Page 47 of The Wrong Side of the Law

Chapter Fourteen

Emily

“So, what are you feeling like for dinner tonight?” Gabriel asks me.

“Oh, I’m not too picky,” I say. “Basically, I’m okay with anything that keeps me out of the house for a few more hours.” Please don’t pick something expensive, I don’t add. As much as I’d love a fancy night out, I just can’t afford that right now on top of everything else.

Gabriel glances outside, looking up at the late afternoon overcast through the window.

“More rain, it looks like.” He grimaces, shaking his head. “Yay. So there goes my first idea. Okay, how about… ah, what the hell. How about the Shamrock?”

“That’s…” It takes a moment of scrounging around in my head to place it. “That’s a cop bar, isn’t it? Down the street?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel says. “It’s a little hole in the wall sort of place, and yeah, it’s where a lot of the cops go. But it’s usually nice and quiet, and they have booths in the back where nobody will eavesdrop.” His face goes grim on those last few words.

“Oh. You’re-” I stop, lowering my voice. “Do you really think that’s a concern? I mean, you’re truly worried about it?”

He doesn’t speak, but slowly and deliberately nods his head twice.

“The Shamrock it is, then,” I say. “Um. What time?”

“Call it six-ish?” Gabriel says as he stands up and grabs his jacket from the back of his chair. “I’ve got to run out for a bit, now. Don’t forget to lock up when you leave,” he finishes, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of Karin’s desk, on the other side of the wall.

“As if!” I snort. Nobody understands better than me the importance of keeping the secret of what I’m doing here.

Something happened after I left this office. Obviously, something related to his phone conversation with Diego Lopez, and—equally obviously—something related to what I’m doing with these files. So, what the hell is it?

I’d walked away from an irritable guy, frustrated that he couldn’t find the key piece of information that would solve a problem. But when he practically dragged me back here with him, Gabriel Cooper was an almost completely different man, almost unrecognizable as either the Jekyll or Hyde versions to which I’d grown accustomed. He was concerned about some things—whatever he’d learned seemed to have shaken him up—but the Gabriel Cooper who’d just walked out of this office had been excited, enthusiastic. Intense.

I open up the case file again, the one that Lopez had prosecuted. Drum technician. Cocaine. I’ve already looked at everything in here, and another quick skim through the case doesn’t find anything that sticks out as odd, other than the fact that Lopez wasn’t the guy that signed off on the roadie’s plea agreement.

A second read, though, and I start to wonder. It’s not too unreasonable for a suspect to plead innocent, then take a deal later and change his plea to guilty. But I’m starting to wonder if that’s what had happened here. If I read between the lines, I can sorta-kinda make out the outlines of where something’s missing. Lopez was prosecuting the case… then he wasn’t, anymore. The roadie was fighting the charges… right up until he took what looks like a pretty lousy plea deal. He was talking a lot about something, screaming his innocence to the heavens… but then he just shut up and did his time.

I chew on the end of my pen while I mull it over, but I simply don’t have enough information to even guess what I’m looking for. I can smell it, though: something about this is fishier than a two-day old can of tuna laying on the sidewalk.

And whatever it is, Gabriel Cooper thinks it could either make us famous—me and him and Frank—or it could… what? Make usinfamous? Is he exaggerating? Or being paranoid?

I guess I’ll find out what it is in a couple hours.

I’d gone back to my cubicle at lunchtime, frustrated and pissed off and excited that I wouldn’t have to see Gabriel Cooper again until tomorrow, yet here I am, actually looking forward to going out to dinner with the guy.

What a weird day.

I spend the next couple hours trying to do some sort of productive work, but I just can’t get my mind off Robert Ferry and Diego Lopez, and it slows down everything I do.

Five-thirty takes so long to get here that it feels like entire civilizations could have risen and fallen while I waited. No, forget civilizations: entirespeciescould have evolved from the algae, developed faster-than-light space travel, and flipped humanity the bird when they vanished into the distance in the billions of years that passed in those couple of hours.

Gabriel was right about the rain, though. It hasn’t started to fall yet, and there’s only a little more than a block to the bar where he wants to meet, but it already feels darker than the inside of my purse, and it’s not going to hold off forever. Do I fight for a parking space in downtown, or do I leave my car here where it’s safe and free, and risk getting soaked on the way back?

No heels today, and I’ve got both an umbrella and the intrepid soul of a girl who’d rather feed herself than a parking meter. That makes the choice easy: walk.

It’s getting close to dusk outside, and darker than normal with the clouds, but it still takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light inside the Shamrock and see the hand waving at me from one booth way in the back.

There he is: Gabriel Cooper, in the flesh. And in street clothes. That son of a bitch went and changed while I was still working. He’s abandoned his usual charcoal-gray suit and power tie in favor of a golf shirt and jeans, which stretch and mold against his form in all sorts of interesting ways. I knew he looked good in a tailored suit, but this wardrobe emphasizes the Y-shape of his body in a very different fashion, and I have a momentary urge—quickly suppressed—to pull up his shirt and see if he has a six-pack hiding under the thin, stretchy golf shirt.

Oh, God. Seriously? Down girl!

“What will you have?” Gabriel asks, once we’re both seated.

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