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Sunrise stains the sky blood orange as I swing out of bed, careful not to wake her. For Junie, sleep is a treasured scarcity.
Catness looks up from his bed in the corner and yawns.
“Good morning, furball. Hang tight until breakfast,” I whisper.
She deserves a few more hours of shut-eye, and even if she wakes up before I’m back, she won’t be surprised I’ve slipped out early for work.
Not that this iswork,necessarily.
Archer couldn’t find a single damning flaw in Haute’s business model or any skeletons in his finances, but my older brother works like a forensics geek, pouring over reports and financials.
He believes in the proper way of doing things, all aboveboard and by the rules. He wouldn’t know what to look for if the person he’s looking at is sneaky enough.
And if there’s any truth to Haute’s dark side, that goes double.
Fortunately for Higher Ends, I have better ways to get answers when the stakes are this high.
The city’s groaning to life with snorting traffic and lumbering trucks making deliveries as I drive through my neighborhood.
The summer air is so thick it’s already unpleasant to breathe, promising another scorcher today.
The local police station is barely up and running with its normal crew by the time I arrive. When you live in an affluent sector of the city, the cops move slower.
The flustered officer behind the desk looks at me like I should be arrested for strolling in before he’s settled in with his morning coffee.
“I’m here to speak with Detective Batista,” I say. “Is she in yet?”
The young man looks at me with new respect, and is that a flicker of fear?
Fair enough. It’s nice to see some things never change, and Gillian still provokes that sort of response.
“Sure, I can see if she’s in. What do you want to speak with her about?”
“That’s private, I’m afraid,” I tell him.
“O-kay. Who should I tell her is asking?”
“Dexter Rory. Trust me, she’ll know the name.” I rest my elbows on the table and wait.
He mumbles an excuse and leaves me to wait alone, but it doesn’t take long.
Detective Inspector Gillian Batista strides in with a uniform cinched tight at the waist and looking almost starched, her black hair tied back and brown skin glowing in the light. This is a woman who knows that half the battle is looking the part and letting the world know you’re not interested in taking any shit.
The other half is being as tough as an old boot.
“Captain Rory,” she says, hands on her hips. Nothing in her expression gives away our history. “You’re the last person I was expecting to see this early on a Friday morning.”
“It’s been too long to pull rank, Batista. But you can already guess why I’m here.”
“Follow me.” Her dark eyes narrow at me and she nods again, more curtly this time, before leading me through the station to an interview room.
I take a seat in one of those hard police chairs that seem designed to dislocate a man’s spine, looking up at her. I smile because it tells me she’s still as hard as nails.
The hellish months we shared in Syria almost a decade ago will always be there in our memories. So will the night an ambush by an Islamic State group and bad intel had me struggling to keep Batista’s guts from hanging out of her body until medevac showed up.
She won a hard-earned Purple Heart and a hero’s welcome home for that.
When I found out she was coming back to Kansas City and enrolling in the police program, I sent my personal endorsement to the police chief and the mayor.
