Chapter 41

41

A knock jerked Daniel out of what he was working on. He looked up. He'd lost track of time. He had everything they knew about the OPJ case and Sol Kimball and Steve Wilson spread out over his desk. They were connected. That wasn't in dispute now.

The TSP were just foot soldiers, used by someone—or multiple someones—to do their dirty work. For cold, hard cash that just "magically" appeared in bank accounts. Sol Kimball had insisted on that. So who would have the power and the funds to utilize a damned police force as a private army? The connections? The know-how to get it all started in the first place?

Those were questions he'd been trying to answer for too damned long. Now, he had bank account records in front of him. From Sol Kimball and Steve Wilson, looking for the common threads.

"Well, here I am, boss. Coming in on my vacation. I am so dedicated," she said. In the sweetest voice he had ever heard. He had to wonder how long it had taken the beautiful beast to perfect that tone. She had to know it would get beneath a man's skin and drive him crazy. She just had to.

Daniel studied Lieutenant Heather Coleson again. She wore faded jeans that clung, a thin red T-shirt—ironically, it promoted the diner in Masterson—and a black-zippered hoodie. Her brown hair was pulled back from her face in a long ponytail. No makeup. No jewelry.

She had the most beautiful face he had ever seen, this woman. But she looked exhausted. And her eyes showed a million secrets.

She was thinner than she had been a few weeks ago. He was almost certain of it. Concern hit him. He was starting to see through her. To see the fear and anxiety. The pain.

Damn it. He wanted to fix everything for her. "Come in. This won't take long."

"Gotcha, boss."

He hated the way she called him that. The way she just seemed to pull away from him—even sitting across the desk.

She looked at the reports on his desk. They were her reports. He saw her pale. Saw one hand cover her stomach. She felt sick seeing them, didn't she? So had he. She had deserved better than this.

"What do you want to know?"

"Details." He was the damned commander of the Major Crimes unit. He was used to asking the darkest questions. To dealing with people's pain. But it still left a bad taste in his mouth. "I need to know what Steve Wilson ever told you about people he knew."

"Hell, McKellen, ask much? Everyone assumes we had a thing, but we really didn't. I met him when he transferred into Wichita Falls four years ago during a really nasty drug trafficking case. He asked me out a few times, I was resistant. Career-focused. Wanted to move up in this lovely establishment and was focused on my family. Boy, was I a naive idiot." She paused for a moment. Checked something on her phone. He looked. It was a photo. Of her little girls. When she next looked at him, there was determination in those devil-dark eyes of hers.

"Go on."

"A case went bad. Fast. Dead teenagers. Still open. Never did figure out why those kids died. We were all pretty shaken—at least I was. And I said, ‘Sure,' and we went out for a drink. I normally don't drink. We had a few more dates. Things turned intimate. Twice, and to be honest, looking back, I'm not so sure I was fully aware of how that happened either. Get my meaning? Some of the details are damned fuzzy when I think about them now when they shouldn't be."

Daniel understood. But there would never be a way to know. That bastard Wilson would never fully pay for what he had done to this woman. He just wouldn't.

"I'll never know, and at this point, I don't care. Frankie was the result. I felt obligated to tell him, even though I'd told him no more, that I wasn't interested in anything with him long term. He'd had a few blow-ups on the job that concerned me, and I told him to hit the road long before there was ever a third time between us. He wasn't happy with impending fatherhood and beat me almost unconscious right then and there. I reported him to Stillman and Winkler the instant I could. Men I had an established working relationship with, even trusted. Men I considered friendly colleagues. They made it clear I wasn't to say a damned thing about what he did. They supposedly ‘ordered' him off. That didn't work. The next time he attacked me about six months after Frankie was born, I reported him—again. Learned my lesson with that one. I was to just keep my mouth shut, no matter what. And they made it clear I had a baby sister out there just starting in forensics. In the field. On scenes. Third shift. And all alone. I got the message. You do the math."

"I'm sorry."

"Reporting to the TSP hasn't exactly brought me a lot of good luck." She pulled out her phone. "But…what can it hurt this time?"

She flipped her screen around. Daniel read quickly.

Your time is coming, bitch. You are going to get what you deserve. Keep your service weapon handy. You are going to need it.

"This was this morning."

"You are still getting threats and harassment. Even with him in a coma." Daniel's blood chilled. He hadn't realized. He should have. He should have known. Of course. Wilson had friends in the TSP. Kimball had made that clear.

And they would blame her. Shit.

"Every day. No surprise. Been getting them every day since Eastman too. Well, I've been getting them for a lot longer than that. Almost four years, actually. Since the moment Stevie learned he was going to be a daddy, actually. But the rest of the family gets threats now too."

"Send me everything."

"Sure. Great bedtime reading material."

"I'll do what I can." He wanted to erase that look from her eyes forever. No denying that, at least to himself. She had lived in fear for years. And men like Stillman and Winkler, both cronies of his own father, had done nothing to protect her. Because she wasn't as well-connected back then? Because she was an incredibly attractive woman? Something else? "Did something else happen between you and Stillman to turn him against you?"

"Not that I can recall. Not before that first time Steve hurt me. We had a decent working relationship. I'd told him he was an asshole a few times, but, well, I was raised not to lie."

"He is an asshole. I have known him my entire life. He's disgusting."

"No kidding." She hesitated a moment. "Until…you know…never mind."

"I can help, Heather. I promise. And I want to. I'm not like them."

"I have heard that before." She just looked at him. And looked. Her mouth firmed. And she didn't believe him. It was in her eyes. "Men like Stillman, Newcomb, Winkler—they have power not on their own. At least, they don't get it on their own at first. But because of their friends. The people who cover what they do. Men with that kind of power are dangerous. The rest of us don't really have a chance."

"You think I am like them, don't you?"

The look in her eyes was all the answer he needed.

"What happened between you and my father?" The words just came out. But he knew he'd struck a nerve when her face tightened.

When she flinched. But she answered him. Eventually.

"Nothing much. At least not as much as he wanted. I'm not going to lie about it to spare your little feelers. I was assigned to the same unit when I first hired in. He liked what he saw. Offered to ease my way up the ladder if I gave him a few…favors…in return. On my back. He wasn't the first to offer. I didn't play by those games back then, McKellen, and I don't now. I told him that too. Pissed him off real good. Got myself transferred to a really rough part of Houston after that. I suspect your dear old daddy was the one filling in the blue ink on the transfer ‘request.' Your daddy, Commander McKellen, is no better than Melvin Stillman or Joseph Winkler. Only he likes to play with the girlie rank and file while he's at it. The younger that girl is, the better your daddy likes it. I was twenty-two."

"I know. He's even more disgusting than Stillman. I can't stand him and never could. He's the exact opposite kind of man I have always tried to be. I'm sorry for him. More than words can say. I hate that I even share a name with that man."

"Sure. Change your name then. I need to go, boss. I need to have Frankie at the new speech therapist by three. You have any more questions, send it by carrier pigeon. Or go through Mig. I am not exactly checking my phone constantly right now. Considering."

"I'm going to look into who is harassing you. As soon as I can." He knew how it worked. She'd been in the news. She was a gorgeous woman. Some crazies—that was all it would take. But on the chance that it meant something else, had ties to something with Major Crimes, he wasn't going to just forget. But he had to prioritize.

He didn't have enough manpower for this, damn it. He just didn't. Kimball, Bell, and Costovia had been out of Major Crimes. With them gone, with Heather out—there just wasn't enough bodies to go around. Not yet. Not until the chief could move people in to fill the holes. Even then, Daniel didn't know that he'd trust them.

"Good luck with that, McKellen. Good luck with that. I've been trying to track them down for four years. And I've found nothing. I'm almost ready to stop trying. Except, well, a Coleson wasn't raised to quit. "

Daniel hadn't been either. He watched her stroll out of his office, walking like she owned the damned place. That woman—a man had to stop and watch her. He just did. There was just something about Heather Coleson that drew a man.

And apparently, drew the wrong kind of man too.

For a moment, he considered adding a guard to watch over her. To report back to him anything that was said. Anything that happened.

But he just didn't have the manpower in the unit. He couldn't make it happen.

He'd get ahold of Elliot. See if the chief had anyone to spare. But with Jarrod out with Haldyn right now and everything else that was going on, he just didn't know if he could make it work.

There just weren't enough good guys to go around.