The Devil's Snare: a Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 4) (26 page)

Derek’s mind shot back to Bo Randall when he claimed that someone used the majority of the cocaine he had in a Ziplock bag and that he claimed the bag was missing when Nikkie asked him to retrieve it from his safe. He thought about what John Mather had just said, about drugs being a serious issue in Ravenswood and that cocaine was a popular drug of choice among several members of the fire department, as well as a few citizens of Ravenswood. He remembered that Lance Mahoney said he had seen a man he didn’t recognize, speaking with Bo the night of the fire. He said that Bo and the stranger went outside together and that only Bo returned back inside.

“I don’t know a whole lot about drugs,” Derek said, “but, when it comes to cocaine, don’t dealers cut it with other stuff before they sell it on the streets?”

“Coke and heroin are usually cut so many times before they’re actually used by someone, a drug user really has no idea what they’re snorting up their nose or injecting into their bloodstream.” Mullins paused, smiled, then said, “You’re thinking that a local drug dealer is cutting whatever drugs he is selling with devil’s snare, and those two men you saw tossing garbage bags full of those weeds are your prime suspects.”

Derek paused a beat. “What exactly do they do up at that compounding facility?” Derek asked.

“Now that’s an interesting question, Cole. An interesting question. But your mind was spinning too fast for me to believe that’s the only question being tossed around in that brain of yours.”

“You know a place I can buy some drugs around here?”

After the three finished their breakfast, and slammed enough coffee into their systems to artificially supply them with enough energy to get through the next few hours, Derek and Nikkie walked back to their rental car. Once inside, Derek called John Mather.

“Did you get ahold of Lance?” Derek asked.

“I did, and you were spot on. The man I saw walking out of the office in the station was the same guy Lance saw speaking with Bo the night of the fire. Not sure what you’re planning to do with that revelation, however.”

“You said you know of a few guys at the fire department who use cocaine, right?”

John said, “Yeah. But I’m not one of them, so I have no idea how to get in touch with this guy.”

“But the others may.”

“You want me to ask them who this guy is?” John said.

“Not exactly. I assume that if you asked the coke users at the department where you could buy drugs that they’d probably deny using drugs in fear they could get into hot water. You seem like a straight shooter to me and I have to believe that no one would believe you’d actually be interested in buying anything illegal.”

“I hope that’s true,” John replied.

“But, if you have a friendship with one of the guys you know uses drugs, and told him a friend of yours in Syracuse is looking to buy, you think they’d give you the dealer’s contact info?”

John was quiet for a few seconds as he mulled over Derek’s question. As much as he wanted to help Derek find out who might be behind the strange occurrences in Ravenswood, he didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize his standing in the fire department, or in the community of Ravenswood. After releasing a couple stress-filled sighs, he said, “The problem is the can of worms you’re asking me to help open. Let’s say I call one of the guys at the department and he gives me the dealer’s number. I give you the number, you call him, meet with him and do whatever the hell it is you’re thinking about doing. This whole plan can come back to me in a heartbeat. If you and I are right and drugs and drug dealers are really the cause of the shit happening here, I’m putting myself in harm’s way. I’d be putting the member who gives me the dealer’s contact info in harm’s way as well. If things go sideways and anyone gets hurt, I won’t be able to live with myself.”

Derek considered what John was saying and found himself agreeing with him. He couldn’t ask John to put himself into the middle of what had the potential of becoming the 2016 version of the shootout at the OK Corral. And John was right about putting the member of the department he would ask for the dealer’s contact info in a potentially deadly situation. He needed to come up with a different approach. A way to get the drug dealer’s phone number that didn’t put John or anyone at the department into a compromised situation.
 

That’s when Nikkie tapped him on the arm. “I can do it,” she said.
 

“Do what?” Derek said to her.

“Ask John to tell me which members might know the drug dealer we’re looking for. I’ll get the information from them and no one’s name will ever be brought up.”

Derek covered the mouthpiece of his phone, turned his body towards Nikkie, and said, “And just how the hell will you do that?”

Nikkie smiled her brilliant smile, tossed her long, dark hair to one side of her beautiful face, titled her head, and said, “I might have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“John,” Derek said into his phone, his voice flat and void of any apparent emotion, “I’ll call you right back.” He disconnected the call, placed his iPhone between his legs, and said to Nikkie, “If you think, for one second, that I’m going to let you put yourself into a potentially deadly situation, you’re crazy. I already feel responsible for what happened to Crown, there’s no way in hell I’m going let you play whatever tricks you may have, as effective as they probably are, and put yourself in danger.”

Nikkie’s face turned instantly stern, her eyes fixed and wide. “If you and I didn’t have whatever feelings for each other we do, would you still feel the same way about me doing my job?”

Derek looked away, a sudden flash of heat raging across his body. “What I’m feeling for you has nothing to do with this,” he snapped back.
 

“Then what is it? Do you
really
blame yourself for what happened to Crown?”

“She wouldn’t have been here if I didn’t allow her to come with us.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” Nikkie said, her voice softer, calmer. “This whole case is about her son and no matter what you or I may have said or done, there was no way she wasn’t going to be by her son’s side.” Nikkie clasped her hands around Derek’s right hand. She held it in her warm, almost electric embrace. “Like it or not,” she said when his eyes finally met with hers, “I am in the business of doing things that can get dangerous at times. That’s what I do and what I’m damn good at. You can’t keep me safe by keeping me away from potential harm, you can only make me less of who I am.”

Derek held the gaze into her eyes. He saw something beneath the soft brown eyes staring back at him. Something he had known for several months but hadn’t allowed himself to admit. It was more than a mutual respect or admiration playing gleefully behind those eyes. Something much greater.

“The thought of losing you,” he said, “after what I’ve already lost, is something I can’t even imagine.”

“You’ve just found me. We just found each other. But, keeping me from doing what I was made to do is what will make you lose me. Make me lose you.” She raised his hand, kissed it, sending a warmth through his body he hadn’t believed still existed. “I can do this and we can figure out what exactly is behind everything happening. I can do this.”

ˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇˇ

Derek was still learning his way around his phone and still was amazed at times at what it could do. After calling Siri from her perpetual state of kinetic readiness, and having stated his request, Siri responded with the phone number of Route 69 Bar and Grill. Lance Mahoney answered the Siri-placed call.

After Derek had finished filling Lance in on the most recent, up to date events, and after Lance agreed to assist in the execution of Nikkie’s plan, Derek ended the call then immediately dialed John Mather.

“John,” Derek said, “we have a plan we’re going to run with that doesn’t include you having to jeopardize your safety or position with the fire department.”

“I’m willing to help, but, if it’s all the same to you and you already have a plan, I’m okay with helping in any other way I can.”

Derek went over Nikkie’s plan, to which he only received an occasional, “Okay,” or “Uh huh” response from John. When he had finished, Derek asked, “So, if you can stand by at the station with a team ready to roll in case things go sideways, we’d really appreciate it.”

“And she’s going there this evening?” John asked, his voice revealing his relief in having such a small part in the plan.

“Around seven,” Derek replied.
 

“I’ll be at the station by six at the latest.”

It didn’t take long for Nikkie to be noticed. Having persuaded Derek to make a few additional stops at a clothing store to assemble the right outfit, Nikkie looked amazing when she walked through the front doors of Route 69. She sat alone at the end of the bar, and waited. She had the head turning, jaw dropping, pornographic mental-image creating looks even when she wasn’t trying to demonstrate what a near perfect body and beautiful-faced woman should look like. But when she wanted to be the center of attention of
 
lust—a want she so seldom indulged—her pull and attraction were virtually impossible to resist.

“There’s no way you’re walking into that bar looking like that,” Derek had told her. “Not without me sitting in the corner with a bazooka at my side.”

“I’ll be fine,” she had said, then dismissed Derek’s concerns and alternate suggestions with a wave of her hand and a simple but powerful reminder: “We’re running out of time with this case and, so far, we only have a few ideas but we don’t have enough time to chase those ideas down.”

Derek continued mounting a defense but began to realize Nikkie was probably right: They had found nothing substantial to either clear Bo Randall’s name or to be comfortable knowing he was the arsonist. Nothing but suspicions. The final push that had broken through his line of defense occurred after they had received a call from Crown’s doctor, telling them that Crown’s condition had improved significantly and they were going to take her out of the medically induced coma. Nikkie, filled with relief, kissed him with such passion, desire and hunger, that they felt compelled to drive back to their hotel and to spend an hour building up their appetites.

Nikkie’s plan included having Derek calling Lance Mahoney to let him know when she’d be entering Route 69 and for him to ensure he would be behind the bar serving her heavily watered down drinks. Derek also called John Mather who shared with Derek two names of fire department members who John knew to be drug users and who frequented Route 69. When the names were shared with Lance, he told Derek he would let Nikkie know when one or both of them entered his bar.

And it wasn’t long before Lance strolled over to Nikkie, a mostly water vodka and water in his hands, placed it before her on the bar, and whispered, “You can’t miss him. Brenden Lull is wearing a dark blue t-shirt, with Ravenswood Medical Services written on the front and ‘FIRE’ on the back in big, bold, white letters. Excuse my crudeness, but he’s checking out your backside right now.”

Nikkie smiled, gave Lance’s hand a gentle and quick squeeze, then spun her bar stool so that her body was perpendicular to the stretch of the bar. She let her long, dark hair fall over her right shoulder as she scanned the bar. She noticed him directly. He was standing near the dart boards, tall beer in his right hand, gazing at her. Brenden Lull was making no attempt to hide his interest in Nikkie and as soon as she locked eyes with him, he confidently strutted towards her.
 

She almost had to hold down her vomit as well as a flash of discontented laughter, after Brenden Lull approached her, smiled and asked her if she was from Tennessee.

“Tennessee?” Nikkie responded.

“Well you must be,” Brenden said after adding a bit more width to his smile, “‘cuz you’re the only ‘ten I see’ in this place.” With that he laughed and leaned in a bit closer to Nikkie.

“Actually, I’m from LA.”

“The city of angels. Never been there but it makes sense.” Brenden waved to Lance, then, when Lance acknowledge the wave, Brenden raised two fingers then waggled them between himself and Nikkie.

“What makes sense?” Nikkie asked, forcing a smile that she hoped didn’t look too manufactured.

“If you’re not from Tennessee, then you must be from heaven. Get it? City of angels? You being from heaven? Come one, that’s a classic.”

Nikkie laughed, partially because that’s what she believed would continue reeling in Brenden, but mostly because the lines Brenden was using were so often employed, tired and downright ridiculous, she couldn’t help but laugh.

“So,” Brenden continued, feeling more confident as a result of Nikkie’s laugh, “what brings you to little old Ravenswood?”

“Can’t say, really. I was visiting family in Auburn and was driving down to Manhattan and saw the name on a road sign, and figured it sounded like a decent place for a girl to spend the night.” Keeping her eyes fixed on Brenden’s, she took a sip through her straw, smiled again, then asked, “You think I made a good choice?”

“I think you made a fantastic choice but, the night is still young; plenty of time to make some bad choices.”

Brenden was pouring it on thicker than Nikkie had ever seen. Women who looked like Nikkie were accustomed to being hit on. Most had grown generally immune to the awkward glances, the cat calls and the cheesy, overplayed pick up lines. While she was never one to rely on her good looks and instead preferred men (like Derek) who appreciated the beauty she possessed inside, she was far from ignorant of the powerful effects her stunning looks granted her.

Lance continued to serve Nikkie watered down drinks as was the plan and double or even triple strength drinks to Brenden over the next hour or so. By the time the ice cubes in their fifth drinks were sitting alone in the bottom of their glasses, Nikkie put her arm around Brenden’s neck, pulled his head close to hers, and whispered, “A guy like you probably knows how a girl could get some action around this little town.” She moved her mouth away from his ear, then kissed him gently on his nose.