Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
While we waited on the lab tech, I had him moved from holding to Interrogation Two. I sat across from him, watching him scratch at his arms and glance around like the walls were closing in. Maybe they were.
“What were you doing today, Nolan?” I asked, keeping my tone casual.
“Same as always,” he said, with a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Running errands and getting some air. Might’ve missed the light—I dunno. I guess I’m still buzzed from last night.”
“Right,” I said. “Buzzed and speeding through town in broad daylight.”
He shrugged, then looked down at his hands like he hadn’t seen them in a while.
There was a knock at the door, and I stepped out to find Kai waiting, face tight with something close to satisfaction.
“We’ve got more,” he said, voice low. “Twenty grand in the glove box, eight IDs in his wallet, and five sets of keys to properties—addresses we’re running now. Oh, and there was coke on him. Not much, but enough.”
I nodded, my heart starting to beat faster. “That’ll hold him and give us some leverage.”
“We’ve already got his prints on file,” Kai said, “but if you request the DNA, we’ll have the rest of what we need.”
I glanced back through the one-way glass at Nolan, who was now hunched over the table, hands clasped together as if trying to keep himself from unraveling.
“Let’s do it.”
“One more thing,” Kai added, cracking a rare grin. “Judd pulled over Eckhart for speeding an hour ago, same story. Bags in the car, IDs, and more keys. He’s applying for the DNA warrant now.”
My smile matched his. It felt like we were getting traction for the first time in weeks.
I stepped back into the room, shut the door behind me, and sat down.
“Dennis,” I said calmly, folding my hands. “Let’s talk about what’s really going on.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about how fast Dennis Nolan had folded. Guys like him usually held out longer, played tough, and asked for a lawyer to buy themselves time. But the moment I asked what the keys were for, he cracked like wet plaster.
“Friends’ houses,” he’d explained initially, but his eyes were screaming lies.
Then, like he was just too tired to keep up the charade, he spilled. He’d told me there were more drugs in the car that we hadn’t found yet, hidden in the tires and under the backseat. That sent our team scrambling back to the impound lot, and sure enough, we hit pay dirt. Cocaine and heroin stashed in thick packages, taped up, and layered beneath fabric and foam.
Alongside that, we found more bundles of cash—rolled tight, rubber-banded, and smelling like grease and sweat. It was street money, the kind that never sees a bank.
His blood test came back not long after.
Positive for crack, methamphetamines, heroin, and weed, too—and yeah, marijuana was still illegal here in Texas. That meant we had him cold. Distribution, intent to traffic, possession of narcotics, DUI, falsified IDs, unlawful earnings, you name it. He was fucked!
But he'd shut down when I’d asked the one question that mattered. “Who are you working for?”
Of course, he’d tried sidestepping at first. He said he was freelance and was hustling on his own. “A one-man army,” he called himself like it was a badge of honor. I asked again—different wording, different tone. Nothing, he was done talking.
Until the very end.
Just as we were taking him to his cell, he started humming, then singing, soft and slow: “Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop…”
It was eerie. Not sarcastic or smug—more like a lullaby from a man who’d completely come undone.
Kapono looked at me, brows pinched, and even the officer leading Nolan out glanced back like something didn’t sit right. And it didn’t. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was it a message? A threat? A warning?
Or maybe it was just the song that played in his head when everything started falling apart.
Either way, it stuck with me—and I didn’t like the feeling it left behind, not one bit.
Chapter 20
Roque
Ipulled into the driveway just as Kairo hit his stride with a story about a big bird and a sunflower.
“No, Roque—on the yellow flower,” he emphasized from the back seat, eyes wide in the rearview mirror. “Bird was blue, and it was eatin’ the middle. The middle.”
I smiled as I killed the engine, soaking in every word of his ramble. It sounded trippy as hell, like some psychedelic scene from a dream or a kid’s cartoon, but the way he told it had me locked in.
It was the sound of him coming back to himself.
Kairo hadn’t been this open since he’d come to live with me. After his parents died, he’d shut down and withdrawn. There was a blankness behind his eyes that used to gut me. But now he was talking again. Dreaming and letting himself be that little boy again for a while.