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“Yeah, I know, the drugs,” Garrett said, a haunted look in his eyes. “You know she’s afraid to be in their house alone at night when Luke has to work the graveyard shift?”
Blake swallowed hard. He had no idea. Every time he saw Orly, she was always so happy and put together. “I didn’t know that. Luke never said anything to me.”
Garrett sighed. “She’ll come over sometimes and we’ll sit on the dock, wait for a fish to bite, drink a beer, or just watch a game. Other times she’ll hang out with Skyla, or Hallie if Caden is out of town on a case. She tries to play it off like it’s no big deal. Like she’s doing us a favor. But it’s not hard to see right through all that bravado. We need to put Russell Graham away where he’ll never be able to hurt her again.”
Blake nodded, a new resolve building deep in his gut. “We will. Just keep working this Teresa Graham angle, and we’ll keep pushing hard on our end. Something is bound to give.” Blake wasn’t entirely sure what that something would be, but with so many people looking into Russell Graham, it was hard to believe this could go on much longer.
“Thanks for coming,” Garrett said. “I think I needed you more for a sounding board than any actual help.”
“Happy to do both. I wasn’t exactly in a rush to get home tonight. It’s been a weird day.” He couldn’t tell Garrett about Vivian, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to go all high school girlfriends with Garrett and tell him about the kiss he’d shared with Skyla.
Shit, was he still thinking about that? Yeah. Yeah, he was. “You almost done here for the night?” Blake asked, handing him the file.
Garrett tucked it into a drawer along with the many other cases he was working on.“Yeah, I’m out of here. I just wish there were more hours in the day.” The heaviness in his friend’s voice was all too familiar. It was the way every single one of his friends felt whenever they talked about Russell Graham, because of all the cases they’d ever worked, this one was personal to all of them.
Orly held a special place in their hearts. She’d saved Luke’s life, and Caden’s, not to mention all the other lives she saved using her telepathic ability to hear victims’ cries for help and getting them the assistance, they needed. She’d spent most of her life alone, with no one to look out for her, but that all changed when she saved Luke. Unlike all the others who’d moved on and all but forgotten about her, Luke had kept her close, talked to her, fell in love with her, and promised that she would never again be on her own. Blake and his friends were just determined to help him keep his word.
Blake walked out to the parking lot, his thoughts drifting back to Skyla. She might not have an incredible gift like Orly or Hallie, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gone through life feeling alone, especially after losing her mother at such a young age.
His biological father had walked out on them, and James - a man he considered to be his real father - had died when Blake was only fifteen. Blake didn’t doubt that both of those events had fucked him up. But he’d had his mom and sisters, and turned to football, then to his career in the FBI.
Maybe losing her mom and having Royce for a father had driven Skyla to a life of crime, and an alliance with someone like Arlo J. It probably didn’t make her any less guilty, but Blake could understand that deep gnawing to belong. To anything. To anyone.
Was that why she’d kissed him?
***
Skyla was exhausted after being on her feet all day, serving hundreds of drinks, and putting up with half a dozen drunk and rowdy customers who didn’t know what it meant to keep their hands to themselves. To make matters worse, her mind kept playing tricks on her. Every blonde-haired man made her do a double take, like her heart hoped Blake would be too stubborn to listen to her demand, and come back to her. Despite the way she pushed him away. Pushed him out the door. She’d been so sure it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of the handsome, blonde haired, chiseled jawline, agent, with baby blues that made her go weak in the knees. But he’d actually, really, just left. Apparently taking her sanity with him, because her mind had been drowning with thoughts of him, and their kiss, all night. She’d lost track of how many times Nico or one of her other bartenders had been talking to her and she hadn’t heard them. Or the huge mix up she made with a table’s order.
She’d never let anyone get to her. No one came between her and Madigan’s, and with just one kiss, Blake had completely undone her. The man hadn’t just ruined her. He’d consumed her.
Nico was out on the floor, wiping down the tables while the bartender was cleaning up behind the bar. Skyla made her way through the place with a wet mop, using it to both sweep and wash the floors at the same time. As soon as she was done, she retreated to her office where she needed to quickly finish doing payroll and hopefully make it home before her body crashed, and she ended up spending the night on the cot like she had so many nights before.
It was almost two o’clock in the morning, and her eyes were heavy with need for sleep, but she was already a day late and worried her employees would all walk out on her if she didn’t get their paychecks out to them tonight. She spent over twenty minutes, clicking away on her computer, entering all the dollar amounts into the program that subtracted all the taxes and fees from the salaries and gave her the final total she owed them.
As soon as she hit print, her printer made a strange noise and a red light lit up. Great, it was out of ink. Of course, this would happen when she was barely able to keep her eyes open. She yanked open the top drawer of the file cabinet that was acting as one of the legs of the desk, but only found an array of pens, staples, and other random junk. She opened the bottom drawer, and the two drawers of the other filing cabinet that acted as the second leg for her desk.
She either didn’t have any ink, which would suck since Nico, the bartender and all the servers would have to wait until tomorrow to get paid, or there was a spare cartridge on the shelf against the far wall. The shelf was where she stored most of the liquor. She pushed her fingers in between the bottles, hoping to land on a small box that contained a cartridge, but it was to no avail. She checked every shelf, feeling more and more frustrated and hopeless as she went, but found nothing more than dust. She looked up to the ceiling, as if asking for celestial help at that moment, when she spotted what looked like a box on the very top shelf.
She didn’t even remember what she kept up there, probably more random office supplies, but that box looked promising and against all hope, she reached up to it with her fingertips in an effort to pull it down. She caught it just barely by the corner, when a knock on her door startled her, and her arm jerked. A bunch of stuff came flying down around her. She shrieked and covered her head with both hands to keep whatever was falling from hitting her.
“Are you okay?”
When everything seemed to have settled around her in a heap on the floor, leaving a fine layer of dust floating in the air, Skyla coughed and turned to see Nico standing in the doorway. “You scared me half to death,” she accused. “I was looking for printer ink, but I don’t think I have any, and now I have to clean up this mess. I’m sorry, Nico, I can’t pay you until tomorrow. Will you please tell the others?”
Nico gave a curt nod. “I can help you put things away if you want.”
“No,” she said in a semi-defeated tone. “I’ve got it. You did good tonight. Go home and get some rest. We get to do this all over again tomorrow.”
He stood for a moment, seemingly unsure, then turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the middle of a mess she had no intention of cleaning tonight. Whatever was on the floor now, would still be there tomorrow. The only thing she wanted to do was -
Something caught her eye on the top shelf that was now fully exposed after all the stuff had fallen. She didn’t recognize whatever it was, but it didn’t look like it was hers, which was strange seeing as how no one else ever came into her office.
Skyla pushed her chair up to the shelf and stood on it to get a better look at whatever was up there. It looked like a package that was wrapped in clear plastic, only nothing she ordered ever came in that kind of box, and it was never sealed in any kind of plastic. Standing on her tiptoes on the chair, she reached for the package just as she heard muffled voices drawing near. The employees were likely on their way out.
She stepped off the chair and closed her office door, not wanting any of them to see the mess inside as they walked by her office to the back exit. Then she returned to her perch on the chair and pulled down the strange package. She placed it on her cot and unwrapped the plastic. As soon as it was off, she slipped her fingers under the lid and popped it open, gasping at what she saw. There must’ve been at least a hundred small baggies of white powder, all neatly stacked inside. She covered her mouth with her hands, stifling a panicked scream.
Drugs.
