Two hours later, the pounding behind my eyes reached migraine proportions. I’d sent a list of properties to my security team to search, and then I started on another angle. One I never expected to be considering.

Something was wrong here. Very wrong.

Rhett was outside briefing the security team, and I rose from the table on shaky legs and went to the fridge for a bottle of water while I waited for him to return. Another cup of coffee might put me right over the edge. I’d chugged half the bottle when Rhett returned. One look at my face was all it took for him to read me.

“What did you find?” He came toward me as he asked the question.

“Didn’t you say Heath had taken himself off the IA investigation about your dad because of a conflict of interest?”

Rhett nodded. “That’s what he said.”

My belly flopped like a fish dying on the banks of the lake. “He’s on the reports about your dad. All of them. For the last year.”

Rhett’s expression turned to stone. “What? That’s impossible.”

I set the water bottle on the counter and wiped my hands on my shorts, clutching the hem. “He’s not just part of the investigation.” I paused, meeting Rhett’s gaze. “He’s leading it.”

Rhett’s face drained of color, leaving it ashen. “Why the fuck would he lie to me about it then? It doesn’t make any goddamned sense. He knew that I didn’t care either way. I just wanted the truth. He could’ve told me he stayed on it, and I would’ve been happy that someone competent was working it.”

I swallowed. “That’s the other thing that doesn’t make any sense. His reports are like a fifth grader put them together. Totally basic. Lacking any useful information. It was almost like . . .”

“What?” Rhett demanded.

“Like he was stalling.”

“Why the hell would he—”

“I have no idea. Could he have been trying to help?”

From his narrowed eyes, it didn’t look like Rhett was ready to give Heath the benefit of the doubt. And, honestly, from what I’d seen, I was having trouble too.

“Show me.”

I grabbed the copies I’d printed out and handed them over. Rhett flipped through the pages, the line between his eyebrows deepening until they nearly touched. He kept his head down as he started to speak.

“Heath’s a competent cop. This isn’t even rookie work. I don’t know how his superiors didn’t kick him off the case for this shit.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

Finally, Rhett looked up, his mouth set in a grim line. “There are only two possible explanations. Either he was trying to help and stall the investigation, or someone didn’t want him closing the case and so he deliberately dragged it out as long as he could.” He skipped to the last report and held it out. “This is what they were using to arrest him, and this information could’ve been in the first report, over a year ago. It doesn’t make sense for Heath to sandbag this.”

I glanced down at the sheet, and it sounded like an intelligent human being had strung together the sentences, which was at odds with the reports for the year prior.

“Could Heath . . . would he . . .” I didn’t even want to voice the possibility that my brother could have been deliberately blocking the investigation for whoever it was going to implicate.

“I don’t know. But we need to dig deeper into your brother and any possible motives.” Rhett looked pointedly at me. “Can you do that?”

Disloyalty burned through my veins like acid, but if Heath had done something . . .

“If he’s the connection from the department to me, and then me to Carlos, then this all starts to make a little more sense. I have to look.”