Free FORBIDDEN LOVE by LAURA HARNER Page B

last shred of patience. “Seriously—don’t bullshit me. There isn’t anyone who knows you better than I do, and I know you’re lying. I also know you love Del and he loves you. Ever since he came back from rehab, you’ve helped keep him on the path to clean and sober. It wasn’t something I ever thought you could do, but you have.
    “Since I know you’re lying to me and I can see you’re worried sick about Del, I need you to tell me what’s going on, so I can help.”
    “Sorry, Dani,” Nicolette replied, even brisker. “I haven’t got anything else to say to you. If there’s nothing more, I have a staff meeting to run. I’ll have Del call you just as soon as he checks in.” She turned to her desk and started gathering her notes.
    Dani blew out a frustrated breath. Nothing to do but return to the station for now and research the hard way. Computer runs and phone calls. If Del left town, there would be a record somewhere.
    ****
    “As soon as she arrived back at the station, Dani pulled her meager notes together to review what she knew, in order to sort out where she needed to go next.
    “Need any help?” LeAnn asked, leaning across the desk and swiping a handful of Peanut M&M's from Dani’s candy jar.
    Tapping her pencil on a pad of yellow paper filled with doodles and random words, Dani looked up. “I don’t like where this is heading, LeAnn,” Dani said quietly. “When was the last time you saw Del?”
    “I don’t know. Last week, maybe? At Constantine’s. He and Nicolette were going out when Beau and I arrived. Why?”
    “Did he set off any alarms? Look like he was using, again?”
    LeAnn hitched her hip on the corner of the desk and cocked an eyebrow at Dani. “Shit, Dani. Was Del mixed up with Beaker? I thought he was clean.”
    “I don’t know. The security camera caught Del in the Pier District parking lot around the time Beaker was killed. He looked like he had a bat in his hand. Three guesses as to the cause of death on our good buddy Beaker, and the first two don’t count.”
    “Fuck. What’s Del say about it?”
    “That’s the thing. According to Nicolette, he left late last night to go to South America on a story for the magazine. He’s supposedly following the drug trail from the rain forests to Généreux, or some such bullshit. And it was bullshit. I know when Nic is lying.
    “I just spent the afternoon checking. Del’s passport hasn’t been scanned in the last eight weeks. No plane tickets have been sold in his name from here to Chicago. Both the Demetrios and Courtland private jets are still here. So neither his grandfather nor his daddy provided air transportation. In fact, Del didn’t leave town in any of the normal ways if you plan to catch a flight.” Dani reached into the jar and grabbed her own handful of candy before pushing it across to LeAnn.
    “Feels like one big waste of a day. I spent all morning flashing pictures around the Pier District, and no surprise there. No one saw anything. No one heard anything. No one knows anything.
    “The only person who I can positively place in the vicinity near the time of Beaker’s death is Del and the only people in the vicinity near the time of Crease’s death are Constantine and Hawk. And they were there a couple hours after, not before.
    “There’s another person in play here, LeAnn. I can feel it. Someone who knows about the security camera, someone who deliberately avoided it when he approached both the Mona Lisa Motel and the Pier.
    “And if we work on the assumption that the two crimes are related, we’re looking for someone with enough skill to get past the Charbonnet security and into Hawk’s—”
    “Ah…Danielle, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Hawk said smoothly from the doorway.
    “Hawk. I thought we were meeting…” she trailed off for a minute, remembering their plans. “Excuse me, LeAnn. This is Hawk. Hawk Charbonnet. Hawk, Detective LeAnn Delacroiux.”
    “Charbonnet,” LeAnn said,