Once outside, he took great gulps of the humid air.
“Are you all right?” John had followed him out. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine.” Colton waved his friend away, summoning what he hoped vaguely resembled a smile. “Stomach’s messed up. Must be something I ate earlier.”
John nodded, mumbling something about women as he turned to go back in the bar.
Colton barely noticed. He started the truck and turned left on Samsun Road, heading home. He’d been wrong about Jewel Smith, née Julie Licciardoni, in a big way.
She’d been the prosecution’s chief witness against her husband’s cartel, testifying against her own husband, while simultaneously filing for divorce. She’d claimed she hadn’t known about her husband’s illegal activities and, when she’d learned of them, she’d turned the man in.
It was entirely possible, he thought with a shake of his head, that Jewel was one other person who hated drugs as much as him.
But then what explained the way he’d found her, naked and unconscious, acting as if she was high? Could the perfect witness have lied? Was she perhaps a user, a victim of the very same designer drugs her husband’s people had peddled?
He didn’t know, but he had to find out.
