Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [77]
This conversation hadn’t gone well—not that I’d expected less. I’d told her some of the truth about J-Hawk, but if her reaction was any indication, I couldn’t tell her all of it. Especially not about the cancer.
But it bugged me, how had toe-the-line Major Hawley started selling prescription drugs? Just to feed his adrenaline-junkie side? Had it started when he was unemployed? Had he decided no one would notice small-scale stuff ? But once he’d tasted easy money, had he moved on to bigger stuff ? What if he’d unknowingly muscled into another group’s territory?
Cross the wrong people, like Saro’s group, who laugh at obeying the law, and bye-bye.
They’d kill him. Without hesitation.
So if I suspected J-Hawk’s death was a drug-related incident, when I wasn’t a professional investigator . . . why hadn’t Dawson come to the same conclusion? And if he had, why hadn’t he done anything about it?
Once again, someone beating on my door roused me out of slumber. Pity Anna hadn’t shot the idiot for disturbing her R&R. I squinted at the couch as I shuffled past. Huh. No Anna. That explained the lack of bullet holes in the door.
I flipped the locks and opened the door. My belly did a little flip.
“I see you took my advice and started locking up.”
“You doing door-lock checks across the county this morning, Sheriff ? Or am I special?”
“Smart-ass.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“We need to talk.” Dawson brushed past me, stopping in front of the empty coffeepot. “You haven’t made coffee yet?”
“I was still in bed.”
Grumbling, he filled the grinder with beans. Poured the water in the machine. Dumped the old grounds and nestled a fresh filter in the basket before refilling it with freshly ground beans. It didn’t bother me that he knew his way around my tiny kitchen. In fact, it was sort of . . . sweet.
After he hit Start, he turned, resting his backside against the counter. Arms crossed over his chest. Chin set in a hard line. No shades masked the steely glint in his eyes.
Yeah, Dawson was pissed. I prepped myself for an ass-chewing session and mentally took back my “sweet” remark.
“Is there a reason you didn’t tell me you knew Jason Hawley prior to his employment with Titan Oil?”
“Yes.”
“What would that reason be?
“Because you didn’t ask me.”
“Goddammit, Mercy, that’s not—”
“The response you were looking for?” I supplied. “Tough. Maybe if you hadn’t been such a dickhead to me the night I found my friend murdered, I would’ve given you specifics. But when you’re tossing around threats, taking away my gun, accusing me, for Christsake, of murder, I ain’t about to offer anything up that wasn’t specifically asked.”
“And what about the next day? When you and John-John came into the office? I asked you specific questions then. You had ample opportunities to come clean about your previous relationship with him.”
“No. You gave me some bullshit theory about how my friend, a man I respected, a man I entrusted my life to, a man who’d literally brought me back from the dead, had somehow gotten himself robbed—and oops, too bad, so sad, accidents happen. He’s not from around here anyway, so who cares? Move on and forget about it. Well, guess what? I couldn’t.”
Dawson was by my side—in my face—in an instant. “What do you mean he brought you back from the dead?”
The damn man was a bulldog when it came to digging things out of me and the hell of it was I didn’t always mind. Didn’t mean I always told the gospel truth, however.
“Mercy?”
Hearing the softness in his tone, I tabled my intent to lie. Or hedge, anyway. “When Jason found me, under rubble and bodies, I was . . . dead. No pulse. Not breathing. He wouldn’t give up, even long after he should have.”
“Tell me everything. In detail. Right now.”
I retreated from his menacing stance and maintained a clinical detachment in the retelling. I left nothing out, including J-Hawk’s relationship with Anna. Needing something to do with