“I thought it was weird too,” Nick frowned as he took a stress ball off my desk and started to toss it in the air. “I assumed at first that he must have hired a hitman to clip his wife. That made the most sense considering what he said about how nothing was supposed to trace back to him. But then why would he be afraid of her?”
I hesitated for a moment as I tripped over his use of the word “clip” to describe someone being murdered. I didn’t think Nick had even noticed that he’d said that. It was so easy to forget that he’d once been enmeshed in such a dark and terrifying world.
“Maybe she threatened to go to the police too?” I suggested. “If she went down, she’d drag him down with her?”
“I guess,” Nick sighed, though he didn’t sound very confident. “Let’s go talk to him. I think I can convince him to talk.”
“What do you mean, ‘convince’?” I asked hesitantly as I watched him hop off the table.
“Nothing sinister.” He smirked. “I’m just saying, as a ‘civilian,’ I’m not necessarily bound by the law the way you agents are.”
“What?” I balked, nervous about what he was planning to do now. Nick tended to walk the line between what a private investigator was and was not legally allowed to do, and most of the time, I was the one who had to smooth things over, so neither of us ended up in trouble. “You’re more bound by the law than I am. You’re not technically allowed to do anything!”
“When have I ever let that stop me?” He grinned. He was speaking quietly enough that he probably wouldn’t be overheard in the hectic office, but I still glanced around nervously, anyway. Few people had the guts to admit openly they were planning on skirting the law in the middle of a federal law enforcement office.
“Okay, just shut up,” I admonished him as I stood up from my chair. There was little point in trying to stop him, since I knew that he would just do whatever he wanted regardless of whether I was with him or not. Joining him would allow me to mitigate any damage he might cause, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t even a little curious about what his plan was.
He grinned and turned to lead the way out of the office. Before we’d gone more than a few steps, though, he stopped in his tracks. I looked up to see what had caught his attention. It was Director Flint, marching directly toward us.
“Nick, Agent Park,” he addressed us as soon as he reached us. I tensed immediately. Flint was a serious and stony-faced man, but I’d never seen him look as angry as he did now. I glanced at Nick and wondered if something he’d done had finally caught up to us. Nick looked calm, almost indifferent, but I’d known him long enough to know that he was putting up a front.
“I have some serious news,” Flint grumbled. “Ryan Rothschild had just been found dead in his hospital room.”
11
Nick
I was disappointed with how the day had gone. I’d been so pumped this morning to get a call about a new, big SDCT case, but it seemed like everything had rapidly become worse and worse until it all fell apart.
While we were waiting for our opportunity to interrogate him, Ryan Rothschild had been killed in the hospital. Jase, being the loyal friend that he was, had been immediately concerned that I would be blamed for it, since Ryan had been complaining about my rough treatment earlier that day during the arrest. Flint had assured us that there was nothing to worry about, since Ryan’s neck had been slit. It was obvious that this had been a murder and not some aftereffect of an earlier injury. Since I’d been at the SDCT office the whole time, there was no way I’d had something to do with it.
That certainly hadn’t stopped Bette from going off about how she was right to consider me a threat and a liability, though. In the end, I’d decided to just head out to give everyone a chance to cool off and to think about what my next move should be. I didn’t regret what I’d done. Even if I’d bent the rules or broken the law, I’d gotten the result I needed in the end. I just hadn’t counted on someone coming in at the eleventh hour to mess everything up by killing the only lead we had.
Without Ryan, we were literally at a dead end. I hadn’t been able to catch the woman he’d been speaking with, and none of the security camera footage had captured her face. Unless we found something else, we’d have no way of figuring out her identity.
I frowned as I leaned forward to rest my arms against the railing at the end of the South Point Park Pier. Even though the place was a bit of a tourist trap and almost always crowded, it was still one of my favorite spots in Miami. Jase and I used to come here when we were still in high school. Anytime we were feeling overwhelmed by our respective family issues or just felt like ditching class, we’d come hang out here until the sun started to set, like it was now.
The sky was just starting to darken now, which meant that the casinos and bars would start to operate in full swing soon. Most of them never closed, but business tended to be slow during the daylight hours. Dusk was when the city would really start to come to life.
Almost on a whim, I decided to go and see Dante. I’d told Colletta I would this morning, and maybe he could even provide some fresh perspective on the case. The kid was really smart, so if there was an angle we were missing, he
