Bash, Volume III by Candace Blevins Read Free Book Online

eat ice cream with her, made me get the grape nuts stuff when I visited her. I was braced for hideous but it’s actually pretty good.”
    I looked at Angelica, touched the outer edge of the mark left by Dozer’s fist.
    “Don’t you dare hit him again,” she said, and I had no doubt she was about to back her words up with a threat. She didn’t disappoint, and I held her gaze as she told me, “If you do, I’ll sleep in the downstairs officers’ quarters until I can go back to my apartment. It’ll give me more time to hang out with my dad. Might even see if he wants to take off on a camping trip for the weekend, just the two of us. Been a while since I camped with my dad.”
    “Don’t play me against your daddy, Princess. You want to spend time with him, I hope I’ll be invited, but I’ll respect any time you need with him alone.”
    She looked at me a few seconds and I could see the wheels turning. “Not playing you against my dad. I’d be threatening to sleep downstairs whether he was here or not. The point is, Dozer did me a favor and it isn’t fair for you to hit him for it. He seemed okay with it, and my dad seems to think I should stay out of it, but this affects me, too, and you can’t just do whatever the hell you want, Bash. If we’re in this together, we’re in it together . If you’re going to make decisions without checking in with me, I’d just as soon do it alone, where I have a say.”
    I really wished we weren’t doing this in front of her dad, but a few things had been niggling at me and it was time to bring them up.
    “And if we’re going to be a thing , these secrets can’t keep popping up. Brain, and then the story you told me last night? These two things change so much, Angelica. You may have a point about us working together as a unit, instead of separately, but I can’t do that until I’m assured there are no more big secrets… and we still have to work out the other secrets, as well.”
    Thankfully, Brain came in the front door and gave us a distraction.
    Angelica stepped away from me as she asked him, “Any news?” and the combination of hope and fear on her face made me realize how vulnerable she felt. She could go to jail for a long time for murder, if the truth came out. She had to stay on guard for the police, FBI, and possibly the media. She had to keep her story straight, had to look the part of the recently kidnapped, and she was here because we weren’t sure we could keep her safe at her apartment. And, a crooked DA and a number of cops on his side would bury her under the jail, if they could figure out how.
    Brain must have seen it, too, because he walked to her and pulled her into his arms. He looked to a camera and said, “Button three,” and a few seconds later I heard the buzz under the music that would make sure a listening device couldn’t hear us.
    “Nothing significant,” he told Angelica. “Police are staking out the house, apparently waiting to send the crime scene techs in until they can arrest the homeowner when he returns. I don’t know how long they’ll sit and watch before deciding he isn’t coming home and they may as well process the scene. Marlin assures me the bodies will never be found, and the pavement has been given an enzyme treatment to make sure the blood proteins are destroyed, bleached, rinsed with hydrogen peroxide, washed to get rid of evidence of cleaners, and then dirtied back up so it looks the same as the surrounding pavement. This isn’t the first time they’ve had to get rid of evidence of murder, and they seem to know what they’re doing. It was all handled before surveillance was on them hot and heavy, and they plan to stay away from that particular warehouse until things die down. He didn’t say so, but I got the idea there’s a good bit of illegal goods stored inside.”
    “You talked to Drake?” I asked.
    He nodded. “Had already asked him to keep me apprised of the investigation into Pickering, and stopped