Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
“Yeah, that’s what we gotta do. We’re on it here.”
“We got no stones left to turn here, but we’re still on it too.”
“CK?” McGill asked.
“Bohannan is coming in. We’re going to see if we can come up with a plan to flush him out.”
“You know that just gave me a shiver, Rus.”
He knew it did.
He knew why.
There was only one plan available.
Somehow use Rus as bait to get him to expose himself.
“We got this opportunity, Ben. I’m not squandering it.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed, but he didn’t sound happy about it.
They disconnected, and Rus was at his report for five minutes before Moran walked in with Bohannan.
He exchanged chin lifts with Bohannan, but mostly, his attention was reserved for Moran.
“What’s going on?”
Moran all but collapsed in a chair at the conference table.
Bohannan took his with far more control.
But he had his attention on Moran too.
“Good news, Lana has taken Shannon under her wing,” Moran shared. “She isn’t a lioness, ready to tear you limb from limb if you get close to her cub. She’s an ice queen perfectly willing to pierce your heart with the icicles she can shoot from her eyes. I don’t know how she got Shannon to move in with her and Dean, but she did. I sense part of this is to protect and look after her, and part of it might be her jumping at a chance to replace Malorie. I don’t give much of a fuck which it is. I’m just relieved Shannon is covered.”
“That’s good,” Rus said hesitantly, also relieved, but this didn’t explain Moran’s mood.
“Bad news, Tyler Cook, Michael Mitchell, Dylan Rogers and Austin Brooks are all pieces of shit. I’ve known that for years. Most of the town has too. Built. Good-looking. Athletes. Popular at school. Acted like they owned this town then, and that hasn’t changed much since they graduated. Straight up, when Shannon told her story, they were the first ones that came to mind. We’ve had trouble with them. Nothing as serious as Shannon. Underage drinking, and with that driving. Intimidating behavior. They’re banned from Aromacobana because they acted like such shits in there. And Double D got close to doing that too.”
“All right,” Rus said when he stopped talking.
“Now they’re getting shit from folks in town,” Moran went on. “Dylan’s been fired, and he’s pissed, says his boss has no reason. He’s been to Ellen’s house, banging on the door and shouting. Twice, she called us, and we had to cite him to get him to leave her alone. Dean says he caught him on the way to his door. Dean’s a serious guy. He walked out with a baseball bat in hand, Dylan had second thoughts.”
Rus had not yet met Dean, but he already liked him.
“Tyler’s always made my skin crawl,” Moran shared. “No empathy in that guy. He’s the leader and probably the one who Shannon had a crush on. Only light shining on this is that he went away to school and didn’t come back. I don’t know where he is, and I haven’t seen him around for years.”
Rus nodded.
Moran kept going.
“Michael is dumb as a rock and would follow them off a cliff. Austin, he probably was a good kid, until he got messed up with them. He’s trying to distance himself from all this now. But you rape a fifteen-year-old, that clings to you no matter how good you were before you gave into peer pressure like that.”
“Gotta ask, Harry, outside members of your team having to go and give citations, not sure why this is a problem,” Bohannan noted. “They’re reaping what the sowed.”
“I just don’t want them to sow any more. That’s my concern,” Moran replied.
Both Rus and Bohannan nodded in understanding.
A man felt entitled to do what he wanted, it took a serious knockdown for him to learn differently, and unfortunately, this wasn’t the kind of knockdown it took. This was the kind of thing that brought to the surface how much he felt the world owed him for just being born.
“But that isn’t what we’re here for,” Moran said. “We’re here to discuss CK. Let’s get into that.”
They started, with Bohannan sharing some ideas, but Rus’s phone rang while he was talking.
He was in an active investigation and had given his number to a lot of people, so he gave the men a one minute and took a call from a number he didn’t know.
“Lazarus.”
“Zachariah, I need your help.”
He tensed at his given name being used, and he tensed more because he recognized that voice.
He couldn’t be sure, but…
“It’s Ezra Corbin, and I didn’t do it.”
He took his phone from his ear, hit speaker, twirled his hand in the air, then jabbed a finger at Moran, and put the phone on the table.
“You didn’t kill Brittanie?” he asked as Moran got his phone out to start recording.