CHAPTER EIGHT
Don Webster was awakened out of a dead sleep by what he initially took to be a particularly violent thunderstorm. When the clouds cleared from his brain, he decided someone was trying to beat through the walls of his apartment with a sledgehammer.
As he reached for his weapon, he realized someone was pounding on his door.
He pulled on jeans, took his weapon with him, and went to look through his security peep.
A dozen thoughts ran through his head, a morass of pleasure, fantasy, and discomfort. He opened the door to Eve.
"Just in the neighborhood?" he said.
"You son of a bitch." She shoved him back, slammed the door behind her. "I want answers, and I want them now."
"You never were much on foreplay." The minute it was out, he regretted it. He covered that with a cocky grin. "What's up?"
"What's down, Webster, is another cop."
The grin vanished. "Who? How?"
"You tell me."
They stared at each other a moment. His gaze shifted first. "I don't know."
"What do you know? What's IAB's angle on this? Because there is one. I can smell it."
"Look, you come barging in here at... Christ, after one in the morning, jump down my throat, and tell me a cop's dead. You don't even tell me who or how it happened and I'm supposed to be some fount of fucking information for you."
"Mills," she snapped. "Detective Alan. Illegals, same squad as Kohli. You want to know how? Somebody sliced him wide open from neck to balls. I know because his guts spilled out on my hands."
"Christ. Christ." He rubbed both hands over his face. "I need a drink."
He walked away.
She stormed after him. She remembered, vaguely, his old place, the one he'd had when he'd worked the streets. This one had a lot more space, and more of a shine on it.
IAB, she thought bitterly, paid well.
He was in the kitchen, at the refrigerator, pulling a beer out. He looked back at her, took out a second. "Want one?" When she simply stared at him, he put it back. "Guess not." He flipped off the top, let it fly, then took one long swallow. "Where'd it happen?"
"I'm not here to answer questions. I'm not your goddamn weasel."
"And I'm not yours," he countered, then leaned back against the refrigerator door. He needed to get his thoughts in order, his emotions under control. Unless he did, she'd spring something out of him he wasn't free to say.
"You came to me," she reminded him. "Either fishing or smelling bait. Or maybe you're just IAB's messenger boy."
His eyes hardened at that, but he lifted the bottle again, sipped. "You got a problem with me, you take it to IAB. See where it gets you."
"I solve my own problems. What do Kohli and Mills and Max Ricker have in common?"
"You're going to stir up a hornet's nest and get stung if you mess with Ricker."
"I've already messed with him. Didn't know that, did you?" she said when his eyes flickered. "That little gem hasn't dropped in your lap quite yet. I've got four of his storm troopers in cages right now."
"You won't keep them."
"Maybe not, but I might get more out of them than I'm getting from one of my own. You used to be a cop."
"I'm still a cop. Goddamn it, Dallas."
"Then act like one."
"You think because I don't get all the press, don't go out closing high-profile cases so the crowds cheer, I don't care about the job?" He slammed the bottle on the counter. "I do what I do because I care about the job. If every cop was as hard-line straight as you, we wouldn't need Internal Affairs."
"Were they dirty, Webster? Mills and Kohli. Were they dirty?"
His face closed in again. "I can't tell you."
"You don't know, or you're not saying."
He looked into her eyes. For an instant, just an instant, she saw regret in his. "I can't tell you."
"Is there an ongoing investigation in IAB involving Kohli, Mills and/or other officers in the One two-eight?"
"If there was," he said carefully, "it would be classified. I wouldn't be at liberty to confirm or deny that, or to discuss any of the details."
"Where did Kohli get the funds he's funnelled into investment accounts?"
Webster's mouth tightened. Spring it out of him? She'd pry it out, he thought, with her fingernails. "I have no comment regarding that allegation."
"Am I going to find similar funds in an account under Mills's name?"
"I have no comment."
"You should be a fucking politician, Webster." She turned on her heel.
"Eve." He'd never used her first name before, not out loud. "Watch your step," he said quietly. "Watch your back."
She never stopped, never acknowledged the warning. When she'd slammed the door behind her, he stood for a moment while a war waged inside him.
Then he walked to his 'link and made the first call.