“And? Any complications?”
“None,” she replied.
“So far,” the man said.
“Yes. So far.”
“Is he talking?”
“He will. I should know who his source is within the hour.”
“Once you do, take care of whoever is fucking with me, and toss the asshole reporter to the fishes.”
“Of course,” she replied, but the line was already dead.
Her employer didn’t do pleasantries, and that suited Verena just fine. She set the phone down and was about to return her attention to the live feed, but something felt off. Her fingers twitched as she glanced at the three phones. The one she had just used wasn’t perfectly aligned with the others. Half a centimeter too far to the left. It threw off the symmetry and the vibe of the entire cabin, didn’t it? She reached out and nudged it back into place. Then again, this time just a hair to the right. Still not quite perfect. She adjusted all three, lining them up precisely along the edge of the table.
There. Finally.
No. The spacing’s all wrong.
She leaned in again, shifting the middle phone just a fraction of a centimeter.
Better.
Another nudge. Then another.
Enough!
She took a long, deep breath and forced herself to pull her hand back. She exhaled slowly.
There. Done.
Verena sighed, then swore out loud. She needed help, and she knew it. Her employer would kill her if he knew how much time she wasted on stupid things like that. He didn’t trust people who had weaknesses, especially the ones who he had admitted into his close circle.
Blackstone Security had been an unexpected turn in her life. Five years ago, she’d been a rising-star detective in the LAPD’s Narcotics Division, only months away from being promoted to lieutenant. Her career had derailed after a judge had deemed that emptying her entire magazine into the two men who had shot and killed her partner wasexcessive force.
She’d disagreed with the judge. Strongly. The two lowlifes had deserved every single bullet she’d fired at them. Still, facing termination and a possible civil lawsuit, she’d resigned. And, just as it had happened to many disgraced cops before her, the job market chewed her up and spit her out.
Unable to find a job that paid close to her detective III salary, she was about to default on her mortgage when her benefactor had called to offer her a job. She knew the man and had met him three or four times when she’d been a teenager, but she hadn’t talked to him since her dad, who had served alongside him during the first Gulf War, had perished in the cockpit of an experimental aircraft fifteen years ago.
“I apologize for not keeping in touch with you, Verena, but I’ve kept an eye out for you,” her benefactor had said. “I admire your resolve, and I watched the video several times, you know?”
She didn’t need to ask which video he was talking about. She knew which one. Though the footage taken by her bodycam wasn’t in high definition, it had captured the entire firefight.
“There’s a poetic ruthlessness about you. One that can’t be taught. I’d like you to run a private security firm I’m invested in.”
That was the moment she’d realized she’d been given a second chance.
A sharp knock on her cabin door pulled her out of her thoughts.
Justin Burton,Veloce’s captain and a former lieutenant with the US Navy, stepped inside before she could tell him to come in.
“Ma’am, we have a problem,” he said.
“You’ll need to be a bit more specific than that, Justin.”
“Something’s going on at the beach. I think you should see for yourself.”
