Fatal Series 00 - Fatal Destiny

wedding and everything,” Cruz said. “We thought if we could, you know, save you some time, it might help you out.”
    “Plus,” Gonzo added. “We owe you.”
    Touched by their efforts on behalf of her father’s case, she looked at Gonzo. “Owe me? What the hell are you talking about?”
    “If we’d waited for the warrant, Gibson would still be in jail,” Gonzo said, his face tight with tension and fatigue. He had a new baby son at home who was keeping him up half the night. Sam had made a huge effort not to be jealous of her friend who’d recently learned that an ex-girlfriend had borne him a son, but it wasn’t easy.
    “That’s not on you,” Sam said. “I’ve told you that a hundred times. I knew what you were doing at his place, my dad knew, Captain Malone knew. We all screwed up by not waiting on the warrant. You need to get over it.”
    They shrugged her off as they had for weeks since her ex-husband was released on a procedural technicality. The evidence they’d found all over Peter’s apartment had cemented their case against him in the bombing of Sam’s car. Gonzo, Cruz and their colleague, Detective Arnold, blamed themselves for not waiting on the warrant before entering the apartment.
    Knowing the dwelling contained bomb-making materials that could clear a city block, Sam wouldn’t have done it any differently herself, but she’d had no luck convincing them of that. They’d probably never get over it.
    “So what did Price have to say?” she asked.
    “Two years ago, he rented the place to a guy named Trace Simmons.” Gonzo handed Simmons’s rap sheet to Sam, who skimmed the long list of priors that involved significant gang activity. “Price said the place was like a Do-Drop-Inn. Simmons had a bunch of people living there with him, brothers, cousins, fellow gangbangers.”
    “All those people in that tiny space?” Sam asked.
    “Exactly,” Cruz said. “Price got sick of the complaints from the neighbors and started eviction proceedings. Around that same time, which was about three weeks before your dad’s shooting, one of the cousins, Darius Gardner, was accused of raping a woman in the house.”
    “Why didn’t that come up during the Reece investigation?” Sam asked.
    “Very good question,” Gonzo said. “We did some digging and found that the case against Gardner never went anywhere. It made it as far as the U.S. attorney and then the charges mysteriously disappeared.”
    “No idea why?” Sam asked.
    The two detectives exchanged glances. “We figured that was a question for you to ask,” Cruz said. “We took it this far and decided it was time to bring you in. This is your case. We didn’t want to step on toes. We just wanted to give you one of those threads you love to pull.”
    Overwhelmed by what they’d done for her—and her dad—Sam stood and stepped around her desk to address two men who ranked among her closest friends, not that she’d ever tell them that. Didn’t matter. They knew. “You gave me far more than one thread, and I can’t thank you enough. You have no idea how badly I needed this right now.”
    “Oh, well, no problem,” Cruz said, clearly flustered by her appreciation.
    “Means a lot to me,” she added. “I won’t forget it.”
    “Let’s hope it leads somewhere this time,” Gonzo said. He handed her another sheet of paper with the last known addresses for Simmons and Gardner as well as the bagged newspaper clippings about her father’s shooting that they’d found in Reece’s house.
    “Yes,” Sam said. “Let’s hope.” She wasn’t sure she could withstand another disappointment just then.

Chapter 3
    “I want to see Roberto first,” Sam decided.
    “Been a while,” Freddie replied.
    Sam didn’t like to think about the six months she’d spent undercover with the Johnson family. The investigation into a far-reaching drug ring in the city, a special assignment she’d been handpicked for, ended so badly she still had nightmares about the hail of gunfire that took young Quentin Johnson’s life.
    Intellectually, Sam knew it hadn’t been her fault. Yes, she’d ordered her officers to return fire, but how could she have known that Marquis Johnson would be stupid enough to bring his young son to a crack house? In all the months she’d been undercover with the Johnsons, she had never once seen Quentin in that house. She was still struggling with the outcome more than nine months later.
    “Don’t go there, Sam,”