Seven years ago …
Riva Henneman shifted in her seat, the handcuffs obviously biting into her wrists. She’d been in the interview room alone for less than ten minutes, but without a clock to gauge time, it could feel like moments, or hours. The room was featureless, no clock, no windows except the one looking out into a squad room. Ian watched her through the interview room’s one-way glass and tried to gauge her emotional and mental state. The bright-eyed, pink-cheeked coed from Kaffiend had disappeared, leaving behind a pale, silent girl who looked far too young for Ian to feel what he’d felt when he’d walked through the coffee shop’s door and made eye contact with her.
“How did a girl like that end up one of the biggest dealers on campus?”
Jo’s tone made the question rhetorical, but in the end, Ian didn’t give a damn. Riva was nothing more than a stepping stone to the bigger fish he intended to fry in court.
“Are you sure she’s old enough she doesn’t need a parent or guardian?” Jo asked.
He’d run her Illinois license through the database. No priors, no tickets, birthday the preceding June. “She’s eighteen,” he said.
“She made her phone call,” Jo said. “Whoever she called, the conversation was short.”
Great. Now he needed to convince the girl and her lawyer to take his deal. He needed an informant to wear a wire and record evidence against the suppliers distributing drugs to the college ring he was going to bust to add some shine to his record before the next round of promotions came up. His best bet sat in the interview room, the florescent lights unable to dull the reddish gleam in her hair.
“Let me know when the lawyer shows up,” Ian said, and walked out of the observation room.
Riva looked up when he opened the door and set the folder he was carrying on the table. He’d shucked his leather moto jacket but still wore the Lancaster College T-shirt, adding the symbols of his job: badge, gun, handcuff case on the back of his jeans. Empty, because Riva was wearing them. Her gaze flicked at his forearms and wrists, then his chest. Anything to avoid looking at the gun, or his face.
“How are you doing?”
At that her gaze met his without flinching. “Fine.”
“Want something to drink?”
“No. Thank you,” she added, a reluctant courtesy. Jo had underestimated her. Anger simmered under the fear.
“Let’s take off those cuffs.”
He couldn’t help but touch her as he did, noting automatically the way she leaned away from him, the rigid set to her muscles when his fingers brushed her wrists. He’d tried to stay dispassionate, but there was an unavoidable intimacy to all of this. He folded them and tucked them back into the case at the small of his back, all the while watching Riva. Small talk wasn’t getting him anywhere, so he kept silent as he took the seat across from her, opened the file folder, made a couple of notes. “How long until your lawyer arrives?” he asked, keeping his tone offhand and casual to downplay the offer.
“I didn’t call a lawyer.”
“Do you want a public defender?” he asked, doing the right thing against his better judgment.
“No.”
Her voice was oddly tight. When he looked up, she was staring at his left hand. He turned it over and saw in the curve of his palm her phone number, written on his skin.
By the time he glanced at her face she was staring fixedly at the wall a couple of inches to the left of his head, color high in her cheeks.
His heart did a funny little lurch, and the nerve endings in his fingertips flared, sending up a sense memory of her soft skin. For a brief moment he wished he could smooth that over somehow, but he needed her cooperation. “It’s late, Riva, so I’m going to make this short. We have you on possession with intent to deliver. That’s a felony that carries some serious prison time, even for a first offender.”
She stared at him.
“But because your record prior to this is completely clean, I’m going to offer you a deal. Help us out.”
Her face was as white as the paper in front of him. “By doing what?”
“Make some buys for us.”
“How many buys?”
“A few.”
“Where?”
“On campus. In return we’ll drop the charges and make this go away.”
She looked at him. Something flashed in her eyes, but disappeared with a blink of her thick lashes before Ian could do more than note it, much less identify it. Relief? Shock? “How did you find me?”
“A couple of other kids we’ve picked up since school started mentioned a female dealer. We’ve been watching activity around the school for a couple of months.”
“Watching me.”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“We thought you’d be the easiest to turn. Young, female, new to the business. Why did you do it?”
She thought about that for a moment. “I needed the money,” she said. “What do I have to do?”
She looked so young, so innocent, and very small, curled in on herself in the interview-room chair. For a moment his concern got the better of his drive. “I’ll walk you through what you have to do. Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer?”
“No. No lawyer.”
Present day …
Ian Hawthorn pulled into a parking space at the back of Eye Candy’s parking lot and killed the engine on his city-issued Ford Taurus. A line of oak trees separating the lot from the street arced overhead, and the shade kept the car’s interior temperature cool as he scanned his surroundings. Behind Eye Candy a crane swiveled to hoist another panel of reflective glass to the top floor of Mobile Media’s building. Ian scrolled through his contacts, then watched the workers guide the panel into place while he waited for the call to connect.
“HealthNorth Oncology.”
He recognized the receptionist’s voice. “Hi, Nancy. It’s Ian Hawthorn. I need to cancel my appointment.”
“Again?” Sounds of clicking and tapping came through the line as she worked away at her computer. “When was the last time we saw you?” she said, almost to herself.
Ian knew the answer to that question. Nancy probably did too, but she never said anything without confirmation. Oncology appointments were tricky, and the last thing a staff member wanted to do was put her foot in her mouth.
“It’s been two years,” she said. “Dr. Ripley attached a note to your file. It says don’t let Ian reschedule again.”
Dr. Ripley was exactly what he wanted in a cancer doctor: brisk, efficient, no-nonsense. “Tell her I’m busy at work right now,” Ian said. “I’ll call back in a couple of weeks and schedule the appointment.”
“It’s a simple blood draw,” Nancy said. “We can do the draw at your convenience, and schedule an appointment to discuss the results.”
“I really can’t right now,” he said.
“Just come in, Ian,” Nancy said almost desperately. “Anytime. Lunch hour, after work, before work. You show up and we’ll fit you in.”
Now he felt like an asshole asking for special treatment. “Thanks. I appreciate that,” he said. “I’ll see what I can work out in the next week or so.”
He hung up, then clicked off his phone and tucked it in his jacket pocket. Eve Webber’s efforts were paying off, with increased traffic on the city’s east side, new restaurants and shops opening their doors in a neighborhood once considered risky. The spaces were filling up fast, people eager to shed what remained of winter’s hold on the city and celebrate a beautiful spring Friday night on the patio of the city’s hottest nightclub. It should have been tempting. But nightclubs made him think of the bad decisions he’d made in the wake of a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma he’d gotten at twenty-one.
“You’re still making bad decisions,” he muttered as he snagged his laptop bag and slid out of the Taurus. Like postponing his blood draws. It wasn’t the needles; he’d preferred the constant sticks to the alien feel of the port inserted into his chest during his chemotherapy, the small plastic lump a constant reminder of his body’s weakness and everything he’d lost as a result.
But he was ten years NEC—no evidence of cancer—and busy. The blood draw would wait. He was in the middle of the case of his career, involving drugs, corrupt cops, and a chance to put a huge dent in the drug supply coming into Lancaster. He was up for captain, earned the top score on the exam, and was only waiting for a spot to open up. His life was humming along, impossible to derail.
Or so he had thought, until Riva Henneman walked up to his table.
* * *
Ian had always been in control of his life, so no one was surprised when, after his older brother Jamie became a SEAL, Ian won a spot at Annapolis, or when, at the end of his plebe year, he was ranked near the top of his class, on track to graduate with his choice of assignments: to go through BUD/S and lead a SEAL team. The only surprise was the tiredness, weight loss, then the high white blood cell count, and then the cancer diagnosis.
The doctors used the word “diagnosis,” keeping it technical, medical, clinical. In the journal the psychologist insisted he keep, Ian wrote not of diagnosis, but of betrayal, of his disloyal cells and duplicitous immune system. He was just telling the truth. Keeping it real.
Fifteen months of treatment got him a clean bill of health and the news that he could graduate from the academy, but with a medical board that ended his military career before it began. No commission in the navy. No chance at the SEALs. He’d beaten the cancer, but in the process, Ian had gone from being a warrior to being a miracle.
He’d loved being a winner, a warrior, a competitor. Someone to reckon with, someone who cleared all the bars and set new records, new standards. He’d really loved being a plebe.
He hated being a miracle.
For the first time in his life, his circumstances dictated his options, not the other way around. Miracles were grateful for a second chance, a new lease on life. Ian wouldn’t have taken it on a silver platter. He didn’t want a second chance. He didn’t want a trip to Disney World or a chance to race the Indy track with a Formula One driver, or any of the other stupid wishes other cancer victims got. He wanted the life he’d built for himself before he got sick.
No one could give him that. In that frame of mind, angry and frustrated and resentful, he’d met Riva Henneman.
At first all he’d seen was a girl he could use as bait to hook a bigger fish. Then he’d spent hours and hours in cars with her, wiring her up for conversations. He’d smelled her skin, felt her hair against his hands and wrists, once against his face when the wind caught loose strands and tossed them against his neck, his cheek.
His brain said, suspect, then confidential informant.
His body said, female. Desirable, sexy woman.
But cops had ruined careers with infatuations with pretty girls of any age, and he had no intention of losing what he had left. When he’d gotten what he needed from her, he’d turned her loose, knowing he had no right and no business staying in touch with her without being the worst kind of creeper. He’d had power and authority over her; there was no way to initiate a relationship not founded on that imbalance. So he’d put her out of his mind as best he could, except for fever dreams hot enough to drive him crazy.
He’d thought she was gone. Forever.
* * *
Cesar, the big bouncer at the front door, looked up as Ian approached. “What are you reading now?” Ian asked. Cesar’s big hands made the book look small, but Ian could tell it was about four inches thick.
Cesar, a man of few words, flipped the cover closed. War and Peace.
“Like it?”
“Liked Anna Karenina better.” Cesar shrugged, like reading the Russian greats outside a club on the city’s embattled east side was commonplace.
“This for fun?”
“Sort of.” Cesar tried to stifle a proud smile, and failed. “I’m in the Upward Bound program at Lancaster College. This was on the reading list for the core curriculum.”
Ian managed to control his eyebrows. Even after a decade as a cop, people still surprised him. Usually this was a bad thing. Tonight, it was a good thing. “Cool,” he said, and opened the door.
He made his way along the hip-high wall enclosing the dance floor and started up the spiraling staircase to the office overlooking the bar. A quick double rap on the door and it opened from the inside. Joanna Sorenson, one of his detectives, peered through the gap.
“You’re late.” She gave him the naughty-naughty finger shake, which made him laugh. He’d known Jo since they were kids on the same T-ball team, part of a small cadre of second-and third-generation cops with the Lancaster Police Department. Technically, he outranked her; in formal situations Jo followed the chain of command with a punctilious officiousness that amused him. In private, she gave him hell like the sister he’d never had.
“Yeah, yeah.” Ian looked over the group and saw that the most important person wasn’t yet there. “I beat the mayor up here, so I’m ok.”
Jo huffed a laugh and closed the door behind Ian. He sidestepped the sofa lining the wall and hunkered down beside Eve’s desk to pull out his laptop and power it up. The small office was crowded, even more so when the door opened to admit Eve Webber and the small, silver-haired mayor of Lancaster.
“Thanks for your time, Mayor,” she said, setting a couple of pitchers of ice water with sliced lemons and a tower of stacked glasses on the opposite end of her desk. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
There was a moment of silence after the door closed behind her as everyone in the room tried to figure out who was running this show. There was enough brass in the room to start a band: Ian, a lieutenant; Swarthmore, the captain of the Eastern Precinct; and the mayor of Lancaster, plus Dorchester, Jo, and McCormick.
“I’ll do the introductions,” Sorenson said brightly. “Mayor, you know Captain Swarthmore. Detective Dorchester. Officer McCormick.”
The mayor shook Matt’s hand, then said, “Good to meet you, McCormick. How are you holding up?”
“Fine, sir,” McCormick said, trying not to look like he towered over the mayor and failing. McCormick made professional football players look small.
“Undercover work is tough; going deep to investigate crooked cops is tougher. You have what you need?”
“Yes, sir,” McCormick repeated, clearly surprised by the mayor’s blunt statement.
“He’s just waiting for us to wrap this up so he can take off and be famous,” Dorchester said from his position against the wall. He had one foot braced against the cinderblocks and a grin on his face. The only thing he liked better than a chance to check up on Eve Webber, Eye Candy’s owner and his girlfriend of nearly a year, was a chance to needle McCormick.
The mayor’s eyebrow lifted.
Dorchester said, “As soon as we’re done with him, he’s off to head up Maud Ward’s security detail.”
“Congratulations. That’s quite a coup.”
“I’m dating her, sir.”
Both of the mayor’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s a long story, mayor,” Jo said. “Eventually you’ll see it on a behind-the-music special. You know me—”
“—and trust me, I regret it—”
“—and I believe you’ve met Lieutenant Hawthorn before.”
“I believe I have, Jo. Ian.”
“Dad,” Ian said.
His father didn’t take his eyes off Ian’s face; when it came down to a battle of wills, his dad would win every time. He knew Ian was due for an appointment with Ripley. “In a couple of weeks, Dad,” he said.
A quick narrowing of his eyes, a downward tilt to his eyebrows, and Ian was a recruit at the academy again, standing at attention before older cops he’d known his whole life. “We’re a little busy right now.”
“I’ll let your mother know you’re too busy to go to your appointment,” his dad said in a silky voice.
And that was his dad, chucking him under the bus. “I’ll call her and explain.”
His dad all but snorted. “Might want to text. She’s looking for someone to clean out the greenhouse before the garden club meeting.”
He wasn’t totally in the doghouse yet. “Thanks for the warning.”
“Keep that appointment or I’ll offer you up to get the beds ready for planting.”
Motivating, but not enough. He loved working with his mom in the garden. Always had. Who else in the room knew about his cancer diagnosis and treatment? Jo did, but she was as inscrutable and silent as the wall she leaned against. Swarthmore probably did; he’d been one of his father’s shift lieutenants back in the day. Dorchester and McCormick didn’t and wouldn’t ask. The diagnosis had left his father shaken to the bone, something he showed to no one but his wife, Ian’s mother, something Ian saw only because his parents thought he was asleep when his father started weeping. His parents, steadfast, supportive, and loving, had never lost the right to quiz him about his health.
“Explain to me why we’re meeting here?” his father said, looking around the tiny office.
That was the former chief of police talking, not his dad. “Hidden in plain sight.” Ian started laying pictures and files on Eve’s big desk. He’d been here a couple of times when Matt Dorchester was protecting the star witness in a drug case, and more since Conn McCormick agreed to go undercover to infiltrate the Strykers. The group gathered around. “We’ve all been seen in this club for social reasons, and it’s owned by a cop’s girlfriend.”
At the word “girlfriend,” his dad perked right up. “You’re dating Eve?”
“Not me,” Ian said hastily. “Dorchester. Gather round.”
His dad leafed through the report Ian had handed him, stopping at the organizational chart Ian and the team had pieced together. “Run it down for me.”
“Eighteen months ago we started seeing a spike in crime we traced to cheap heroin, flowing in from Mexico. It was a new, more potent form, pure and cheap, and it flooded the market, driving prices down and spreading west, into the burbs. We also saw an increase in ODs, intakes at addiction treatment centers, and violence. We learned from Dorchester’s encounter with Hector Santiago that the cartels were working with local gangs to gain new turf.”
“That explains the spike in violence,” his dad said.
“Exactly.”
“How close are we to closing this down?”
And here was the reason for the meeting. This was his area. He’d gathered the data, traced it to the roots, and was close to shutting down the traffic. McCormick was undercover in plain sight, working his regular shift as a patrol officer with the city’s Eastern Precinct. Only the people in this room knew he was also gathering data to arrest, prosecute, and convict the dirty cops who had swarmed in to take advantage of a vacuum in the city’s gang leadership, created when Dorchester took out a vicious drug runner threatening Eve.
“We’re close,” Ian said. “Five months of work and McCormick has data on high-level distributors and their dealers.”
McCormick cleared his throat and squared up. “Kenny knows where the meetings to deliver shipments will take place. He directs patrols away from that area and sends in one of his guys to make sure nothing goes down. Five minutes and everyone’s gone, and the drugs are out for delivery.”
Swarthmore added, “We’ve also got proof of cops taking money and drugs from crime scenes, coercion of suspects, and several instances of planting evidence to frame members of other gangs, illegal searches, false testimony.”
“What do we know about the supplier?”
“Not much,” McCormick admitted. “Kenny’s playing his cards close to his chest. I’m in, but not the inner circle.”
“Does it matter?” his father asked, switching to devil’s advocate in the blink of an eye. “We can shut down the current distributors and clean house at the same time.”
“According to Kenny, this guy’s been trying to get into Lancaster for a while, opening new territory for a gang out of Mexico. If we don’t shut him down, he’ll try again.”
Ian tapped the file with the question mark on a big blue sticky note on it. “I want this guy, Dad.”
His father looked at him. Ian recognized the glint in his eye, having inherited his father’s ruthless, relentless drive. He knew what Ian meant—I want this bust, this clearance, our house cleaned from top to bottom. I want the captain’s bars. “How do we go about getting him?”
Swarthmore said, “Kenny’s top distributor is a guy named Malik Hathaway. We’ve got enough on Malik to arrest him.”
Ian shook his head. “If we go after any of them, the rest will run. I want to leave the top leadership in place.” He flipped open Malik’s file. “What about Malik’s brother?”
“Isaiah?” McCormick blew out his breath. “We’ve picked him up for shoplifting, petty theft, but not in the last few months. He’s not involved, as far as I can tell. His brother gets him to run packages every so often, but only as a last resort.”
Ian studied the pictures in the file. Just another kid in a hoodie getting into another junker of a car with a brown sack in his hand. Just another means to an end. He pushed his memory of Riva, white-faced when she approached his table, then gorgeously furious with him when he dared broach the sanctity of her kitchen. “Do we have enough to arrest him?”
“Yeah,” McCormick said.
“Bring him in. Let’s see what means more to him, his family or his freedom.”
The meeting broke up, Swarthmore and Dorchester catching up on another case, Jo checking her voice mail on her way down the stairs. McCormick took the back door through the empty apartment behind the office, protecting his cover.
Ian collected the folders and shut his laptop’s lid. Looking at it brought back to mind standing by the kitchen door while Riva Henneman calmly directed a panicked group of kids through the procedure for dealing with a grease fire, and he clutched his laptop like a kid with a security blanket.
The memory hit him with all the unexpectedness of Jamie landing a punch Ian didn’t see coming when they were sparring at Lancaster’s boxing club. One minute he’d been getting his laptop out to work through his meal. The next Riva was standing there, drawing all the oxygen out of the room despite the wide-open windows and warm spring breeze. He’d looked up into her face, and all his brain could do was notice. Riva. Different.
All grown up. The slender body of an eighteen-year-old college student had filled out into a woman’s curves. Her slouched posture was now ramrod straight, shoulders back, head held high, her pale blue eyes snapping. Finely arched brows. A wide, mobile mouth, alternately prim or carnal depending on the color of her lipstick and how heavily she applied it. She still wore her chestnut hair long but had stopped straightening it to that artificially sleek look. It was now pulled back in a ponytail, emphasizing the freckles spattered across her cheeks, nose, and forehead. They were a little darker but maybe that was because she was pale with shock at seeing him. He hoped it was shock. God knew his mouth was hanging open like an idiot’s.
He’d chosen the restaurant because Eve had talked up the farm-to-table ethos and the owner’s community involvement, and Matt had talked up the rib eye special. In the space of two racing heartbeats his day went from average, ordinary, data-driven metrics for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the visceral, full-body memory of the erotic thrill he’d spent the last seven years trying to forget.
He couldn’t have her. Ever. She’d been a suspect, a confidential informant he’d ruthlessly used to shut down a campus drug ring and earn his first commendation. He’d been ambitious, concerned with nothing other than proving himself as a Hawthorn, living up to his dad’s reputation, and Jamie’s. Everyone else acted like cancer gave him a pass, but he didn’t want a pass and flatly refused to be the weak link in the Hawthorn family. He wanted to stand tall beside his brother and his father. Nothing more, nothing less.
Until he’d wanted Riva. He’d needed her cooperation, but been terrified the entire time, sending a slender, defiant, sexy girl into dangerous situations. Underneath all of that was the most dangerous thing in the world: the desire to throw it all away.
He’d taken all of that conflicted emotion out on her.
His father was waiting by Ian’s truck. “What’s up, Dad?”
“I’m a little disappointed. I thought maybe you and Eve had gotten together.”
Ever since his brother, Jamie, finally convinced the love of his life to give a long distance relationship a shot, his parents were in full-on matchmaker mode.
“Eve’s great.” He clicked open the locks and tossed the laptop bag up on the seat. “I can’t imagine holidays sitting across from Caleb Webber.” Eve’s brother was a hot-shot defense attorney who loved making cops’ lives difficult.
“Dorchester seems all right with it.”
“He’s in love with her. I’m not.”
“Is there anyone? Anyone at all?”
Just a tall, leggy, chestnut-haired former suspect turned organic farmer who hated him enough to refuse him service. He wasn’t even sure what she did for a living. Was that farm hers? Just the restaurant? Or was she the liaison with the East Side Community Center? He’d given in and searched her name on social media. The farm had a page, but no clues about the owner. She had no social media profiles under her name.
“It’s spring, so an old man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love?” he said.
“Who you calling old?”
“I don’t want to steal Jamie’s lovefest limelight.”
“You think they’ll get married soon?”
Jamie was an active duty SEAL stationed in Virginia Beach. He’d come home nearly a year ago and claimed the girl he’d never forgotten, Charlie Stannard, a former pro basketball player and now the girls’ basketball coach at East High. They were still working out the long-distance-relationship details. “Ask Jamie.”
“Jamie ignores the question.”
A sure sign his brother was in stealth mode about something, probably the proposal. “Even when Mom asks?”
“Even when your mother asks.”
“I’d prepare for a big announcement.”
“So you don’t know something we don’t?”
“I know lots of things about Jamie you don’t,” Ian said. “But not that particular thing.”
“Humph,” his dad said. “You and your brother. Thick as thieves.”
“You’ve got to renegotiate the city’s contract with the sanitation service, and you’re thinking about Jamie getting married?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I think about you getting married.”
“Give it a rest, Dad.”
“Is it the cancer?”
No. Yes. Maybe. Ian didn’t know how to answer that question, because sometimes, sure, a woman got a good look at the scar on his pectoral from the chemo port and bugged out. Sometimes she went all maternal and protective on him, and he bugged out. Sometimes she didn’t ask, because talking wasn’t part of the program.
“I’m not looking for someone right now. I’m busy at work, and this thing takes up most of my off-duty time.”
“You want me to come with you?”
The last thing he wanted was company in the exam room. “No.” He softened his tone. “I’ll go. I promise.”
His dad was more fine with Jamie joining the US Navy SEALs and going off on incredibly complicated, dangerous missions he knew almost nothing about than he was with Ian having cancer. It was the illusion of control. Jamie was highly trained, with his teammates, in control of his situations. Ian was alone with a ticking time bomb of a body that had deceived him once already. “I know, Dad. I’m fine. I’m sleeping, eating right, not drinking to excess, exercising. I’m fine. I’m just not dating, okay?”
His phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen. McCormick. We got him.
“I have to go, Dad. Work.”
“Me, too.”
“Have fun with the sanitation engineers.”
His father snorted. “Stay out of trouble.”
* * *
Ten minutes later he pulled into the parking lot behind the Eastern Precinct, known to the cops and most east side residents as the Block. To protect both the cruisers and cops’ cars, the parking lot was fenced off with eight feet of chain link topped with barbed wire. He held the door for a cop bringing in a drugged-out homeless guy, then kept on holding it for two cops returning to their vehicle.
“Thanks, LT.”
McCormick was waiting in the observation room, feet spread, arms folded, looking like he wouldn’t move until doomsday. Through the reflective glass Ian saw a kid slumped over the table, face buried in the arm of a gray hoodie, nicked-up hands and a shock of blond hair the only visible identifying features.
“He asleep?”
“He’s being eighteen,” McCormick said.
“Any trouble?” McCormick was seven inches taller than Ian and had him by a good sixty pounds of muscle. Ian didn’t expect him to say yes.
“Nothing beyond the standard.”
“Charges?” They didn’t need anything big, just enough to arrest him and scare him.
“He was named last week by a small-time corner kid as the guy who delivered his packages.”
“Any truth to it?”
McCormick shrugged. “Probably. It’s a Stryker corner. They don’t usually use Isaiah for that, but he’s done it a couple of times.”
“Has he asked for a lawyer?”
“No. He made one phone call. I assume his aunt’s gonna show up any minute.” At Ian’s raised eyebrow, McCormick added, “He and Malik live with their aunt.”
Ian studied the top of Isaiah’s head a moment longer. “Want some coffee?”
“Sure. He’s not going anywhere.”
Ian poured out two cups, added sugar to McCormick’s, and shifted both cups to his right hand. On his way back to the interrogation room, he scanned the email on his phone.
Ian handed McCormick his coffee. “All yours,” he said.
“His phone call’s here,” McCormick said, tipping his head at the glass.
Ian looked up to find Riva Henneman standing beside the table in the interrogation room.
“Shit,” he said.