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“Afoot? Been watching those new Poirot movies?”
A guilty expression flashed across Morrison’s face. “I couldn’t handle any more Swifty sh-stuff.” He glanced back down the hallway as if Daniella was going to hear his real opinion of Taylor.
“Thanks for taking one for the team,” Dante said.
Dante had listened to so much Taylor Swift in the last five months that he knew most of the lyrics. He didn’t hate her music, but there was a limit to how many times a man could listen toCardiganand not start to relate to whoever she was singing about.
Suppressing a groan, Dante gingerly leaned forward and picked up the handset—damn, the thing was fucking heavy—and held it to his ear. The dial tone was loud and clear. That was good, he supposed. Knowing Hatch would answer, no matter what time of night it was—and it wasn’t midnight yet—Dante pressed the sequence of numbers he had memorized years ago.
Hatch picked up on the first ring.
“Hatch, Castone.”
“Dante.” Hatch’s voice was hoarse; he’d probably been yelling at people all day. Maybe all week. Hatch was one of those guys who looked mild-mannered but when he opened his mouth, the illusion was quickly shattered.
“You’re really on board with this plan of Morrison’s? And I use the word plan loosely.”
“It’s not the worst idea he’s ever had. I think it could work. We thought the Campos organization was worried about something, and this attack on you only proves us right. If you’d gone into WITSEC, this could have been avoided.”
Dante did not appreciate beingI told you so-ed every time he and Hatch spoke.
“Fuck you, Hatch. It’s too late now, so quit beating a dead horse. Daniella doesn’t know anything. She saw the assassins, yes, but she still can’t ID them—and they’re dead anyway, right?”
“Campos must think Dani knows something. And I have a theory about that.”
“What?”
“Remember how I told you that what was left of two guys had been found?”
“The bodies outside of Salem?”
“Right. Well, they were a little hard to identify right away. It was the MC rags and tattoos that gave us the initial direction and tentative IDs. But funny thing that. It turns out that one of them was a known associate. Curtis Leandro, Alonso Campos’s second-in-command. The other was a nobody. No significant priors. His name was Jimmy Brown—for real.”
“What does that mean, that Brown was a nobody?”
“We’ve batted around just about every idea here in the office, and the one we keep coming back to is that Jimmy Brown was a fall guy. What if Alonso and Curtis killed Simone and Curtis maybe got twitchy, so Alonso had him taken out? And added a second just to make sure we thought both killers were dead.”
“I’m out of the loop. Explain to me how Daniella would still be a threat to them if we thought the shooters were both dead.”
Things were not making sense and something Lani had said had Dante’s thoughts heading another direction. He didn’t want to say anything to Hatch, not until he’d confirmed a few things, but a terrible feeling of dread was blooming, and it didn’t have anything to do with Aldo Campos.
“You know as well as I do that both Campos brothers are one Rorschach test this side of batshit crazy,” Hatch said.
There was no denying the Campos brothers were psychopaths. So was what was left of Dante and Daniella’s biological family.
“And you think we might be able to convince them that Dani and I’ve left town?”
If Hatch thought the plan might fool Campos, then maybe it would fool the Castones too, if it turned out the dread was right. Probably not, but Dante was done leaving his life behind him. Done lurking in the shadows. It hadn’t kept Simone alive.
“If you’re still not willing to go into WITSEC, it’s the only plan we’ve got.”
Right or wrong, Dante was tired of running. He’d been running for so long that he’d actually forgotten he was. He’d gotten careless, or Simone had, and it may have cost her her life. If his instincts were right, it was time for him to make a stand. Past time.
“Still not going.”
And then there was André. Selfish, possibly, but Dante wasn’t letting André Dear go a second time.
“Operation Trojan Horse it is.”
