Easy peasy.
She crossed the room and parted the blinds on a window overlooking Sixth Avenue. No cops yet. Her phone hadn’t rung, which was strange. The detectives investigating the case should have called her number already to find out who she was. Unless they hadn’t found Walsh’s cell phone. Or he’d deleted his call record.
If either of those scenarios was the case, it would buy her some time.
She drew her fingers away; the blind snapped into place, sending years of dust filtering through the air. Turning her back, she braced her hip on the window ledge and looked around the room. Really, she didn’t have it so bad. She had this place. It wasn’t much, but it was hers. Damned sure was more than her father would have given her—seeing that he had basically disowned her and all.
Pauley Winters, a former cop and the best damned PI in the state of Alabama before his death, had left the building and his business to her when he’d died last spring. He’d been her best friend and the closest thing she’d had to a real parent since her mom died. Her father had changed after his wife’s death. Pushed Sadie away, grown hard and cold. Not even when she’d joined the Birmingham Police Department could she please him. She’d even gone into narcotics to impress the revered DEA special agent in charge Mason Cross. She could be a big undercover hero like he once was.
He hadn’t been impressed.
Thinking about her father and the past had her stomach cramping. Sadie pushed away from the window and went to the sink. She needed coffee. Too early for a whiskey. She’d allowed her alcohol consumption to get out of control for a while. She wasn’t going there again. Her father would be waiting in the wings to put her in rehab for the third—no, fourth—time.
“Bastard.” She poured water into the machine. A few scoops of grounds and then she pushed the “Brew” button.
The only thing worse than living through the haunting memories of those missing months was rehab. She’d spent more than enough time in hospitals and rehab for a dozen lifetimes.
She walked to her desk and shuffled through the files there. Her last case was closed. Nothing new had come in. That was the way of a small private investigations firm. It was feast or famine. Pauley had explained the instability of the business was the primary reason he’d bought this building. The pub downstairs was the only one of its kind in this neighborhood. Very Irish, very vintage. He had leased it to a real Irishman years ago. The money from the lease provided sufficient income for scraping by if nothing else panned out.
Lately, Sadie had come to appreciate her old friend’s foresight. Barely a month after Pauley died, she had walked away from her damaged career at the BPD and taken over the PI shop. Pauley had left it to her, after all. Why not? She could be her own boss. Do things her own way.
Funny, her father—the man she hadn’t been able to impress with her law enforcement career—had suddenly been beyond pissed off that she’d left it behind.
Sadie shook off the memories. She poured a cup of coffee and walked over to the wall next to the door, the one that stood between her and the alley. No windows on that wall. She used it like a massive bulletin board for her cases. But at this end, next to the door, was her ongoing, four-year-old-plus personal case. The one that haunted her sleep and gnawed at her every waking hour.
What in the world happened to Sadie Cross?
The answer to that question was the one—however remote—real reason for her to have even the slightest desire to continue breathing. A little less than five years ago she had taken what would turn out to be her final field op with the BPD. Deep undercover. Inordinately dangerous. Four months in, she’d disappeared. Nearly a year after vanishing she’d reappeared as if an alien spaceship had dropped her back on the planet. Those missing months had stolen the person she had once been. Had taken more from her than anyone knew. She’d come back an empty shell. Her stellar law enforcement career had suddenly become that of a file clerk digging through dusty cold case files.
Now she was here. Filling the emptiness with booze and what Pauley had left her until she could find the truth.
She couldn’t really say why it mattered, but somehow it did. She stared at the timeline she had created. There were dozens of sticky notes on the wall. Red, yellow, and purple. Even a few pink ones. A couple of light-green ones. All were pieces of her shattered memory. Scattered fragments. Nothing, not counseling, not regression therapy, had unearthed more than mere slivers of recall. This past Christmas she’d considered going back to the guy who had done the regression therapy three years ago and trying again, but then he’d died. Car crash. He’d been the only one of the shrinks she’d seen that she had liked . . . trusted just a little. She’d considered requesting her files and the audiotapes of her sessions after his death, but she’d never bothered.
She’d let it go. Wouldn’t help. The shrinks had reached a certain point, and her mind had blocked any further progress. There was a brick wall inside her head, and nothing or no one seemed able to get her past it. Maybe the truth was she didn’t want to know whatever was beyond that brick wall. It wasn’t like she could change whatever had happened during those missing months.
Sounds and images whispered through her mind, making her flinch.
She had survived. The only question was why.
“Just another mystery in the life of Sadie Cross.”
She stared at the colorful notes, some faded with age. Did it actually matter what had happened during those lost months? Probably not. She wasn’t a cop anymore. It wouldn’t fix the canyon-wide rift between her and her father. Damn sure wouldn’t help the failed operation. Still, part of her wanted those weeks and months back. It was her life, and whatever happened, she wanted to know and understand it. To log it in like the rest of her days. If she was going to continue breathing, she might as well have the whole story.
The regression therapy shrink, Dr. Oliver Holden, had told her the memories behind that wall were either gone for good or there to stay. Trying to dig them out was in all likelihood a pointless endeavor. If regression therapy hadn’t resurrected them, they weren’t coming. The trauma could be too much for her to handle. The mind’s ability to block something like that was powerful.
Denial was an incredibly strong cognitive process.
The soft chime of the alert that someone had approached the fire escape sounded. She went to her laptop and checked the camera. The stairway down to the first floor, to the pub, had long ago been closed off to allow for a private living space on the second level. This upstairs loft—her dusty, disorganized home—was entered via the fire escape in the alley. Since that access point created a vulnerability all its own, she’d taken precautions with plenty of added security. Like cameras and motion sensors.
Frustration furrowing her brow, she watched the images on the screen. Kerri Devlin, followed by Luke Falco, climbed the rusty iron stairs. At least now she knew who had landed the double homicide at Leo’s Tobacconist.
“Shit.”
She would have been far happier if it had been anyone else. Luke Falco she liked, sort of. It would be harder to lie to him with a good degree of success.
She needed to lie. Not that it was anything new.
She lied a lot.
It was necessary. Or, at least, less complicated.
Equally troubling, Falco and Devlin were good. By far the best of the lot at the BPD.