Page 52 of Outlaws' Single Mom
“Bullshit. This whole thing is fucked. I’m out, and you should be, too.” The guy shakes his head and starts to walk away.
“You're not gonna do that. Come on, Ross, how long have you known me?” Jay. The guy with his back to us is definitely Jay.
“Sorry, man. It’s for the best. They’ll put you on a year of desk work to give your trail time to cool and then you’ll be right back out there.” Ross pats him on the shoulder and moves to leave again. “Don't make this harder than it has to be.”
When Ross has his back turned, Jay pulls the gun. “Stop.”
Maybe Ross was a good cop, but he must've been a real shitty judge of character, because when he looks behind him, he seems completely shocked that Jay would pull a gun. “What the hell are you doing? Stop fooling around, man.”
“I'm not gonna ask you again.” Jay's voice quavers. Not a hardened killer, for sure, but Poe pretty much spoiled the end for us. “I need this. I’m so close to breaking into the next level.”
“This is what I’m talking about, you’re?—”
The gun goes off twice, throwing Ross backwards in a spray of blood. The shots echo off the alley walls and the video spins and goes dark, like she shoved the phone in her pocket or something. Georgia's gasp is just audible under the shuffling, in time with Dakota's right next to me. “Gi-gi, it’s not what it looks like,” Jay shouts. “What the fuck are you—” The video cuts out.
Dakota's hand is clapped over her mouth, stunned.
“Now I'm regretting letting that asshole live instead of putting his ass down when we had the chance,” I growl.
“You tracked him down?” Dakota asks. “When?”
Stiff nods. “At the apartment, remember? When we got the key?”
“Key? That's Jay?” Dakota's voice is a whisper.
“Yeah, who did you think it was?” Jackal asks.
“That's Officer Dillard. The policeman who showed up at my apartment to ask about Georgia and then when I had the break-in.”
The fuck? Playing pieces shift around in my head, settling into new spots. Not two people workingtogether. One person with two identities. “You're sure?”
“Definitely him.” Her voice quavers and her hand grips the edge of the desk, knuckles white. “He was in my home. He talked to Logan!”
Poe looks at her, skeptical. “You really never saw your sister’s boyfriend? The guy she was with foryears?”
“No! I think early on I saw him go into the building once when I was dropping off Georgia, but she said he knew I hated him, and he didn’t want anything to do with me. Considering I did hate him, and pretty soon had Logan to worry about, no, I made no attempt to try to get closer to her shitty boyfriend.” She stalks away, leans against the wall and slides down until her butt is on the floor. “What do we do now? Call the police? When did Georgia take that video?”
Poe checks the file. “Friday morning.”
“Not long before she picked Logan up from pre-school,” Dakota whispers. “She was running scared. And that asshole tried to cover his tracks by making sure nobody would look into someone like her when she died. The gun.” She looks up at us. “The gunfrom Georgia’s apartment. If that’s the same gun, he probably knows we have it. This is so messed up.”
Poe closes the video window on his laptop. “I’ll go through everything just to be sure, but there might not be much else related to this. I just thought you guys needed to see that ASAP. Let me know if there's anything I can do to grease the fucker. He sounds like a grade A piece of shit.” He catches Dakota's attention. “I'll give you all the files once I'm done. I'm sure there's a bunch of personal stuff you'll want just because it was your sister. “
“Thanks.” Her smile is tired, but the gratitude is real, and I think Poe understands that. He's a smart dude.
On the way back to her apartment, Dakota stops and looks up at the sky. She closes her eyes and soaks in the sun after a day of rain and hard truths. “At some point, I’m going to have to explain to Logan that his father killed his mother. Maybe not directly, but I don’t know if that matters.”
Me, Lash and Jackal share a look.
Jackal is the first to speak. “I wanted to wait until there was a good time for you to talk to him personally, but we had a talk with Priest, one of Ice’sbuddies from back when he and Georgia were a thing. He’s pretty sure Logan is Ice’s kid, not Jay’s.”
She blinks at me. “How sure is he?”
“Very,” Stiff. “He’s pretty sure she got pregnant when things started going bad in the club, and Ice wanted to keep her clear of the trouble.”
“So why didn’t she say anything? Why didn’t she go back?”
“Because by the time things were safe, he was dead.” Jackal’s voice is soft, but the message isn’t.
