Calm. Collected. I breathed once, slow and deep.See what he wants first. Taking down one man left us with nothing. We needed to know how far the rot had spread.
“I’m in need of your brand of investigation,” he began.
“Go on.”
“I recall the work you did on the Hillway-Spencer case.”
The Hillway-Spencer case? That was why he was talking to me now? The team had provided evidence to exonerate Zachary Hillway-Spencer, which was acase that Lassiter had been prosecuting. Of course, we’d sent the deep dive stuff to the defense anonymously, but we’d also had to work damn hard to let Lassiter come out of the mess smelling of roses, because if he’d found out about my extracurricular work, we were finished.
“That was a long time ago,” I said conversationally. “What about the case?”
“I know it was you.”
“Me?” I tried for innocent, but he rolled his eyes.
“One of the defense team suggested that the information to clear Hillway-Spencer had come from my side of the bench. With your constant doubt over the client’s guilt, I assume it was you, or at least someone you knew, who’d pulled out the information that not even my best investigators could find.”
“Not me,” I lied. He pretended to believe me, knowing I’d never admit to such a thing. I made a mental note to get Caleb to close that down—opposition thinking it was me that passed them information was a step in the wrong direction.
“Whatever,” Lassiter said. “There was a fire at some downtown club a few nights ago. The Bonehook,” he said, voice gravel-thick but casual, as if he was discussing the weather. “Do you know it?”
I kept my expression neutral. My training kickedin—relax the jaw, don’t blink too long, breathe evenly, don’t act too surprised.
“It’s near the bail bond office in El Sereno,” I said smoothly, and there were no lies there.
He made a slight, disdainful sound in the back of his throat. “Low-class. Low-rent. But… a friend of a friend had some money in it. Investment, I imagine. Cash flow. That sort of thing.”
I nodded, slowly. “Okay?”
“Your office,” he began, and I tensed, although I kept my expression even. “Quite aside from what you may or may not have shared on the Hillway-Spencer case, youfixedthings for me.”
Fuck, did I regret that now.
“My legal team supported you with the information we’d found in discovery,” I said. It was all lies. We’d dug so deep we’d discovered way more than would ever be seen in a typical search. Not that Lassiter would have known that. We hadn’t worked forhimas the lead prosecutor on the case, but I’d thought Hillway-Spencer was innocent, and we were more than happy to pass over what we knew in our most subtle of ways. My worlds colliding was just fortunate. “I didn’tfixthings for you. I’m not some fixer.”
Lassiter’s expression narrowed and cleared—tooquick for me to even think about it usually, but now that I knew things about him, or at least suspected him, that expression was telling. “Of course not,” he said, flashing a smile that never reached his eyes. “I didn’t mean fix in a bad way, but my friend’s friend has certain charitable endeavors that would be severely impacted if this Bonehook loss isn’t accounted for.”
There it was again—friend’s friend.Twice now. It was too specific to be casual and too vague to be honest.
“What specifically doyouwant from me?” I asked.
“Not me, I don’t want anything,” he said hurriedly. “But I want to help ensure any ties between my friend’s connections and the club are… removed,” he paused, smoothing his expression. “Legally, of course. It’s a messy business, and I’m sure it’s far beneath what you usually deal with now that you’ve established yourself after working that case with me.”
I didn’t blink—I was where I was now by being me, I didn’t owe Lassiter anything.
He cleared his throat and continued. “Anyway, the charities affected…” Any minute now, he was going to addthink of the children, and yep, I was going to beat him if he went there. “Yes, the charities—” Helifted a hand, vaguely, as if he might swat the detail away, “—whoever started the fire might be connected to another man who recently died. An unfortunate house fire. And at the club, they took a laptop.”
My gaze didn’t flicker. “A laptop.”
The laptop. It had been relatively clean at first glance—aside from the typical drug deals and human trafficking activities—but there’d been nothing on it linking to Lassiter, and the memory sticks had been corrupted. Given our new interest in the man, I made a note to have Caleb dig deeper and pull out more than just the surface level. Had he missed something on the laptop, and was it possible to examine the memory sticks more closely? He was listening to this, and knowing him, he was probably already on it.
He waved his hand again, casual as anything. “Or something. Doesn’t matter, I’m sure. But it’s odd that low-rent rival gangs, or whatever, would steal a laptop, isn’t it?”
“Anything they can sell…” I let the words lie.
“True. But then, there’s this man I mentioned that may or may not be connected, a certain John Mitchell.” Fuck. He went there. And it was a move in the right direction.Or the wrong one.This was why he wanted to see me. He watched me over the rim ofhis glass. “Tortured and burned alive in his home. Ghastly, really. The media was all over it.”
“I don’t think I saw anything,” I lied and sipped my water. “Is he, sorry,was heconnected to the club you’re worried about?”
