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“You want a cup?” Richards asked, holding out a mug.
I nodded, taking it from his hand and moving back to the door, not wanting to sit and shoot the shit while Johnson was around.
“You should make him pay you for that coffee, Richards. Since he’s making such good coin now.”
I stopped in the doorway and glanced over at him. “Did I get a pay rise I didn’t know about?”
Johnson stood and took his now empty mug back to Richards for a refill. “Heard you’re making a little extra cash on the side from your gangbanger friends.”
I froze.
Richards glanced over at me with a frown.
Johnson chuckled, resting a hip on the kitchen countertop while he waited for his second cup. “Don’t look so freaked out. It’s about time you got down off your high horse and wised up to how things run around here. We don’t get paid enough to not take a little on the side when the opportunity arises. Right?”
Stewart grinned, and the guy who’d been putting his lunch away slapped my shoulder as he passed. There was no shock or outrage on his face. The slap felt almost like…support.
My gaze met Richards, but he wouldn’t hold it. He put the pot down and walked out of the kitchen without a word to me.
Ignoring Johnson, I followed after Richards, catching him in the empty hallway. “Hey, wait up.”
He kept walking until I grabbed his arm and spun him around. “Richards…”
He shook me off.
The look of pure disappointment on his face hit me in the gut.
His expression was near identical to the one Jayela would have given me if she’d still been here.
“I can explain,” I promised, but it sounded weak even to my own ears.
“No need. I get how it is, I’m not naïve. I just thought you were different. I’ve always admired you and Jayela. I didn’t think the two of you bought into that shit, and so when…well, you know what happened. I asked to be paired up with you.”
I widened my eyes. “You did?” No one had told me that.
He shrugged and kept walking without making eye contact.
Another person I’d let down.
Anger built up inside me. Not at Richards. At the chief for putting me in this position. At myself for allowing it.
I swiveled on my heel, changing direction and storming into the chief’s office.
He glanced up from his desk and sighed. “You ever going to learn to knock? When did you stop doing that?”
I ignored his question. “How does everyone else know? Johnson just gave me a virtual high five for taking money from the Sinners. Now the entire floor thinks I’m as crooked as he is!”
“He’s not crooked.”
“He’s not straight!”
Chief sighed heavily. “You’re still young. When you’ve been around as long as Johnson and I have been, you’ll see not everything is as black and white as it seems. So many of the laws we swear to uphold just don’t work in towns like Saint View. It’s not just me who sees that. You know your orders came from above my head.”
“I want off that case.” It hurt me to say it. Jayela was hell-bent on pinning the Sinners. But it was clear to me that whoever was calling the shots wasn’t after them. They were content to let them get away with whatever the hell they wanted in order to catch the bigger fish.
It didn’t matter to them that the Sinners might have been running guns or dealing drugs or shooting up Eve’s club. They didn’t care about gangbangers waging wars out on the streets. There was no glory in bringing down a small-town club. Not for the bigwigs. They wanted the big names. The cartels. The mob bosses. The gangs who would put them on the map.
That wasn’t why I’d gotten into policing. I wanted to help people. Unlike them, I did care about the people in Saint View. I wanted kids to feel safe to walk to school, with no chance of them catching a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting. I wanted those same kids to make it to college without a drug habit.
