RATING: VERY GOOD
SPOILERS!!!
The police find that Evans Tseng, the dealer, has also been murdered and find him in his home. The gun used for the murder is a glock, the same as with Trejo. Everything seems to point at Leah. She has a glock and she could have made the tape disappear. Also, John Owens, the detective in Peberton, emails Tracy a link to a video on which Leah is practising Krav Maga, a tupe of Israeli fight, which shows how Leah could have made Trejo use the gun against himself.
Rebecca Stanldy, Leah’s boss, provides Tracy with a copy of the footage of the night the videotape went missing. Nobody was in the building other than Cho, Leah and the janitors. Tracy talks to the janitor, but he says that nobody came into the building, and he tells her about his routing.
Back home Tracy tells Dan about the copy of the footage she has been given, and while she is sleeping, Dan studies the tape. When Tracy wakes up, he tells her that the tape shows some inaccuracies and it seems that someone has manipulated it. Tracy talks to Mike Melton from the lab, and he confirms that there are some cuts, and she should get hold of the original, which cannot be tampered with.
Tracy returns to Pemberton and contacts John Owens, the detective. First, they talk to the janitor, who admits to having left the building to have a smoke and left the door open. Then when they request the original footage, Tracy discovers that there was a person there, and at first, it is difficult to identify, but she can tell it is a woman, and when she spots her earrings, she knows that it is Rebecca Stanley, Leah’s boss.
Tracy is told that Rebecca left with Leah. The truth is that Rebecca lied to Leah, telling her that she won’t have to face a hearing, but she has been transferred to Washington. Then she suggested they go for a drink. When they are in Rebecca’s apartment, Leah realises that there is something weird going on, and as she retrieves her gun, Rebecca appears pointing a gun at her.
When Tracy and Owens burst into the apartment, they find the two women holding guns, and Tracy tells Rebecca to drop hers. What she didn’t expect is that there is someone else involved: Owens, and Tracy finds herself with his gun against her temple. Tracy has to drop her gun, and she realises that both Rebecca and Owens are involved in the drug dealing. Rebecca started to use heroin for the pain in her back, and Owens is the big boss who used men like Trejo to bring in the drugs from the countries which he was sent to. Owens tells Rebecca to shoot Tracy, and Tracy tells Rebecca that if she shoots her, Owens will have to kill her as well. There is very tense moments when Owens keeps telling Rebecca to shoot Tracy, and Tracy saying that she should drop her gun. Then Rebecca and Owens turn to each other and shoot. Rebecca is killed, and Owens is hurt and Tracy arrests him.
Tracy and Leah talk, and Leah says that he has one more year of active service, and Tracy tells her that Dan, her husband, is a lawyer and would need someone as he wants to take things more slowly. So in the end Dan hires Leah for his firm. Celia and Del are now in a relationship and in love. And in the last page of the book Tracy discovers that she is pregnant.
I found this book totally fascinating, and I was clueless about who the baddy was until the end. A great first read for this new year, 2023
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