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“They got him too?” I whisper, my voice an octave below lethal.
“Yeah,” he replies softly, cautiously. “But it looked like he took one out with him.”
“Fuck,” I hiss, clenching my fist. “I gave him that job to keep him off the streets, Lory. I really liked him.”
His voice is so gentle it nearly cracks me open, bleeding me from the inside. “I know, Gem.”
“I heard Juan talking about the attack right before it happened,” I confess. “I was playing the security feed, forwarding through the day... And I heard him on the phone two hours before.”
“He’s been planning that for a while.” Movement muffles Lory’s voice. “Dean and Reggie have been playing poker with us for two or three months now. Ever since Chico died.”
I nod, no longer surprised at the depths Juan will go to get what he wants. He’s just erased the last of my lines.
There are none left.
“Ezra was able to hack into Juan’s laptop,” I tell Lory, keeping myself on track. “There’s all kinds of shit on it, but I don’t think it’s as useful as he was trying to sell. The only thing I could really put together was that he would tell Senior we were cheating on each other, not serious about our arrangement. And Riley thinks he wants to plant the seed of doubt, telling the foot soldiers that I was in bed with the feds and the MC.”
“Well, you are,” he snarks.
“Sleeping with and working with are two totally different things.”
“And you’re going to explain that to the rabbits?”
I scoff, a derisive noise that’s all Jasper and exactly zero Gemma. “I’m not explaining shit.”
“That’s what I thought,” he says, sounding disappointed. “That attitude will make them turn.”
“I don’t need to explain that I’m sleeping with anyone. We sell ecstasy to Wheeler, and Riley is his son. All I have to say is that I met with the seller’s proxy. And I don’t mind explaining that I have several feds in my pocket.”
Lory chuckles dryly. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“No. Not even a fraction of them. And still, I need more,” I murmur, then move on. “I’m assuming you have a vehicle? Or did Javi steal one?”
“We got the Merc out,” he states. “Someone slashed your tires. We thought your laptop might have been inside—”
“But I had it with me,” I finish for him.
“Right,” he agrees, shuffling something around. “The hard drive from the security booth is missing, too.”
I grimace. “Probably should have mentioned this sooner, but I took it.”
“Thank fuck,” he rumbles, relieved. “We need to see who all was a part of this.”
“Yeah... But we need to find Don and Jose first. I want to make an example out of them.”
“Have you called Shawn Douglas yet?”
Shawn Douglas… He’s the newest Crimson Bay Police Chief, a tall, thin man in his early fifties, with more debt than he can ever hope to pay off. He’s also as dirty as they come.
I got to him before Estrada, though it was a close call. Between the tyrant who tries to kidnap your daughter and the one who rescues her, the decision isn’t difficult to make.
Now, we reap the benefits of having the local police in my pocket.
“Yes,” I respond. “He hasn’t answered yet.”
I hear a car door shut in the background. “I’m on my way to get you. I’ll be there in twenty, and then we can pay him a visit.”
I almost tell Lory to go to Shawn’s house, but I refrain from the impulsive decision. He’s got teenagers, three of them, to be exact. And a loving wife with a shopping addiction.
