“Next week or two.” Colin squeezed the back of his neck as if it hurt. “You’re following the Hegland murder?”
“Yes.” He was getting a little pissed because most of what he knew came via gossip, listening to the police band or overheard conversations rather than directly from his police chief the way he expected.
“Lieutenant Vahalik let me know this morning that it’s looking like he’s been taking payoffs for years.”
Noah muttered an obscenity.
Colin made a noise suggesting agreement. “This thing is spreading far and wide.”
“But why would they have knocked him off?”
All he got was a head shake.
“The appointment of his replacement will be mine,” Noah said, frowning. “I’ll be damn careful. Traffickers have lost the airport.”
“Maybe they don’t need it anymore. There are half a dozen private runways in the area now.”
“You mean he’d become redundant.”
Colin lifted a shoulder. “It’s possible. If they wanted to cut off payments, and he threatened to talk…”
What else was there to say? Speculation didn’t get them anywhere.
“What happened with you and your sister?” Noah asked.
“None of your business.” There might be a dark shadow of pain in those gray eyes, but no give in the hard voice.
Noah moved his shoulders in what he meant for a shrug, but it felt more like an attempt to lessen tension. He couldn’t claim her family problems were his business. Hadn’t he been trying to make sure they weren’t?
“I take it you haven’t located the boyfriend?”
Looking no happier than he felt, McAllister shook his head. “It’s been a week and a half now. She might be right that he didn’t hang around.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Goddamn it, no, I don’t!” Her brother glared at Noah. “Tell me what I can do that I’m not.”
He felt violent and had to hide it. “You could have avoided getting into it with Cait, so she doesn’t have to go home to an empty house every night.”
McAllister closed his eyes. “Shit. You think I like it?”
“No.” Noah didn’t have to admit it, but he wasn’t being fair. Cait wasn’t a pushover. In fact, given her feisty personality, he could see her being at fault.
“I’ve hung on to the memory of my kid sister,” said Colin in a strange voice. “She hit me with how little I really know her.” After a brusque nod, he strode away.
As he watched the police captain go, Noah had an uncomfortable realization. He’d taken to thinking of him by his first name. As if… He didn’t know. Didn’t want to know.
Mumbling under his breath, he went the opposite direction.
* * *
THANK GOD THE moving truck was supposed to arrive tomorrow. Of course, the company had first promised to deliver on Saturday. The cause of the delays meaning they wouldn’t arrive until Tuesday had been unspecified.
Cait was especially irked because, once again, she’d have to take time off work, but she didn’t care. She wanted her television, her big squishy chair, a dresser with real drawers, so she could put her clothes away. Pans, a mixer, cookbooks and her box of recipes. And her books—she missed her books.
She turned into the alley behind the row of town houses, and her headlights picked out garbage cans behind a lot of the other units. That meant tomorrow morning was pickup. Not really cooking, she hadn’t generated that much trash yet, but she had some. She might as well put her brand-new can out.
The garage door rose as she approached and she turned neatly into it, leaving the door open so she could pull the can out.
Not for worlds would she have admitted to anyone—specifically Noah or Colin—that she dreaded that quick dash across the small yard to let herself into the back door when she got in at night like this. But it would be two weeks tomorrow since Blake’s last stunt, and she was starting to cautiously believe he really wasn’t in town.
Even so, after letting herself out into the yard, she peeked cautiously around, then hurried. She should have left a back porch light on. No, better—she’d get a motion-activated floodlight installed, like Colin had over his garage.