Please don’t let him be here.
Riva had chanted the mantra all way to the Block, switching from reciting it under her breath to mentally repeating it to herself while she asked at the front desk for Isaiah. She’d held her chin high the whole way back to a very familiar interview room, but Hawthorn was nowhere in sight.
To her relief, the room held only Isaiah and herself. Her heart was pounding, her stomach roiling like she’d eaten bad fish, but she held it together, reaching for skills she’d learned in this very precinct, in this very interrogation room. Stay calm. Don’t give anything away. She dropped her purse to the floor and perched on the edge of the chair beside him.
“Isaiah, what’s going on?”
“Got arrested,” he said.
His blond hair fell forward, into his eyes. He was handcuffed to the table. The sullen look on his face, so different from the open excitement and delight she saw when she taught him a new recipe or approved an improvement he’d made to one of hers was gone, replaced by the kid who’d skulked into her kitchen back in February. All the progress she’d made was lost.
“So I see,” she said lightly. “What happened?”
“Someone snitched.”
Monosyllabic answers, closed-off expression. All too familiar. She waited.
“Little Ray said I delivered a package to him.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah, but this was months ago. I’ve said no to Malik every time since I started working for you.” His face closed off again, the expression of someone who didn’t expect authority figures to believe him.
“I believe you,” she said. But she also knew all about statute of limitations, and what cops would do to get an arrest, a conviction. “Did you call a lawyer?” He needed help, just as she’d needed one seven years ago. The conversation was seared into her memory.
Dad? I got arrested. Selling … you know. What you asked me to sell.
A few low, muttered words, “knew a girl would fuck this up … stupid bitch” among them. Then, Did you tell them about me?
No! Of course not!
Don’t, if you know what’s good for you. I’m not jeopardizing this relationship because you couldn’t handle a job twelve-year-olds do without getting busted. Don’t call me again.
Then he’d hung up on her.
“No money for a lawyer.” At her glance, he added, “Malik’s the one with a good lawyer. I’m not taking his help with this.”
She blew out her breath, then dug in her bag for her cell phone to text Eve.
I need your brother’s work number.
You finally want to get a drink with him? I’ll give you his mobile, but he’s in Cleveland for a couple of weeks, doing depositions. I’ll set the two of you up when he gets back!
“Dammit,” she breathed.
Thanks, but I don’t want to get a drink with him. I need a lawyer.
The response came almost immediately. What’s going on?
It’s not for me. For Isaiah.
Three dots appeared. While she waited, she said absently. “Where’s your mom?”
“Gone.”
She looked up. “Gone, gone?”
“Gone, gone.”
“Your dad?”
“Where I’ll be going.”
Prison. Great. “Who’s responsible for you?”
“I’m eighteen. I am.”
“You turned eighteen six weeks ago,” Riva said. “Who was responsible for you before then?”
“Malik, I guess. We live with my aunt.”
“Tell me what happened. You said this wasn’t recent.”
“Cop rolls up a couple of hours ago and arrests me. Says I can have a second chance, if I roll on Malik. I’m not snitching on my brother.”
A warning bell went off in her brain. “Tell me exactly what happened.” At his disbelieving snort, she added, “You can’t shock me. Trust me on this one.”
The story was all too familiar. He lived on the outskirts of all kinds of illegal activity; half of the east side made ends meet any way they could. Malik was up and coming in the Strykers. For the most part he kept his little brother out of things, but every so often, he asked Isaiah to do something he trusted no one else to do.
“Including delivering packages.”
“Just the big ones,” Isaiah said ironically.
Cops wouldn’t hesitate to use family members to go after the biggest fish of them all, the suppliers.
“What did they want?”
“Malik’s supplier.”
“Do you know who supplies him?” Her heart was in her throat.
“Yeah. But I’m not giving up my brother.”
“Let me guess.” But it wasn’t really a guess. Her past, her fate, was catching up with her. She leaned in close, keeping her voice down to a low murmur. “It’s a guy out of Chicago, goes by the name of Rory.”
The look on Isaiah’s face was almost as priceless as the look on Ian’s at the restaurant. Riva knew how shocking this must be to him, that his clean living, organic farming food arts and sciences mentor knew high-level drug dealers by name. “How do you know him?”
“Never mind,” she said. “Just sit tight and keep your mouth shut until I get back.”
Isaiah stared at her, eyes full of wild hope and total disbelief. “You can help me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“How?”
Easy. All she had to do was give Ian Hawthorn what she’d withheld seven years ago. All she had to do was ask for help from the man she hated as much as she desired.
She opened the door and found herself staring at the bulging right biceps of a mountain of muscle standing outside. He wore jeans, a half-zip pullover, a gun on his hip, and a badge on his belt. “I’d like to speak to Ian Hawthorn, please.”
He didn’t blink an eye. “And you are?”
“Riva Henneman.”
The door next to the interrogation room opened, and Ian stepped through. “Ms. Henneman,” he said, unemotionally, like the encounter at the restaurant had never happened. This was the Ian she knew, cold, distant, walled off. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to speak to you in private.” She chose her words carefully, striving for an even tone, working hard to give nothing away that would jeopardize Isaiah’s future.
Without a word, he inclined his head. She followed him down the hallway.
“In here,” he said, reaching past her to open a door with a glass window in it. His breath heated her ear, and she went still, electric tremors running over her nerves. To calm them, she focused on the sign next to the door.
LT. IAN HAWTHORN
He’d been promoted since she knew him. More authority. More power. More danger.
The thought carried her into the small office. Neatly stacked manila folders occupied the right-hand side of the desk, and cables trailed through an empty spot in front of two large monitors.
That must be where the laptop goes, she thought, nonsensically.
“What can I do for you?”
Was she really going to do this? Was she really going to risk her freedom and put herself in the hands of the man she feared and desired in equal measures?
Yes. For Isaiah.
But this time she held some of the cards. She lifted her chin. “I want to offer you a deal.”
“That’s not how this works. You’re not his lawyer.”
“I remember,” she said, then glanced down at her phone. “I’m just waiting to hear back from Eve. Her brother, Caleb, might be able to take Isaiah’s case. You know Caleb, right?”
Was that a flash of amused respect behind his facade? “I’m listening,” he said.
“First, I want your assurance all charges against Isaiah will be dropped. He walks out of here today, and you never talk to him again.”
“Depends on what you’ve got, but I’m listening.”
That told her Isaiah wasn’t the real target. She hesitated for just a second, holding on to the last moment in time when Ian respected the new person she’d become. “The name of Malik’s supplier. The man behind the pipeline of drugs into Lancaster.”
He blinked, and the light in his eyes disappeared. “You have that.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell you once I know you won’t go after Isaiah.”
His gaze narrowed. “Why risk yourself for him? He’s in with a bad crowd. He’s going to get in trouble again.”
“No, he won’t. Want to know why? Because the sauce on your salmon last night was Isaiah’s creation. He spent three weeks perfecting it, bought the ingredients with money I paid him to work in my greenhouse. The dirt under his fingernails is honest dirt. He wants to open a restaurant, and to do that he’ll need money. Small business loans. Grants. All of which becomes impossible if he has a felony conviction. He knows that. He’s committed to that dream, and he wants to get it the right way. The honest way. I’m willing to stake my life on it.”
“It’s not your life at stake,” Ian pointed out.
“Isn’t it? I have no guarantee you won’t come after me. I just told you I know the name of a major drug supplier. I get involved in this and someone says I’m using my farm as a cover for drugs? You arrested me for distribution. You’ve got an easy conviction.”
He looked at her, and she knew that once they struck this deal, any privacy she’d had, no matter how flimsy, was gone. The LPD would crawl all over her business, the farm, her records, her relationships. Ian would ask questions, better questions than he’d asked last time.
She waited for the next logical question. How do you know the supplier? Are you selling drugs?
“This sounds like it could get very serious, and dangerous for you. Do you want a lawyer present?”
“Thank you, but no. I don’t need one.”
“You’re still fearless.”
“You’re still ruthless,” she shot back. “Arresting Isaiah, threatening him with jail time unless he rolls on his brother. You think I don’t know exactly what’s going on here?”
“You think you do?”
Her smile wasn’t a pretty, happy thing, and she knew it. “I do. Having any trouble with corruption, Lieutenant Hawthorn? Cops helping dealers? Taking money for information, or to look the other way?”
His gaze sharpened. “Don’t fuck with me on this, Riva.”
“Let Isaiah go, and I promise you’ll get everything I know.”
“I could just arrest you, too.”
“You could. But you won’t.”
“Because I know you won’t say boo to a fucking ghost if I do.”
“Precisely. Caleb Webber will make sure of that.”
He hauled open his office door and beckoned. The mountain of muscle left his position by the interview room and walked over. “Uncuff him, get him a soda or a sandwich, but hold him for now.”
“Yes, sir,” the cop said.
Ian closed the door again, seated himself behind his desk, and opened the laptop. He sat back and reached for a pen, spinning it around his first knuckle, a nervous habit she remembered from seven years ago. “Start talking. Let’s start with a name.”
This was it. This was the moment she told the whole truth and lost any chance she had at Ian’s respect.
“Rory Henneman,” she said. “My father.”
The pen flew up and over his knuckle, careening into the top level of his inbox/outbox tray. She remembered him spinning the pen seven years ago and never, ever missing the catch. “Your father,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“Rory Henneman.”
She must have shocked the hell out of him for him to repeat himself like this. Normally he remembered an astonishing degree of detail. Clearly he hadn’t put together the obvious, which was that she’d known all about this seven years ago and not told him. “Yes.”
“Is Rory short for anything?”
“No.”
He typed something into his laptop. Silence reigned while he waited, then his gaze sharpened, eyes tracking back and forth as he skimmed the results. She’d done this dance before; cops started with plugging names into national crime databases and narrowed from there. But he wouldn’t find Rory Henneman. He was too slick for that.
“A couple of speeding tickets, both paid, and bunch of unpaid parking tickets in Chicago. Nothing else,” he said. He typed some more. “I’m getting hits for a Henneman Candy and Vending, out of Chicago.”
“That’s him.”
“Chicago?” Hawthorn was scrolling and clicking, gaze flitting back and forth between the dual monitors. “He looks like a visible, respected businessman.”
“And you looked like a grad student,” she said. “While I looked like a first year. And Isaiah looks like a banger, not a budding chef. Let’s agree that people are sometimes not what they seem.”
Hawthorn pushed back from his desk, linked his hands behind his head, and fixed her with a look she recognized very well. It was his command-and-control glare. She gave him a little smile.
“Candy and vending businesses used to be fronts for the mob.”
“Used to be,” she said.
“How long has this been going on?”
Her stomach twisted into knots, the kind she couldn’t easily untangle. “About a decade.”
“So when I busted you, you were working for him?”
“Yes. My job was to check out the local suppliers, see how organized they were, get a feel for the market before he moved into it. I knew what his plan was. It included paying police to look the other way, if he could.”
“You didn’t tell me any of this.”
He’d assumed she was a low-level dealer, a college girl looking to make easy money. His questions had been geared around getting evidence on the bigger dealers on campus, unaware of her father’s mission. “I truthfully answered every question you asked.”
“I just didn’t ask the right questions.”
A mistake he wouldn’t make twice. Ian sat forward, fingers poised over the keyboard. The eager spring sunlight highlighted the slashes on his cheeks, the webbing of lines around his eyes, the muscle jumping in his jaw. “What evidence do you have?”
“Nothing right now.”
He shoved back from his desk and strode to the door. He hauled it open and bellowed, “McCormick!” into the squad room.
“Sir.”
McCormick was the giant of a man standing guard outside Isaiah’s interrogation room. He moved quickly for someone the size of a small mountain, or maybe everyone was as terrified of Hawthorn as she was. “Charge him.”
Riva scrambled out of her chair. “No, don’t! I can get it. It’s just going to take time.”
“How.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a demand growled from the back of his throat. She looked at him, then at McCormick. Hawthorn held up a hand. “Don’t go far,” he said.
When Hawthorn closed the door, Riva went on. “I can get you what you need to shut it all down. Just keep Isaiah out of jail while I’m doing it.”
“You’re doing this for Isaiah. Giving up your father for a kid you barely know.”
“A kid with a future,” she shot back.
“Bullshit.”
She thought about her mother, about the long silences, her glazed eyes during their FaceTime chats, her nervous fingers picking at her cuticles during circular conversations about lunch menus and floral arrangements. This was about more than Isaiah, but Ian wouldn’t care about her mother’s nervous breakdowns or her father’s role in them. “I should have done something about Dad a long time ago. I know that. I didn’t. I am now.”
Ian leaned forward, and the fury in his eyes froze her to her chair. “Or you took the deal so you could pass along what you learned when you were working for me, and now you’re trying to get inside so you can help him slip away.”
“No!” She met his gaze head-on, willing him to believe her. “I called Dad the night you arrested me, but Dad hung me out to dry. He said it would jeopardize his relationship with the supplier. That’s why I took your deal.”
No response. His fierce, intent eyes studied her face. She tried again. “Did you really expect me to give up my father, my family, if you didn’t know about him? You set the terms of our arrangement, and I fulfilled them. You got exactly what you wanted from me. After you were done with me, I didn’t want to have anything to do with drugs or cops ever again.”
Tension thrummed in the room. Riva fought down her furious questions, because getting angry would get her nowhere. How could he understand what it was like to feel powerless, to face someone with an iron grip on your present, your future? When had he ever been truly powerless?
He glared at her, brows lowered. “If you quit working for your father, how are you going to get the information I need?”
She let herself exhale. That was the easy part. “I’ll go back home and tell him I’m tired of working eighteen hours a day and being poor. That I miss him, and want another chance.”
He sat down, typed something into the laptop. “Are you tired of long hours and poverty?”
“No,” she said. “I love my life. I’ve worked hard for it.”
“Why would he believe you?”
“Because he’s a sociopath who believes the sun gets its heat and light from him.”
“Why now? What’s your cover story?”
“My mother’s involved in a dinner-dance fundraiser for a hospital-wing renovation. She wants me to come home and help her with a luncheon for the organizing committee.”
He stopped typing. “Come again.”
“I’m going to make lunch for a group of my mother’s society friends.”
“I know what a dinner dance is,” he said. “And a luncheon. This is your plan?”
“I’ll go home, fool my dad into thinking I want into the business, find his laptop, and get what you need. Do you have a better idea?”
Ian typed some more. “Do you ever bring home friends?”
“What?” she said, startled. “No. Why?”
“Never? Why not?”
“I don’t go home much.” Her heart started to pound. He couldn’t be thinking what she thought he was thinking …
“Come up with a decent excuse, because I’m coming with you.”