Long Simmering Spring (30 page)

“It’s not going to help. I was all right until I started up with Julie. But now, the things I’m feeling—” Even as he spoke, Cole felt his veneer of control slipping. He crushed his hands into fists and slowly lowered them to his sides, trying to regain his composure.

“This is ridiculous,” Val said, exasperation written all over his face. “What happens when the next woman comes along? Or are you intending to stay celibate for the rest of your life?”

Cole laughed mirthlessly. “No. I just don’t want to get wrapped up with someone I can fall in love with.”

“So you’re going to go back to your old ways? It’ll be Olivia all over again, is that right?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Well, you can count me out. You’re saying the PTSD means you can’t have a healthy relationship with someone you love? That includes me, Theo, and Seb, too. You think I’m going to sit back and watch you throw yourself away? You start not caring about the people who really matter and you have nothing to live for.” Val finished cleaning his unit and packed it away in its foam-cushioned case. He snapped the case shut with two loud clicks and pushed his chair back angrily. “You’re trying so hard to run from the past that you’ve forgotten about what it’s like to live in the present.” Val stood up and grabbed his gun case. “When you’re ready to figure it out, give me a call.”

Then he walked out without a backward glance. A few moments later, Cole heard Val’s truck rumble away.

Cole swore under his breath. How the hell was he going to get home now? Quickly, he packed his weapon into its carrying case. He snapped it shut and walked outside into the darkened parking lot. A lamp about thirty yards away flickered, then went out.

Val shouldn’t have left him here. Not with his black thoughts festering by the minute.

Cole was angry. He was angry at Don for lashing out at an innocent and for hurting the woman he loved. He was angry at Julie for eliciting such a strong, uncontained emotional response in him. He was angry at Val for being utterly unsupportive. And most of all, he was angry at himself for everything he was thinking, feeling, and experiencing.

Then he heard it. That whistling sound he’d never forget as long as he lived.

Rocket.

Without thinking, he lifted his carrying case over his head and hugged the side of the building, but before he crouched down, he stopped.
Assess. Not an inbound rocket. Fireworks. Breathe.

He closed his eyes, lowered the case, and breathed.

Adrenaline faded, leaving him feeling tired. So very tired. The carrying case felt as if it were made of lead, so he put it down and leaned against the wall.

Val was right. He
did
need help. Outside help. As usual, his brother was spot on. Cole had accepted that he’d always be living with the PTSD, which was all right as long as he could control it. But he was using the damn disorder as an excuse to push people he loved away. Including Julie. Before he’d royally screwed up that night in the park, she’d seen the worst and not only hadn’t she run, she’d embraced it. Embraced
him
. Wanted to help. Asked him to go back to a psychologist. Begged him.

God, he was so stupid! It wasn’t the PTSD—it was
him
. He was so afraid of loving her, of being with her, that he’d used his disorder as a crutch. Yeah, it would always be there, but he controlled it, not the other way around. It was a part of him, and he had to start thinking of himself as a complete person, even with the damn PTSD. He pushed himself off the side of the building. Things needed to change. Starting now.

He’d been in therapy for months—years—and it had dredged up images he never wanted to remember. He didn’t want to go through it again, but he would. He had to. For his brothers. And for her.

But before he could go back to Julie and beg her forgiveness, he had to be whole. And to be whole, first he had to nail down this drug issue. And then he needed to get help.

He squeezed his fists and released—the last, calming step. Slowly, deliberately, he collected himself. When he finally was good, he pulled out his cell phone to call for a ride.

CHAPTER 24

Cole was having a rough Friday. He’d been working for three solid weeks on the drug project without getting any answers, but he wasn’t going to complain as long as his mind was off a certain blond-haired, hazel-eyed doctor and all the hoops he still had to jump through to get back to her.
If she’ll even have you
.

He got his mind back on task, fast. Working with Val and his team, the Sheriff’s Department had compiled a list of the top prescribing doctors and pharmacies for controlled substances in Barnstable County and had begun constructing the sting operation. They had an inside guy—someone Val recommended—prepping, infiltrating, setting himself up for access. Waiting for an in.

But they were still waiting.

And it was killing Cole.

He needed to see action. Needed to see it through. But he wasn’t the one calling the shots, and there was no way in hell he’d blow it. Not with so much at stake. Yet to just sit and wait for days, weeks, even months? God, he was going to go insane!

To give himself a break, he’d followed up on figuring out Don’s associates and connections, but the man wasn’t talking and Cole’s research hadn’t revealed anything. So he’d started in on his own drug incident files again, trying to figure out if he could pinpoint something—anything—that could help him get some answers a bit closer to home. Sure, there was a big, sweeping operation going on, but that didn’t mean that drug dealing in Star Harbor had just up and stopped. He didn’t know what he was looking for, just that there had to be some small nugget hidden within the drug-related clusters of incidents in town. He’d pored over more case files than he cared to count, but he just couldn’t see any rhyme or reason to the patterns.

Cole stared at the whiteboard in the conference room for what seemed like the millionth time that afternoon and rubbed his fingers over his eyes. What was he missing? What couldn’t he see?

Mentally, he ticked through the variables in the case again. He’d charted the incidents for time of day, location, age of perpetrators, any description of the drug dealer, and every other possible variable he could think of, but nothing made sense. Nothing connected them except the drug itself. Every lead ran into a dead end.

He turned away from the whiteboard and back to the stacks of files on the conference-room table he’d been puzzling over. Absentmindedly, he flipped through the file on top and skimmed the arresting officer’s report. Time and date of arrest, description of scene, suspect’s statement. One line jumped out at him: “Suspect bought four packets of ‘bath salts’ from dealer.”

Cole paused, then read the statement again. And again. He thought about it for a long moment. Then, as if he’d been fumbling in the dark for days, a light went off in his brain, illuminating everything. He’d been thinking about everything in the files, but what about something that wasn’t there at all? At least, not
obviously
there.

Where the hell was all the money going?

In Cole’s experience, with drug trafficking cases, it was typically tricky to trace. But here, the number of incidents clustered together virtually ensured that a Star Harbor local was involved, which was why Val and his team were here. And if a local was involved, he could have put any ill-gotten gains into a regular bank account at Star Harbor Mutual. Federal reporting requirements would have triggered an inquiry for deposits over ten grand, but unless the person had been extraordinarily careful, there should be some other red flags, such as clustered deposits just under that triggering amount.

His mouth set in a grim line, Cole picked up the phone to call the county district attorney. He needed to subpoena some bank records and he hoped that his good relationship with the president of Star Harbor Mutual would make the bank more inclined to cooperate.

Then he’d call Val. With any luck, there’d be some connection they could use to their advantage. And Lord knows, they needed some kind of advantage. Because waiting around just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Not for him.

Seventy-two hours later, subpoena in hand, Cole had what he needed. He, Hank, Kip, Jason Ullner, another of his deputies, Dave Preiss, a representative from Star Harbor Mutual, and Marie Fine, an assistant district attorney, were now staring at adjacent computer screens set up in the conference room at the Sheriff’s Department. A whirring hum emanated from the machines as they pored through the electronic records.

The bank had agreed to give them the information without names attached to the accounts to protect the privacy of innocent third parties. Only if there was truly suspicious activity would Cole be able to additionally subpoena specific names to match the accounts. His team’s requests and searches would be facilitated by Dave, who was there as a gesture of the bank’s goodwill and full cooperation.

Val had also given Cole his blessing. In fact, he’d been thrilled. He and his team had been spinning their wheels in Boston on this case, and things on the local front had been dead until now. Unfortunately, Val had a full case load, but he promised that once he was done with his current case—most likely in a day or two—he was coming back to Star Harbor to help.

Steadily, Cole and his team worked through the records, looking for any obvious patterns surrounding the clusters of drug-related incidents they had charted in their own files and any unusually large deposits that almost, but didn’t quite, trigger the federal reporting requirement. It was slow going.

After three hours of staring at a computer screen, Cole was ready to take a break. He stretched his arms above his head and glanced over at Hank, who was squinting at the screen while absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck. Kip had his eye glued to his monitor, while Jason was staring at some notes by his workstation.

“I assume that if any of you had found something interesting, you would have shouted out by now, right?” Cole asked. The men nodded. “That’s what I thought. This is getting us nowhere. Either the perp was clever and hid his transactions, or we’re looking in the wrong time frame.”

“Well, we’re looking in the same time frame as when the incidents occurred. Shouldn’t that be right?” Jason asked.

“If the person—or people—were dealing, money could have been funneled into an account during the time the incidents took place. But what if the person was merely
facilitating
the dealing? Or doing the buying? The money could have been put into an account well before or after the clusters, right?”

“You’re right,” Hank said. “Let’s broaden our search.”

“Can we change the time frame without going outside the scope of the subpoena?” Cole asked Marie.

Marie nodded. “I see no problem with that, since the subpoena was broadly worded.”

“Good,” Cole said. “Look for large deposits within three months prior to the start and end of each of the clusters we’ve charted.”

“Let me pull up those records,” said Dave.

Within an hour of reviewing the new records, Kip had a hit. “Sheriff!” he shouted excitedly, his blue eyes wide with excitement. “I think I found something!” As Cole walked over, he pointed at a line on the screen. “See? Three deposits of $9,950, three days apart, in November.” He clicked through to another page on the screen. “And see there? Four smaller deposits of nine grand each in the last week of January.”

“You’re sure this is the same account?” Cole questioned.

“Positive. I double-checked to be sure.”

“Any other red flags?”

“Let me check.” Kip flipped through the pages. “Aha! There and there. Two more times when cluster transactions occurred, each deposit large, but not large enough to trigger the reporting requirement.”

“I bet if we broaden out the search even more, we’ll find more clusters,” Hank said.

Marie nodded. “Let’s do it.”

When at last they’d confirmed that they had several hundred thousand dollars of transactions just under the reporting requirements, Cole smiled in satisfaction as he jotted down the account’s identifying numbers and handed it to Marie. “Ms. Fine, please draw up another subpoena and go get us a name.”

At the end of his long day, Cole stood up from behind his desk and stretched. The office was quiet; most of his deputies were off duty, Rhonda Lee was packing up to go, and Hank was out on patrol. He was exhausted but satisfied. By tomorrow morning he’d have the name of his top local suspect in the drug incidents that had disturbed the peace in Star Harbor. Then, he and the county attorneys would methodically prepare a rock-solid case against him. Maybe they could even flip the guy, make him assist in the sting. That sure would make Val happy.

And it made him feel great. He was reflecting on how he was going to tell his brother the good news, when his cell phone rang.

“Grayson,” he answered.

As he listened to the voice on the other end, his blood ran cold.

It was after hours at her office on Tuesday night. As Julie had done many times over the past two weeks, she’d read several chapters of a good novel with a sandwich at her desk and then finished up some paperwork. Better to be here than at her house. She’d found out from the daytime guards that Cole was outside her home from midnight to four a.m. every night. And the worst thing? He’d never told her he was there. Being a cop, he still had to see to her safety, but their relationship had been collateral damage.

With the doors locked tight, it was safe at her office, and if she went home too early she’d just start crying again. Or eating ice cream straight out of the carton and watching maudlin movies on Lifetime. So she avoided it as long as possible, until she couldn’t hold out for sleep any longer. Then, and only then, would she call whoever was on duty to escort her home.

But right now, it was only six, she had no more work left to do, her dinner was gone, and the thought of reading more of her book wasn’t appealing. Picking up the phone, she dialed a now-familiar number. Rhonda Lee picked up on the second ring. Once the friendly dispatcher had gone through her introduction, Julie jumped in.