Chapters (84)
“He’s taking some personal time, I guess. Sign off on it yourself. You’re a partner.”
“This company is going to shit,” Warsame says on his way out, looking harassed. Brazuca doesn’t blame him. He’s never been one for paperwork, either.
Brazuca looks around the tiny office. He wonders if he should care that the company he’s spent the better part of a year working with is falling apart. But finds he doesn’t, really. He’s got other things to worry about.
Curtis Parnell, the biker, had snapped a photo of his face when Brazuca was looking into a drug case for a wealthy playboy who’d lost the love of his life to an overdose. Because of Brazuca’s intervention, Parnell’s house had been raided, a selection of drugs and weapons seized, and Parnell went into hiding.
Brazuca really shouldn’t be so invested in Nora’s hardship now that he’s got a fugitive enemy of his own, but there’s something about the danger she’s in that feels more real to him.
Years ago, back when he was on the force, the shrink they forced him to see after he’d been shot in the leg had told him he had a hero complex. Immediately after the session he went out with his cop buds, got wasted, as they were all borderline alcoholics, and then he chose to forget that unhelpful assessment. He’d been shot at, was an alcoholic with a bum leg. What kind of hero is that?
He logs into his bank account online and stares at the balance. His playboy client who he once thought was a friend, Bernard Lam, had paid him an obscene amount of money to look into the death of his mistress. At first he thought the number was a joke, but Lam had money to burn and this is how he wanted to do it. He could have bought a new yacht or luxury property in the Caribbean, but he chose to give it to Brazuca instead to run down some leads. And, in return, get details about the people involved in smuggling synthetic opiates into Vancouver.
Brazuca got the information, but the price had been high.
If this thing with Nora hadn’t cropped up, Brazuca would have left Vancouver weeks ago. Not out of fear of Parnell but because he’s tired of being here. He doesn’t particularly like this city. It’s cold. Not just the weather. The people are cold. Distant. Just because you’re from a place it doesn’t mean you’ve got to put up with it for the rest of your life. He’s stayed out of habit and a concern for a woman who’s most definitely in trouble. A woman who, like this city, doesn’t even really like him.
There’s nothing keeping him here but him and his hero complex.