Page 7 of Daybreak

“Do you know what time it is?” Letourneau mumbled.

Whistler frowned. The jerk was either hungover or still drunk. “Is Garza there with you?”

“As, with me in bed? Hell, no. He’s in his own room,” Letourneau muttered.

“Then why do you have Garza’s phone?” Whistler asked.

Letourneau sat up, stared at the phone, and then frowned. “Shit. He must have mine. We partied hard after the dump.”

“Clearly,” Whistler snapped. “Go wake up your cohort, and both of you get your asses over to the estate, ASAP. The boss wants to talk to you.”

Letourneau groaned. “Yeah, yeah. It’ll take at least forty-five minutes to get across town.”

“I suggest you hustle. He sounded mad,” Whistler said and hung up.

Letourneau swung his legs over the side of the bed to sit up, then called his own phone number.

Garza answered. “What the hell? It’s not even 8:00 a.m.”

“You have my phone. I have yours. Whistler just called. Dixon wants to talk to us ASAP. He said Dixon was mad. Get dressed,” Letourneau said.

“Shit,” Garza said and rolled out of bed.

Neither of them knew that the body they’d dumped last night had already been found. They’d been partying when the boss called and were already high when they got the nod to get rid of a body.

The only problem for them had been the storm. Digging a grave with lightning cracking all around them seemed foolhardy, and dead was dead, so they’d opted to dump him in a long-abandoned warehouse, assuming decomposition and rats would take care of the rest.

* * *

Dixon was still in the dining room when he got a phone call. He recognized the number as a burner phone from one of his informants inside the Dallas PD and frowned. This was never good news.

“What?”

“There was a witness to the dump. A homeless man—an old dude who goes by Yankee Dan. He claims it was too dark to see or hear anything, but he was there on the upper floor of an abandoned warehouse where the dump was made. The cop who caught the witness took his statement and then dropped him off at Wilson Trainer’s homeless shelter.”

“Just a minute,” Dixon said and got up, cursing beneath his breath as he went straight to the library and shut the doors for privacy. “Damn it! A witness and a cop? Could this get any worse?” Dixon shouted. “Who’s the cop?”

“A homicide detective named Gunner Kingston.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Dixon asked, “Is he any relation to Asher Kingston, the special investigator for the State Attorney General?”

“Brother.”

Dixon took a deep breath. “Shit. Do you think the witness told the cop something that didn’t go in the report?”

“I told you what I know.”

The line went dead in Dixon’s ear. The news just added to his aggravation. He’d dealt with the federal witness. Now all this was happening because Letourneau and Garza didn’t do what he said. All they had to do was bury the body, and they couldn’t even do that right.

Despite the fact that it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m., Dixon went straight to the wet bar. He poured himself a double shot of bourbon and downed it like medicine, then sat down to wait.

Chapter 2

Whistler was in the foyer of the Dixon estate, watching for the two screw-ups to arrive, and when they did, he escorted them to the library, knocked, then opened the door and stepped inside.

“Garza and Letourneau are here.”

Dixon was standing with his back to the windows when they walked in. Whistler started to leave when Dixon stopped him. “Whistler. You wait in here with me.”