Page 24 of Ace of Spades
“She could’ve been my number-one bitch, ya know? All she had to do was quit the crack and whatever other shit she was taking. I told her that. Didn’t do any good.”
“That sucks, man.” Nate already knew that Hector’s mother had been an addict who’d overdosed when he was eleven years old. “I take it you don’t indulge?”
“Weed, booze, a little coke now and then, shit yeah. The hard stuff? Nope. I like keeping my teeth in my mouth.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Nate refilled Hector’s mug a third time. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“I dunno. Maybe two months ago? Like I keep a calendar of events.”
“So she leave you for some other dude?”
“How the hell should I know? The woman sold herself to any man with a few bucks in his pocket.” He looked up at Nate, suspicion in his eyes. “Why all the questions? You’re starting to sound like the fucking FBI, asking questions like I did her in. The blonde bitch was hot, though. Wouldn’t mind doing her.”
Since Nate was a lawman, he didn’t kill Hector on the spot for that last bit. The man was a douchebag, but he wasn’t their killer. “Yet you’re hanging over here by yourself, feeling guilty that you didn’t somehow help your ex-girlfriend.” Nate leaned toward Hector. “You got a tender heart, dude, but don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Fuck you, Gentry.”
Nate laughed. “No thanks.” As he walked by Riker, he said, “He pays for his next one.” Alex seemed to have everything in control for the time being, so Nate made a detour to the office. Normally, he would call Taylor, but now that they had an official date—thanks to his butthead brother—he wasn’t sure what to say to her. Instead, he logged on to the computer and typed her an email, recapping his conversation with Hector and writing that he agreed with her assessment that they could eliminate the man as a suspect unless some new information turned up linking him to the murders.
He hovered the cursor over Send, paused, sat back, and stared at the screen. She was his best friend, and he was treating her like she had the plague or something. He deleted the email, then called her.
“Hey, what’s up?” she said on answering.
“Just had a conversation with Hector Ramirez.” He filled her in, thinking as he did so that he was glad he’d called her. The thing he liked about Taylor, one of the many things, she never made it into a big deal whenever he was a jerk. She should, but he was glad she didn’t. Because of that, he tried not to be an ass too often.
“I got the profile back from Pauline,” she said. “I’ll shoot it over to you when we hang up.”
“You going into the office tomorrow?” She usually went in for a few hours on Saturday.
“Yeah.”
“Then hold on to it. I’ll stop by and read it there.”
“Great. I’ll see you in the morning, then. Oh, and Nate?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad we’re friends again.”
She hung up before he could answer. “Yeah, me too,” he said to dead air.
Taylor arrived at the bureau after spending the morning having breakfast with Rosie and the girls. She’d promised to be back by three to take them to the library to turn in their books and check out new ones.
Not one of them had liked to read when they’d first come to her and Rosie, but that was one thing Taylor was determined to teach them to enjoy. Reading made them smart and introduced them to worlds they’d never known. Her hope was that they’d want more out of life than working some job for minimum wage or, God forbid, deciding to drop out of school as soon as they legally could.
They could check out whatever they wanted, and right now the older ones had discovered the Harry Potter books and were devouring them. Once they finished a book, Taylor would have discussions with them about what they’d read. Annie loved any book with pictures of animals in it, frogs being her most favorite thing. For some reason, frogs made her giggle.
When Taylor had first started taking them to the library, they’d dragged their feet and fussed about having to go. Now, it was the highlight of their week. Each of their grades had remarkably improved in the past year, and she couldn’t be prouder of them.
“What’re you daydreaming about?”
Taylor tore her gaze from the window, her girls forgotten because of the man standing in front of her desk. He wore what she thought of as his Aces & Eights uniform, a black T-shirt with the bar’s logo on it, topped by an ace of spades card. Each of the brothers had their own card above the Aces & Eights logo on their work T-shirts. Nate was the ace, Court the king of clubs, and Alex the jack of hearts.
“You need a queen of diamonds,” she blurted.
“You asking for the role?”
That had sounded almost flirty, something new from her moody man. He never flirted. “And if I were?” One side of his mouth twitched, and she knew she shouldn’t feel so smug in being able to make him almost smile.
