“I was talking to my buddy Mack, who worked the scene, but he doesn’t buy it. He thinks it was just a hit. But this guy’s death was a message. Personal.”
“Bit of a stretch?” In her mind, she thought, Spot on.
Her practiced confused face prompted him to explain. “Because it was up close. Not a shot like all the others. The killer cut his neck. Takes a lot of balls to cut a man’s neck.”
If she didn’t know any better, Nena would think Cort was impressed. And that pleased her entirely.
Took a lot of something to rape and sell young girls too. But Nena didn’t share that part.
“Not to mention the guy who was killed in front of me.” Cort grimaced, his conviction slipping as the memory hit him. He blew out a breath. “It’s still hard to think how close I came to death. Like, what if it was me in the crosshairs, not the other guy?”
Nena frowned sympathetically.
“Georgia would have been an orphan.”
Cort’s words plucked at the chord of guilt thrumming in her chest. She didn’t need reminding of what could have been.
“But the guy I was going to prosecute and the cartel guy, they were linked.”
“How?” This question was real because she herself wasn’t entirely sure. Would Cort realize both Smith and Juarez had an affinity for human trafficking?
“Money. There’s a money trail that links one of Smith’s schemes to some of Juarez’s investments.”
Her thoughts went to N’nkakuwe and the Compound. The way the Walrus had laughed when her father’s head had rolled. Money schemes and investments. Cort had no idea what Smith had really been into.
“Is it a stretch then to say justice was served?” she asked. “You say both men were bad men. If what you’re saying is true—”
It was.
“—and their deaths are connected, or personal, or whichever . . .” She frowned. “Is it wrong that they’re gone? Justice served?”
He looked at her, resolute. “No.”
“Which is it?”
“Justice wasn’t served.”
“Even though they were bad men?”
He shook his head.
“Why?”
“Because we have a system for this. A legal way to exact justice.”
“Would the man you were going to prosecute have been sent to prison?”
“I would have tried my damnedest.”
“But what if he got off? What if he was exonerated? Where is the justice then?”
She could see Cort’s torrent of emotion as if his face were a movie screen, the war raging between systematic justice and moral justice. She quelled the urge to reach out and touch him. The intensity of the feeling both terrified and thrilled her. Nena wanted him to see that justice was more than a system of unbendable laws. She wanted to tell him all systems were fractured, and laws were colored shades of gray. Cort would work himself to death trying to live by rules no one else played by.
“It’s my job, no matter which way it falls.”
There were some jobs not meant to be done. She thought of the bullet marked for Cort that had gone into Attah Walrus instead.
“That’s very commendable.” She pitied the day when his idealism would be crushed.
Cort beamed at Nena before reaching for the TV remote. Nena gladly took it as a signal they’d gone deep enough for one night. He flipped through the apps.
“Have time for one more movie?”
“I do. Yes,” Nena answered without hesitation. She watched as he relaxed into his seat and followed his lead, settling into a more comfortable position on the couch, feeling her guard lower with each passing moment. She asked, “Any new releases?”
“I can help with that!” a singsong voice called from two rooms over.
They looked at each other, at first wide eyed at Georgia’s eavesdropping on their conversation. Then amused when she suddenly materialized in the doorway. Without prompting, she invited herself back in and nestled on the couch between them, sitting closer to Nena than to her dad, as if Nena had always belonged there, with them.
34
BEFORE
“What the hell is this, Robeeee?” the woman drawls, reminding me of John Wayne movies.
An American? Here? And who is Robe-eeeee?
“Who’s the kid? And what the hell is going on here?” She gets her second wind. “I like kinky, but I don’t do kids, okay?”
She is so busy gawking at me she does not notice Monsieur’s slow rise from the bench or the stealthy steps he is taking toward her. He is a predator, she the prey. He closes the gap between them. My anxiety is growing because he will undoubtedly blame me for his forgetting to properly lock the basement door.