don’t know,” Scarlet admitted. “But why? Her brother is a supervisor, her cousin is a prosecutor, who does it benefit? The family? Could it be her uncle? Her father’s dead, but her uncle took over the family business…”

  “Which is a legal accounting practice.”

  “Do we really know that? I don’t. I don’t know anything more than this. Yet someone involved with the Vartarians tried to kill me. And my partner—Gabe—he set me up.” She hadn’t believed it for the longest time. She’d been in denial. But the more she’d thought about it, the more she realized that she hadn’t been losing her mind. Gabe had called her, Gabe had sent her to that warehouse, Gabe had lied to I.A.

  And then he ran away. Coward.

  “I just…” Jason shook his head. Yep, denial. Just like her. “This is Gabe. He came to your dad’s for barbecues. Gabe, his family. I know him. He was a good cop.”

  Scarlet pointed to a timeline she’d recently posted under Gabe’s name. During the week prior to the ambush, he’d been training newly minted detective Craig Franklin.

  “Franklin?” Jason shook his head “Wasn’t he also was arrested because he was working with Mercer?”

  “That, and the fact he nearly killed me,” Scarlet said dryly. “But look at the timeline. Three years ago, Franklin just made detective. Gabe was assigned as his trainer. I was assigned a low-level rookie cop. A week after this staffing switch, I’m nearly killed. Franklin left two years later under a cloud of suspicion—an abuse of authority charge—that disappeared when he resigned.” She pointed to each handwritten bullet point on the wall. “Immediately after he quits, he lands a job with Armor Plus—Diana Vartarian’s security goon squad.”

  Jason rubbed his eyes. “I think I see what you see, but it’s getting confusing.”

  “That’s why they’ve gotten away with it for so long!” Scarlet didn’t want to get angry at Jason—she was really angrier at the entire situation—but everything had finally come clear to her. She just couldn’t prove shit, and that made her furious. “It’s a pattern. Corrupt cop, Mercer brings him under his wing. When he does something to really get in trouble, he quits. Goes to work for Vartarian’s Armor Plus. Franklin wasn’t the only former cop on Vartarian’s payroll.”

  “So you think Franklin was corrupt from the beginning?”

  “I know he was corrupt. That’s how Mercer rolled, right? He looked for the cops who crossed the line, then blackmailed or bribed or protected them, depending on who it was and what they could do for him. It took me a lot of time and calling in every favor I still had, but I learned that Franklin’s abuse of authority charge over which he resigned was more like a protection racket. L.A.P.D. probably let the abuse charge out to avoid a bigger scandal.”

  “It sucks,” Jason said, “but you know how some cops are pushed out because they had issues. It’s a quiet way of maintaining morale, ensuring the bad apples are off the force, all that jazz.”

  “Yes—though not all those bad apples end up working for Armor Plus. But that’s not why he’s on my radar. I looked into his record. Franklin had been a cop in Sunset, under Mercer. Then made detective. Why go to Van Nuys division? To spread Mercer’s reach.”

  Jason looked at her wall. Saw the name GABE STONE next to Franklin’s.

  “Gabe was your partner. Just because he rode with Franklin for a few weeks means shit.”

  “I don’t say this lightly,” she said. “Look. Look at the evidence!”

  At the top of the pyramid was a big fat question mark. Because she didn’t know who was in charge. Then there was Diana Vartarian. The owner of Armor Plus, a private security company that hired mostly ex-cops and a few from the military. Maybe she was in charge…. maybe she was the ringleader. But it didn’t feel right to Scarlet. No with what she knew now. No, Diana Vartarian was the hired gun—or, rather, the head of the hired guns.

  She’d told all that to Kyle Richardson last week—her theory that Vartarian was working for someone else, a Big Bad Guy, an unknown. She’d laid everything out to him and he’d told her she was wrong. Flat out said that she didn’t know what was going on and to stand down.

  But she wasn’t wrong. Richardson was ignoring her, John was acting weird, and she was losing her partner. Moreno & Hart Investigations was deep in the red and Krista needed her.

  But Scarlet couldn’t give one hundred percent to anything or anyone until she knew the truth.

  Under the question mark she’d listed Diana Vartarian, her brother Peter—now a County Supervisor—and her cousin Ben, who was an ADA. There were other family members—her younger sister, Christina, who was married to Thomas Laurens, the bastard who’d killed a cop for Mercer and was now in prison. Another cousin of Diana’s who was a cop, another cousin who worked at the Port of Long Beach. She wasn’t even sure she’d found them all.

  Apart from the Vartarian family, there were circles of cops who seemed to be connected to them, but Scarlet didn’t know exactly how or why. Sergeant Tony Mercer, the corrupt cop who’d helped protect the family and ultimately ordered the hit on a cop and framed Jason; Rick Sykes, a corrupt cop who Krista helped take down; Craig Franklin, another former cop turned Vartarian baddie. All three of those men were in custody. And still, the Vartarians hadn’t blinked. They still ran their own criminal enterprise. Did nothing faze these bastards?

  “Franklin partnered with Gabe on May first, two weeks before the ambush,” Scarlet said. “I was partnered with Krista Hart, rookie cop. She’d just graduated from the academy. What did Franklin do in those two weeks to convince Gabe to set me up?” Scarlet didn’t believe her mentor had been corrupt from the beginning. She couldn’t. They’d worked too many cases together; she would have s
een a hint of something if he’d been a bad cop.

  “You said all along that it might have been someone else who called you, pretending to be Gabe.”

  Scarlet shook her head.

  “How can you be so sure now?”

  “I am.” How could she explain it? It wasn’t until after she left the hospital that she doubted it was Gabe… and that was only because she couldn’t believe her partner and mentor had betrayed her. He’d been in the hospital with her, he’d sat with her, he’d quit the force in solidarity… or so she’d thought at the time.

  But they hadn’t spoken in over three years. He’d moved out of state. No one she spoke with had heard from him. Guilt? Fear? Both?

  “Why?” Jason asked. “I’d never once heard a whisper that Gabe was a bad cop.”

  “Why. That’s the million dollar question. I’m going to find out.”

  “How?”

  “Not sure yet. I may have to just ask him.”

  Jason turned to her. “You have a judge on that wall. Two, if you count the Vartarian connection. You have several cops, both current and former. An ADA. This is getting dangerous.”

  “It was dangerous for you to run when Mercer set you up for killing your girlfriend,” she snapped.

  Jason looked away.

  She felt awful. She shouldn’t have brought up Gina—the emotions were still raw for Jason.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Why are you showing me all this? What file do you want?”

  “Gabe’s.”

  Jason ran his hands through his hair. “Shit, Scarlet.”

  “Gabe was party to the ambush. He sent me there. He might as well have pulled the trigger himself. I have to know why. The why is in his file. He did something, saw something, let someone go, sent someone away, I don’t know! But I can only dig so deep. Jason, I have no one else I trust.”

  “You should have John do it. John would do anything for you.”

  “No, not anything. He’s working on the task force, which means he answers to Richardson. Even if they believed me, it means nothing without context. Besides, they’re not looking at the ambush. They’re only looking at the Vartarians and what they’re currently involved with. My gut tells me there was a specific reason they wanted me dead.”

  “Then you’d be dead.”

  “Maybe… or maybe when I lived and no one believed me about getting a call and I left the force, they determined I wasn’t a threat.”

  “If you’re right and the Vartarians find out you’re doing this—”

  “They threatened my brother. They framed you. Mercer is in prison, as is Franklin and a host of others, and still the Vartarians are free, in power, controlling this city through factions they’ve built over years. If I find out why they wanted me dead—or discredited—all the pieces will fall into place.”

  “You don’t know that, Scarlet.”

  He was right. She didn’t. But she had a moral obligation to solve this, and not just because it was the right thing to do. It was personal. They had made it personal.

  Whatever the reasons, she would never live in peace if she let this go. She’d never be able to commit herself fully to Moreno & Hart Investigations, she’d never be able to commit to Alex; she’d never be able to move past this if she didn’t stop this now. She had barely been living for three years because, in the back of her mind, the why haunted her.

  “Please,” she said because she could think of nothing else to convince him.

  Jason nodded, almost imperceptibly, and she breathed easier.

  She heard something at her door and turned. Alex stood there, behind her, staring at the closet, his hand on her doorknob. He was either going on duty or coming off duty; his badge was clipped to his belt and he wore slacks and a blazer which barely concealed his gun.

  “Scarlet,” he said, shaking his head. “You said you were letting Richardson and his task force handle this.”

  “I am.”

  “Like hell you are.”

  Jason cleared his throat. “Hey, I gotta go.”

  Alex glared at him. “You’d better not be part of this, Jones.”

  Jason tensed, but it was out of anger. “Don’t threaten me, Bishop. They had my girlfriend killed.”

  “Your shenanigans the other month nearly got both you and my girlfriend killed.”

  “Fuck you,” Jason said and bumped up against Alex.

  Scarlet immediately intervened and steered Jason ten feet to her door. She looked him in the eye, not needing to say anything. He knew what she wanted; he would come through. He owed her. She didn’t have to say it.

  “Be careful,” Jason said and left.

  Alex walked over and stared at the closet, his jaw tight. “You have twice as much information here as you did two months ago.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  He grabbed her and spun her around. She pushed him back, hating the way he manhandled her when he was upset. His eyes practically blazed with anger. And fear. “Don’t do this, Scarlet. You know there’s an open investigation. Let Richardson handle it.”

  “I can’t!”

  “You have to!”

  “You told me you’d take me how I am. This is me.”

  “I don’t want you dead.”

  “I don’t want to be dead, either. You have to trust me.”

  “They got to Mercer, dammit! In prison. He was supposed to be protected, but they still got to him.”

  She stepped back. “How do you know that? How do you know Mercer’s dead and no one said a word to me?”

  Alex didn’t say anything for a second. “Hank told me. Said the feds were keeping it hush-hush.”

  Scarlet had no reason not to believe Alex, but it didn’t make sense that Hank would have told Alex and not her. Hank may have been Alex’s boss for the last two months, but he’d been her friend for years. “So now you and Hank are trying to protect me? Is that it?”

  “No, it’s not like that—dammit, Scarlet, you’re obsessed with this.” He waved a hand toward her closet.

  “Wouldn’t you be?” She stepped away from him. “Richardson didn’t tell me about Mercer. John didn’t tell me. What if the feds are keeping other information from them? We’re all at risk. We’re all in danger until we find out who’s behind this. I don’t have the answers, but I have a direction, and I’m going to pursue it.”

  He stepped forward, pulled her to his chest. The tension in his body vibrated. “They almost killed you. Twice.”

  “Almost.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I’m not reckless.”

  “Dammit, Scarlet, you are.”

  “Have some faith in me.”

  He tilted her chin up and stared at her. What was there? What did he see in her? Why hadn’t he walked away already? Why hadn’t she pushed him away?

  “Thanksgiving dinner at my dad’s. Don’t forget,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound normal. She was trying to lighten the mood, but her comment only served to darken it.

  He kissed her. It wasn’t gentle or sweet, but hard and full of a dark passion that bordered on desperation. As if it were the last time. As if he would never see her again.

  She gave him as good as he gave her, taking him to his knees, then to the floor. Clothes were off, buttons popped, hair pulled as they took from each other the ecstasy that was uniquely theirs. It was hard, it was fast, and Scarlet had to bite back a cry as an orgasm washed through her with a sudden force she didn’t expect. Alex followed her, fast, furious, desperate.

  Alex’s weight pinned her to the floor, a sheen of sweat covering them both. He didn’t move. She couldn’t move.

  She knew she should say something, but she didn’t know what. She’d said everything she wanted to. To trust her. To have faith. To understand.

  He kissed her slowly. Looked at her, just for a moment. She couldn’t read his expression, but her heart skipped a beat. There was something here, something just outside of her grasp. He wanted someth
ing more from her, and she didn’t know what. What was she missing? Had she already screwed this relationship up?

  Alex rose and walked to the bathroom, picking up his clothes as he went. Gloriously naked.

  She sat up. Her pants were off, but her tank top was still on. She was sore but she wanted more. She didn’t want Alex to leave. She was scared and nervous and even a little bit angry at Alex and at herself because she wasn’t sure what had just happened. They’d had sex many times in the ten weeks they’d been dating. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes gentle, sometimes rough. But this was… desperate. Wordless. Urgent.

  She knew he was going to leave. So she found her pants, then pulled them on. Three minutes later, Alex came out of the bathroom. He’d splashed water over his face and hair and had dressed. “I have to go to work,” he said. “I’ll call you later.” He glanced at the closet, but didn’t say another word before he walked out.

  He didn’t call later. He canceled Thanksgiving dinner at the last minute, and Scarlet feared it was over.

  Chapter Three

  Scarlet was relieved that Sherry left her alone for a while, though sitting in Gabe’s quiet house while Sherry did laundry, vacuumed, and chatted on the phone was unnerving. By the time the kids came in later that afternoon, she’s had second, third, and tenth thoughts about whether she was doing the right thing.

  Joey came in shortly before the girls—he had a job at Starbucks. Lizzy came home with Abby just after three-thirty. They all had a hundred questions for Scarlet, and she answered them—mostly about California, baseball. (They were all Dodgers fans, like her dad, except for Abby, who firmly rooted for the Angels. Scarlet suspected because she herself was an Angels fan and had taken Abby to a game as her sixth birthday present.)

  “Are you spending the night?” Abby asked, practically jumping up and down. She was at that age between child and teen. She’d be eleven this summer, about to start middle school, smart, conversational, yet to be interested in boys, athletic, and curious. She was a lot like Scarlet had been as a kid. Just more talkative.