"Did you at least get her phone number?" Aiden asked as they started searching the perimeter.
"What?"
"Shelby – did you get her phone number?" she repeated.
Danny smacked his forehead.
Shelby's partner, Ben, had hooked up with some of the other Narcos who had been working the Operation K-Car case, of which Kortanze was only one of the stools. They wanted to chase down the others to make sure no one else was dead. That left Shelby and Flack to pound the pavement and interview potential witnesses.
"We haven't done this in a long time," Shelby commented, trying to lighten the mood.
Flack remained sullen and silent.
She just shook her head. "Glad to see you haven't changed," she muttered under her breath.
"Neither have you," he shot back.
"You are such a child, you know that, right?"
"At least I have some morals," he said.
She grabbed his arm and flung him, martial arts style, head over heels and on to his back. She pinned his arms to the ground with her legs.
"What do you want from me, Don? You want me to say I'm sorry? I'm sorry. I'm sorry I cheated on you. I'm sorry I lied to you. I was young and impulsive and you scared the shit out of me, okay? I wasn't ready to settle down. I'm still not ready to settle down. It's been five years, Don. You need to let go of this grudge against me. I'm not who you want me to be."
He turned his head away from her. "Get off me," he said.
"No," she answered. "Not till you tell me you've accepted my apology."
"I'll call the police," he threatened blandly.
She couldn't help but smile at that. "We are the police, Don," she said.
"I just…" he started. "You're hard to get over."
"I'll take that as a compliment. Do you accept my apology?"
He sighed. It didn't matter that it had been almost five years since he'd last interacted with her. She still had him wrapped around her little finger. "Yeah, I accept it."
She got up and offered her hand to help him up. "Good. Can we get back to work now?"
Shelby and Flack started knocking on doors and interviewing anyone who might have any idea of what went down but they came up with nothing. No one wanted to talk and Shelby could guess why. This cartel was no Mickey Mouse operation – this was serious business and ratting on them had serious consequences.
"They must have just beat us," she lamented after their last rejection. "Damn it, I hate not getting any leads."
"You and me both," Flack agreed. "This group must be really serious."
"Yeah, but that's not what worries me."
"What worries you?" he wanted to know.
"The fact that they've paid enough attention to our routines worries me. They knew everyone we would want to talk to and they've got to them first." She pulled out a cell phone and dialed a few numbers. "I hate being outdone," she muttered as she waited for the person on the other end to pick up. "Ben, tell me you have some good news," she said.
She rubbed her eyes and grunted a few acknowledgements. "So you got as much as I did," she sighed. "I guess this means I need to go undercover…Okay, yeah. Let's regroup at HQ and work something out." She hung up the phone.
"I hate when you do undercover," Flack told her as they got into his unmarked car.
"Why?"
"Makes me nervous."
"Why would it make you nervous?" she grinned.
"Oh, gee, I don't know, you could like, die," he said sarcastically.
She scoffed. "Haven't died yet." She gave him a sidelong glance. "But that's not why it makes you nervous, is it?"
"What are you talking about?"
"It makes you nervous because I usually use my sexuality to get what I want when I'm undercover. That's why you hate it."
He looked away from her. He hated and loved that she knew him so well. "Maybe."
She shook her head. "How do I cure you of me?" she asked.
"If I knew, I'd tell you," he answered.
Back at HQ, the team debated over a plan of attack.
"Look, they've already got the jump on us. Now we not only have to play catch-up, we have to figure out a new way to go about this," Shelby said.
"CSI pulled a fingerprint off the bag of heroin. It's our new friend, Orlando Yates – you know, the one we've been tailing for a few weeks," Ben said. "He's recently moved up in rank in the world – graduated to distributor about a month ago. Thinks he's king shit of turd island now."
"You think he might be the weakest link?" Flack asked.
"At this point, it doesn't matter. He's all we've got," Shelby said.
The group could see Shelby's mind racing. She was trying to decide the best way to go about this.
"Kay, brainstorm with me a little – how many of our stools have died since we started Operation K-Car?" she asked.
"The mouth is the first one."
She nodded. "That's good. That means we have at least a year of crap on them. That's more cards than we've been able to play with for a long time."
"Yeah, but we have no proof that they haven't been on to us for longer than this," one of the other officers said.
"True. This could just be a set-up for a trap, but I don't know. The fact that they let a newbie handle diamond heroin seems risky. As far as we know, they haven't shown signs of being that smart, have they?" she asked.
Ben shook his head. "Nah, this whole operation has felt like 'new old money' since we started."
"New old money?" Flack asked.
"Like some punk 20-year-old whose dad has run the cartel for years has just taken over," one of the officers explained.
"Too brazen, too bold. Just no caution to speak of," Shelby concurred. "I wanna meet Orlando," she said.
"You wanna bring him in for the heroin?" Flack asked.
She grinned. "Oh no, I wanna see him in his natural environment. I need to see the way this guy works so I can better understand what we're up against."
"You're just looking for an excuse to go undercover," one of the officers grinned.
"Of course I am," she grinned back. "That's why I got into NARC in the first place."
"We need to find out everything we can about Yates," Ben said. Once we know his usual haunts, we can send Shelby in. This team can be our task force." He went on to divvy up tasks and then sent everyone off to get to work.
"Shelby, you go home," Ben said.
"Why? I'm fine."
"I don't care. You know our rule – the person going undercover always takes the night off before hand."
"I made that rule for you, you know," she said. "I have no one who would miss me if anything happened."
Ben frowned at her. "Don't be a jerk – do as I say."
"Yes, dad," she grinned. "I'll see you in the morning."