You’re right, I never meant to get involved in any of this.
I wish I hadn’t.
I wish I wasn’t.
I just want to go home.
I didn’t even know where home was anymore, or where it would be in the future. Honestly, at that moment I felt like I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
A million things were on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them down, shaking his hand with a smile and saying instead, “You’re very kind.”
“Not at all. I’ll speak with you later, Ellie.”
A gentlemanly nod and he was gone, out the door, leaving me alone in the sitting room with my thoughts.
I sank back down on the striped settee.
A doctor. I could be a doctor. Whatever field, whatever profession. No student loans, no debt. Just a few more years of hard work, a lot of luck, and I could actually be a doctor.
I couldn’t deny the idea had crossed my mind more than once, but it had been a dream that seemed way out of reach. The amount of debt I’d have had to incur in order to pursue an MD or a DO had been too much. In the end, I’d chosen the less expensive route of becoming an RN, which still allowed me to work in the medical profession but with fewer years of paying off loans. Now, the dream that had once been unattainable was right here, at my fingertips, and yet something warned me to be cautious.
What?
Was it the fear of being bound to a man like Sean Costas? I didn’t doubt his gratitude for saving his son, as well as my attempt to protect his wife and possibly even Carter. And yet, how far did gratitude stretch? Was this what it seemed on the surface, or did he have a deeper meaning in mind? A doctor could do much, much good, but a trained medical professional beholden to someone who skirted or flouted the law—how much harm could they be compelled to do, as well?
Chapter Sixteen
Fort Worth Police Department, Investigative and Support Command
“Any luck?”
Detective Candace Ewing glanced up from the computer screen in front of her. Its bright glow was beginning to trigger a headache, or maybe that was lack of sleep combined with stress. She rolled out her neck and shoulders to relieve tension before answering her partner.
“Not yet. When we first saw the body, we both agreed it probably had cartel written all over it, right?”
“Right.”
Gary pulled up a nearby chair. It scraped in protest as he drew it flush with hers.
“Well, I’ve been on this screen for hours, checking every resource,” she went on as Gary seated himself near her. “I can’t find a single thing linking our vic to the cartel, to drugs, to coyotes, to smugglers, to anything illegal. He entered the country legally five years ago from Columbia on a marriage visa. Since then, he’s worked as a forklift operator at one of those giant warehouses downtown. He seems to live a quiet life. No arrest records. No domestic violence calls. Nothing. Only a couple of speeding tickets that were paid on time. On the surface he’s a normal husband and father. This guy is clean as a whistle.”
“There’s got to be more to him than meets the eye,” Gary said mildly. “Clean as a whistle doesn’t usually wind up dead with their guts spilled all over the street.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Candace snapped, her frustration showing. “I’m telling you, I’ve been looking and I can’t find a stinkin’ thing.”
Gary nodded soberly.
“Maybe fresh eyes would help.”
“Maybe,” she conceded grudgingly. “Have you broken your case yet?”
“Had about as much luck as you have,” he admitted sourly.
Gary’s case was the disappearance of a young, African American male, Ethan Wharton, early twenties, attending Tarrant Country College on the Trinity River Campus. For extra cash, he moonlighted as a security detail for big events coming to town. Several months ago, Ethan had disappeared without a trace. No phone calls to his family, no texts, no activity on his social media, credit cards, or bank accounts. Normally, the case would have been handled by Missing Persons, and had been at first, but during the course of their investigation a DNA match had popped up between Ethan and blood found at a certain scene in the Fort Worth Botanic Garden last November. That case had been Gary and Candace’s. Officially it had been dropped for lack of evidence, but Missing Persons had kicked Ethan’s disappearance back to them because of the connection. They’d been working it off and on since it was given to them, but with no success. There was too little blood at the scene to verify a death, and no other physical evidence to prove Ethan had ever been there, let alone died there. They had a pretty good guess what had happened, but proving it was quite another step. An impossible step, according to Gary, who simply wanted to come up with a story to feed Ethan’s family.
“Let’s stop and go back a minute,” Gary now said, pulling his partner’s thoughts from his case back to hers. “Maybe we’ve been looking at this wrong. We can’t find anything off about Gomez. What about his wife? Any ties between her and anything suspicious?”
“I’ve found nothing that linked her to the cartels,” Candace said. “I haven’t spent as much time on her as him, but I was getting to that. Nothing suspicious popped up right away. She’s a U.S. citizen, as are her parents. Her grandparents migrated here from Cuba back in the 50’s. Their family seems pretty average. No criminal records to speak of. Living the American dream.”
“Who does she work for?”
“Uh…hold on, let me check.”
With a few clicks of the mouse, Candace brought up a screen with Maria Gomez’s driver’s license and public records.
“Says she’s been an administrative assistant for Rory Bleakly for the past seven years.”
“Who is Rory Bleakly?”
“Hang on…”
More clicks, more scrolling. Finally Candace stopped.
“Well, I’ll be…”
Gary leaned past her shoulder to look. Read for a second. He turned his head, meeting Candace’s gaze.
“Now that’s interesting.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
Candace leaned back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest.
“Ricardo Gomez is married to a woman who’s the personal secretary for Rory Bleakly, who is pretty much the personal assistant for Sean Costas, himself.”
She said it quietly, the words meant only for her partner’s ears.
“Coincidence?”
“Do we believe in coincidences?”
“Not in our line of work,” Gary admitted. His chin, what Candace could see of it beneath his trim beard, firmed with tension.
“No, we don’t. This guy is married to a woman who works for another woman close to Mr. Costas himself. That could be enough to get him killed for any number of reasons.”
Gary didn’t argue. The whole humans turning into monsters thing aside, Sean Costas was allegedly king of business deals in the Metroplex, both shady and not. He was smart enough to hire the best lawyers to protect himself, not to mention financial wizards to put a veneer of legality on everything he did. But Candace knew. Gary knew. The entire police department knew. Everyone knew. Nevertheless, knowing and proving, especially proving anything against a man like Sean Costas in court, were entirely different things.