The Once and Future Father

“Did he say what?” Dylan asked.

She shook her head. “You know Ritchie, he gets—got—excited over things.” It was so hard to think of him in the past tense. She wasn’t sure just how she could bear it. “But he always played them close to his chest if they weren’t completely aboveboard. He said there was no reason for me to know, too. That’s what made me think it was dangerous.” She bit her lip, taking a deep breath. It didn’t ease the ache in her chest, or the one in her throat. “I told him that I didn’t want him doing anything illegal and he said he wasn’t the one standing on the wrong side of the law.” Despite her best efforts, a tear spilled out, followed by another. She brushed them away with the back of her hand. “That’s what got him killed, wasn’t it?”

He curbed the desire to wipe away her tears. The word no hovered on his lips, but he tried to avoid lies whenever possible. The only lie he’d ever told Lucy was that he didn’t love her.

“Possibly.”

He was going to have to get back to Alexander and Hathaway on this. As well as Watley. Den of Thieves was suddenly one man short. The task force could use this information to their advantage. Could plant one of their own men inside.

The fact that he was using this tragedy as a tool to further the investigation disgusted him, but he knew that ignoring it couldn’t help Ritchie now. And there was far more at stake here than just a dead man’s sister’s feelings and his own personal code of ethics. Other people’s lives were involved. Innocent people.

“What exactly did Ritchie say to you?” He saw that she didn’t understand where he was going with this. “Did he physically have something, some kind of evidence that he was going to blackmail someone with?”

Things began to crystallize in Dylan’s mind. A few weeks ago, the accountant for Den of Thieves, Michelson, had approached the local D.A., saying that the restaurant was a front for money laundering. But the man had vanished without a trace before any sort of case could be made. If for some reason the person Ritchie was looking to blackmail was Alfred Palmero, the owner of the restaurant, it would go a long way toward explaining things.

Lucy shook her head, frustrated. “I don’t know. He wasn’t specific.”

Dylan wondered how much he could tell Lucy about this, then decided that for her own protection, and that of the child she’d just given birth to, she needed to know at least some of it.

Because he knew he had a tendency to be far too blunt, Dylan tried to pick his words more carefully this time. “If he was looking to blackmail his boss, Alfred Palmero, your brother made the mistake of getting in over his head.”

“Your brother,” she echoed, looking at Dylan with disbelief. Could he really be that cold? Of course he could. Why did the fact keep surprising her? “You make it sound as if you didn’t know him.”

Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. “Lucy, I was just—”

But she was tired and angry and more than a little fed up. With him, with everything. All the hurt she felt finally made her temper snap.

“Keeping your distance, yes, I know. The way you do with everything. With me, with him, with life. You’re very good at that. Keeping your distance. Protecting yourself at all costs.” She was through crying over him. “Look, I don’t need you coming into my life right now, disrupting everything. Thank you very much for coming by, for helping me, but I’d really just rather not see you again, all right?”

Dylan felt his own temper fraying. But he knew she had a right to what she was saying. “Sure, fine. I understand.”

The thing of it was, he thought as he walked out, that he did understand. He would have probably played it the same way she had and for the same reason. For self-preservation.

But he still couldn’t shake the image of Lucy’s expression from his mind.

He supposed that it was exactly that image, playing itself over and over again in his mind’s eye, that made him drive past his own apartment complex and keep right on going until he found himself turning down her street.

Though he tried to shake himself free of it, he felt as if he needed to make some sort of atonement. The least he could do was bring Lucy her suitcase. A woman needed things at a time like this. Things to make her feel less depersonalized, more human. Like her own nightgown and her own slippers.

Dylan couldn’t give her anything else she needed, but at least he could give her a little of her outer dignity back. The hospital gowns certainly did little to preserve it.

Admittedly flimsy, it was the excuse he fed himself. It was the best he could do on short notice.

Holding on to it, Dylan parked his car in her driveway. The automatic sensors he’d insisted on putting up for her when they were still together turned on, illuminating his path. Feeling in his pocket for what he thought of as his skeleton keys, he noted a fresh oil slick on the asphalt beside his vehicle. He’d parked in the street earlier. The slick hadn’t been there then. Dylan wondered if the ambulance had an oil leak and if someone had alerted the paramedics to it.

The front door wasn’t locked.

The door gave the moment he inserted the thin metal wand into the keyhole and gave it the slightest bit of pressure.

He distinctly remembered shutting the door behind him this morning and hearing the tumbler click into place. As a cop, he’d been careful not to leave the house susceptible to invasion.

Something wasn’t right.

Very slowly, Dylan turned the knob and then released it, clearing the doorsill. He moved the door away by inches, simultaneously feeling for his service revolver. Drawing it out, he took off the safety as quietly as possible and entered the house.

The living room looked as if a tornado had been through it.

Moving from room to room at an even pace, his gun poised, ready, Dylan took it all in. If at first glance he’d entertained the thought that this had been a run-of-the-mill break-in, the fact that the television set and audio equipment had been left behind quickly squelched the supposition. Lucy’s house had been systematically tossed.

From all appearances, someone had wanted something very much. Since every room had been ransacked, Dylan’s guess was that they hadn’t found what they were looking for.

Satisfied that whoever had done this was long gone by now, he holstered his gun. All he could think of was that he was grateful Lucy and her baby hadn’t been here at the time.

“What the hell were they looking for, Lucy?” he murmured to himself. “And what was it that Ritchie had on them?”

He realized that he’d made a leap in judgment, but his gut told him that there was a connection here between where Ritchie worked and what had happened to the house. His gut instincts were rarely wrong.

The question still remained. What?

Lucy was going to have a fit when she saw this, he thought, pressing the numbers on his cell phone that would connect him to the precinct. Maybe forensics would come up with a few answers for them.

Hanging up a few minutes later, he looked around for the suitcase he’d come for originally. He found it in Lucy’s bedroom, its jaws yawning wide open, its contents scattered in a rude semicircle around it. He’d have to wait for forensics to go over the crime scene before he could remove the suitcase and the few things he judged had been in it. With a sigh, he made himself as comfortable as possible.

“Your timing is perfect, she just finished her dinner,” Lucy said, looking up from the sleeping infant at her breast. Expecting to see the nurse, her smile faded when she saw Dylan entering her room. Primly, she covered herself, her mouth hardening. Why couldn’t he leave her alone and let her heal?

“I didn’t expect to see you again.”

Her voice was cool, distant. He couldn’t blame her. Dylan nodded at the suitcase he was holding, telling himself that the sight of Lucy nursing her baby didn’t effect him one way or another.

“I thought you might need some things.” He placed it at the end of her bed.

“What are you trying to do to me, Dylan? Why are you being nice to me one minute, then the next…?”

Abruptly, Lucy caught hold of herself, breaking off her words midsentence. There was no point in upbraiding him, and she refused to lose her composure in front of her daughter, no matter how young the girl was. She had to be strong and this wasn’t the way.

With effort, Lucy regrouped, then looked at the suitcase as he flipped open the locks. Maybe, in his own way, he was trying. At least she could be civil toward him. “Thank you.”

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