Page 200 of A Matter of Time

I stared at him. “Can you explain?”

Heavy sigh as he stretched out his long body, his fingers laced behind his head, his feet out in front of him. “Well, for starters, this morning I went right in to talk to my captain and ask him for a new partner, but before I could even explain why, before I could even get a word out about you, he makes a call and I have to go meet with IAD.”

“What’s—”

“Internal Affairs Division. They check out cops. That’s their deal.”

“Okay. So what’d they want with you? Surely Dom didn’t tell them about⁠—”

He shook his head. “No, love. They weren’t interested in me. They wanted me to tell them everything I knew about Dom.”

I stared at him.

“And really, I had nothing to say because I had no idea what they were talking about.”

I thought about Dom’s beautiful house then, but remained silent.

“But then they explained,” he said with a sigh. “Turns out, from what they ended up telling me, that Dom’s been on the take since day one. He’s probably the leak in the department, but they don’t know what he’s said or who he’s said it to.”

“Oh shit,” I gasped, moving to the love seat and taking a seat beside him.

“Oh shit is right.” He looked absolutely wrecked. “That little home invasion he had—you remember, you were there.”

“I do remember.” It was the night I lost Sam, how could I forget?

“Well, it turns out that was the work of one of the guys who pays Dom off, wanting to send him a message.”

“By doing what? Killing him?”

“I have no idea. I just know now, from meeting with IAD, who they were.”

“Is Dom still working?”

“No, he’s been put on leave pending a full-scale investigation.”

“What did your captain say?”

He exhaled deeply, closing his eyes for a long minute before opening them, only to stare at the ceiling “It was so weird… I mean, he was just so thrilled I asked for a new partner today. I guess he’s been telling IAD I was clean this whole time, and they came to the same conclusion, but because I was still his partner, not cutting myself off from him, they figured I was either the most unobservant motherfucker in history, or that maybe they just hadn’t dug down deep enough to find what I was tangled up in.”

I stared at his profile. “When you said earlier that he’s been on the take from day one, what did you mean?”

“Someone has been paying Dom off for information since he was a rookie.”

“Oh, honey,” I said softly, slipping my hand into his. “I’m so sorry.”

He squeezed my hand for a moment, then lifted it to kiss my palm.

“But Dom is a good detective, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. He worked his way up by himself, but nobody’s gonna care about that anymore,” he said, holding my hand in both of his, needing to touch me. I felt like his lifeline.

“So they were going to keep investigating Dom, and therefore you, but today you asked for a new partner, and now what?”

“Now IAD is moving forward with their case and I get left out of the charges they’re gonna bring against Dom. They believe I had no idea what he was into.”

“Which you didn’t.”

“Which doesn’t look great,” he muttered.