Page 90 of Claimed By the Deputies

“Billy Jade. A collaborator of yours. He was working out a deal with the DA,” I calmly reply. “I doubt he would’ve sold anyone out, but the mere rumor that he might flip made someone walk into the sheriff’s station and slit his throat.”

“No need to show me,” he mutters and looks away. “I heard what happened.”

“The same will happen to you, Dante. Mark my words, the Silver Stallions are closing their ranks. Why hasn’t anyone filed a missing person’s report for you? Sherry’s been working, minding her own business, not saying a word.”

“She’s afraid of you. This is police brutality, and when I get out, I’m gonna sue every one of your sorry asses,” Dante insists.

I can’t help but smile. “Sherry knows she’s safer if she stays away from you. She knows what’s coming, and frankly, I’m surprised by how stupid you actively choose to be. The Stallions will dropanybody who could lead the cops back to them. And we have you, dead to rights, in Tim’s house.”

A bit of a white lie, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“What do you mean?” he asks, and I know I’ve piqued his interest.

I put my phone away and open the takeaway bag, the appetizing smell growing stronger. It’s enough to get him into a more submissive mood. I can see the tension leaving his shoulders.

“You underestimate the power of forensics and the lifespan of particulates,” I say. “We were able to definitively connect a boot print and a couple of fingerprint smudges as yours.”

“Nah, that’s crap.”

“The office in Denning has a mass spectrometer. We sent samples over to them from both the crime scene and your boots. They came back to us with a one-hundred-percent match.” I smirk. “We know you were at Tim’s house, and we know it was within the window of his time of death. Forensics doesn’t lie, Dante.” I pause to let that sink in. “So, tell me, do you want to keep rotting here in this burned down cabin, or do you want to give me something useful so the sheriff can negotiate a safer housing option for you?”

“What do you mean by safer?”

There it is. The final flicker of resistance. He’s considering it now.

“You’ll be dead in less than forty-eight hours if we take you to the station. We haven’t found Jade’s killer yet. They could strike again,” I calmly reply. “But the sheriff can work with the U.S. Marshals and have you assigned to a safe house somewhereupstate, at least until it’s time to depose you. It’s the only way you’ll survive this, Dante.”

I pause, giving him a moment to digest all of it.

“Or,” I add, “We go ahead with what we’ve been doing so far. Inevitably, word will get out that we’re negotiating a deal with you?—”

“But we’re not!”

“They don’t know that,” I chuckle dryly. “One rumor is all it takes, and you’ll end up like Billy Jade, or worse.”

I give him another moment, grief filling my heart. He needs time to assess the fact that there’s no way out of this mess. The only way for him to survive is if he betrays the very people he’s protected so far. Kudos for his resilience and loyalty, I’ll give him that. But the Silver Stallions won’t hesitate to end him if he becomes a liability. Dante needs to understand that.

“You killed my friend,” I say with a trembling voice. “The least you could do is help me nail whoever put you up to it.” My blood runs cold as our eyes meet, as he begins to tell his truth.

“There’s a guy,” he finally says. “A fixer of sorts. The mayor uses him, the Stallions use him.”

“What’s so special about him?” I ask.

“He was supposed to do a better job at Tim’s place. You shouldn’t have been able to find anything linking back to me,” he grumbles. “I don’t mind selling his sorry ass out. Maybe he’ll give you what you need.”

“What are you telling me, Dante?”

“I handled Tim, like you said,” he confesses, unable to look at me anymore. “It was an order from high above.”

“Above?”

“I won’t tell you who ordered the hit, but I will tell you who was ordered to clean it up. His name is Fitz. He’s got a laundromat chain all over the Catskills, but it’s more of a front for money laundering, that type of stuff. He’s connected to the mayor, the Stallions. I’m not gonna betray my brothers, but if you can get to Fitz, he might tell you what you wanna know.”

Well, it’s better than nothing, but it’s more than we had yesterday. Unbeknownst to him, I recorded the conversation on my phone, so I have Dante’s confession to Tim’s murder. If his lawyer plays his cards right, it might not even be admissible in court. The legal system is often filled with choppy water to navigate through.

“You said Fitz, right?”

“Yeah. He meets with his clients on a monthly basis at the Blue Salmon,” Dante says. “It’s the restaurant up at the?—”

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