Brysen had obviously gown tired of the two of us trying to out-badass each other and demanded, “Where is Race?”

“In my office with Dovie.” I stopped Bax with a hand on the center of his chest as he went to maneuver around me. My brother was big, but I had always been bigger, and I had no qualms about throwing around my weight when I needed to. “Look, I need this girl to stop what is happening in the Point . . . the fires, the beatings, the destruction . . . it’s all tied together. She is absolutely necessary. I told Dovie all of this and she gets it, so you need to use your brains and not go off half-cocked, because I will shut you down so fast it’ll make your head spin. You got me, Bax?”

Bax didn’t say anything, just shoved around me and stomped his way across the precinct house toward a glass door that had my rank and last name stenciled on it in black letters. Brysen went to follow him but I reached out to stop her. I felt like I had to give her a heads-up that her man was having a tough time with the news about his dad but doing his best to try and hide it.

“Race is a good man. He’s in a tough spot right now and making some really difficult choices, but he’s always been a lot softer at his center than Bax. His dad was a piece of shit, a murderer and a goddamn oily son of a bitch, but when it hits him, when it really settles, he’s gonna need a hand working through his old man being gone.”

She told me in a haughty tone that she was never going anywhere, as her man, my brother, and his lady all made their way towards us in a somber huddle. I stepped to the side as both the couples embraced, muttered soft words to one another like they weren’t in the middle of a very active police station as they made their way to the front door and acted very much like handling things such as murder, betrayal, and deep personal loss was old hat. It made my chest tight because in a place like the Point those things were indeed an everyday occurrence and all of those young adults were far too familiar with them. At least they had all found someone to lean on, someone else to share the burden of all the constant bad news.

Bonds created in the worst circumstances, love forged in the fire, was bound to shine brighter and last longer than feelings that weren’t put to the test. Regular people got to love with ease and without thought. People that fell in love in the Point had to do so knowing it was a battle to stay in love. Everything here was a fight, and in a dangerous place full of dangerous people, love was often the only thing people were willing to do the right thing for. My brother was a prime example of that.

Bax’s entire life had been one big house of cards waiting to come toppling down. He spent his youth doing one illegal deed after the other, just bidding his time until he got caught. He wasn’t a good guy, and he never would be, but the fact that he cared about Dovie, that he loved her, forced him to make smarter choices. He knew that if he went back to jail or if he eventually ran up against someone that was just a little bit tougher or a little more ruthless than he was, it would kill her to have to put him in the ground. Bax had always been dangerous, but now, with the sassy redhead in his life, he was also cautious. I never thought I would see it happen, but the day had arrived when my brother actually thought before he acted.

I went back to my office and settled in. I kicked back in my rickety chair that I was sure was going to give out and dump me on my ass before the year was over and turned on the cell phone Reeve had left with me. I was both curious and slightly sick to see what was on it. I had faced every variety of bad guy there was since I started as a patrol officer in the Point eight years ago. There wasn’t much that shocked me, wasn’t much that made my skin crawl anymore. Hell, I was the one that snapped the cuffs on Bax and threw his ass in the joint for five years when his luck had finally run out, and I did it without guilt or regret. The idea of a fellow cop, a fellow officer of the law, being the one behind all the destruction and the bodies piling up in the morgue had fury boiling so hot in my blood I was surprised it wasn’t burning through my skin. You didn’t sign up to serve and protect only to decide that oath was just too hard to keep.

There was a security code on the phone that I couldn’t figure out, so I called one of the tech guys up and asked him if he could look at it. I was known as kind of a hard-ass around the station, but I also got the job done, so generally when I called in a favor it got bumped to the front of the line. It only took twenty minutes for the tech guy to show up and another five for him to get me into the phone. By the time he left to go back to his own part of the station, I had already been through ten messages that had my teeth clenching so hard I was lucky they didn’t crack.

It was all there. Words upon words that told a tale of revenge and destruction. There were messages back and forth between Roark and someone that had a standing date with one of Nassir’s working girls arranging the setup so that the Irishman could get to Roxie, one of the Point’s most well-known hookers and a personal friend of Bax’s from back in the day.

There were exchanges with someone simply called Zero setting up the entry of explosives through customs. The explosives that had to have been used to annihilate Nassir’s club. The fire was intended to punish not only Nassir and Race but also the people that flocked to the heart of the Point in search of bad things. The rage the dirty fed had toward the city was unreal and I couldn’t figure out what was behind it. It wasn’t like he lived here or had been a victim of the streets like the rest of us that called the Point home had been. His fury and the vengeance it wreaked felt so displaced. I knew there had to be more to it but the phone wasn’t giving me that much.

There was another flurry of back-and-forth messages chronicling the plan to grab one of the kids that owed Race money on a football bet and dumping his body as a message to the new criminal elite. More bodies had followed and so had money into the hands of desperate men so they would do ugly things to make sure that everyone knew the Point was never going to be safe, no matter who was in charge. That it was never going to be anything but a forgotten place filled with forgotten people that no one would miss when it was gone.

There was even a picture of Race’s classic Mustang as it burned to nothing but a twisted scrap heap of melted metal and rubber.

The guy was vengeful and liked to witness the effects of his handiwork up close and personal. Unfortunately he knew how the good guys worked, so while there was plenty of evidence that he had been present for all these dirty deeds on his end, there was nothing on ours that showed him. Roark knew how to avoid cameras, knew how to blend into the background, and knew enough to keep from getting caught while he pulled strings in the background like a demented puppet master.