Chapter 6

6

Detective Charlie Fields deserved to pay for the shit he had done to people through the years. Detective Robert Wright of the Finley Creek TSP’s Homicide division fought the fury that just thinking about that man brought.

Fields... Fields had been the golden boy of the TSP for years.

And when the new Major Crimes Unit had been formed almost four years ago, Fields had been one of the first picked to fill a slot. Fields and that asshole MacNamara. And those two upstarts Acardi and Foster. The chief had then brought in his good old pal Erickson from somewhere.

Now some punk, Murdoch Lake—a screw-up Robert had worked with in Wichita Falls twelve years ago—was right there occupying a desk. Lake would be taking over for Fields once the man’s retirement went through.

Of course, he would. Lake was screwing the governor’s sister-in-law now. They’d been married a few months. Of course that meant Lake would get the good position.

Foster, a good buddy of the chief’s wife, had gotten his own department to focus on cold cases. The governor’s aunt-by- marriage was Foster’s new partner, transferred in special from Wichita Falls. Homicide was in Major Crimes now, too.

Under that son-of-a-bitch Miguel Rodriguez.

Rob had been the next in line to head up Homicide. It had been his. Until the department had been moved to Major Crimes—and the chief had put Miguel Rodriguez there instead. No one with half a brain argued with that—not considering how damned big Rodriguez was. Rodriguez remained as the chief of the part-time, as-needed Rapid Response Team, too.

The man handled grenade launchers like they were Legos. That was one scary bastard Wright wasn’t stupid enough to cross. When Rodriguez told him to do something, Wright did it. Fast.

The governor’s aunt getting Major Crimes burned Wright’s ass, too. Almost as much as Charlie Fields. Connections, connections, connections. Advancement in the TSP all boiled down to connections. It made the difference now. Lieutenant Heather Coleson had far more connections than Bob Wright, after all.

Pain-in-the-ass bitch all the way. She was good friends with Rodriguez.

Probably screwing him in her off time. He could see it. She and Rodriguez had been all buddy-buddy since she’d walked in like she owned the place. She was off on medical leave now—she’d taken a bullet recently and was still recovering.

Rob wouldn’t mind screwing her if he ever got the chance, though. Most men would enjoy her. Talk about a hot woman, that one.

Rob still had three years until he could file his papers. But unlike Lake and Rodriguez, Homicide Detective Robert Matthew Wright wasn’t screwing around with a well-connected woman. He was going nowhere. Just like always.

Story of his damned life.

Especially with the TSP. He was never going to get the head of Major Crimes position. They had brought in outsiders instead of giving it to him. He’d worked his ass off to get Major Crimes since it had been formed a few years ago. It had made sense—patrol officer, detective, homicide, and then Major Crimes, and then chief. He’d had goals for his career, damn it.

Now there was a damned woman who stopped a man’s heart when she looked at him, co-heading Major Crimes: Cold Case Investigations. A brand-new division created just for Coleson and that asshat Foster to co-run. Of course, she would get special treatment, too.

Women had no business in law enforcement. They for damned sure had no business telling men like him what to do. But she was related to the governor. She had a nice cushy spot in Major Crimes forever now. Nepotism at its finest right there.

While Rob, who’d put in for Fields’s position, got nothing. Not even the promotion to chief of homicide he’d been working toward for five years.

No. Rodriguez got it instead. Because Charlie Fields had had to go to bat for the other man. No one went to bat for Rob. They never had.

Everything he had, he’d earned himself.

Hell, Finley Creek only had about ten to fifteen murders a year. Until recent years, anyway. Things had picked up in the last five or six years or so. Gotten busy. Kept Major Crimes on their toes. Wright was just a lowly grunt. Cannon fodder. He was a homicide detective, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

He looked up. Fields walked by, cocky as always. Walking with Rodriguez, Rob’s own supervisor. He hated that monster-sized son-of-a-bitch and always had. Cocky Latino bastard had no business running Homicide. Rob had been with the division for twelve years now. And he’d put in for it. But they’d chosen Rodriguez over him. Said he was more experienced, coming from Houston or someplace like that. Hell, Rob was a decade older than Rodriguez—how much experience could the guy have?

Fields had recommended Rodriguez.

Fields had blocked Rob at every damned turn. He wasn’t much past where he’d been ten years ago, after that case he and Fields had worked together that had gone so sour.

It was Fields’s doing. No denying that.

Well, the guy wasn’t so special now, with his super-hot movie-star daughter who moonlighted in the forensics lab, or Fields’s hot blonde wife, who was a good ten years younger than Fields. The guy was retiring to change shitty diapers now that that wife had popped out those twins of hers. Probably weren’t even Fields’s kids, either.

Fields had even poached another man’s wife—everyone knew that woman’s ex, Keaton Price, had still been hung up on her. A decent guy didn’t do that to a colleague.

Fields needed to pay. In more ways than just one.

For the man’s biggest sin. The one Rob couldn’t get out of his head.

Finding that body dump on Fields’s daddy’s property had given Rob some ideas. Ways to make him pay.

Especially for her. His sister.

Rob had loved his little sister—but he hadn’t realized it until she was gone.

Now she was rotting in the ground. Dead. She’d died in prison in Oklahoma two days ago. He’d gotten the notice that morning, from her seventeen-year-old son.

It was Fields’s fault. All Fields’s fault for what he’d not done all those years ago.

Rob had always known that. He’d always wanted to make that bastard pay for what he had allowed to happen to Candy all those years ago.

Now he thought he’d found a way.

Rob picked up his cell phone—the one he kept in his desk for private texts—and made contact.

He had some things to do. To make things happen the way they should.

He wasn’t Candy’s only brother. They had been half-siblings through Rob’s father. But Candy had had two younger brothers through her mother.

And those two imbeciles would come in handy now.