AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Fifteen minutes later, Lindsay was carrying two cups of coffee back to the lab. He’d decided to be nicer to the lab tech, in hopes that it’d speed up the process. At first, when he walked in, the lab was empty, and Lindsay almost threw his second cup of coffee at the fucking wall. That bastard had left? Gone to keep his dinner reservation?
No. He hurried back into the lab a few moments after Lindsay, skittish and almost excited. He was waving around a printout that looked like a series of lines and going on about striations and barrels.
‘Here,’ Lindsay interrupted, handing him coffee.
‘Is it black?’ the guy asked breathlessly. ‘I’m vegan.’
He frowned. ‘Romera’s is a steakhouse.’
The guy tore the lid off the coffee – which was black and steaming hot, luckily for him, the vegan steakhouse frequenter – and started pouring sugar packets into the brew. ‘My girlfriend likes to eat dead animals. I see enough dead people to never eat meat again.’
Lindsay thought of Allie’s skull. ‘Fair call.’
The lab tech handed Lindsay a piece of paper with those irregular lines again.
‘You want the good news or the bad news?’
‘Just start talking.’ Before I throttle you.
‘See these striations? They’re rare.’
Lindsay’s ears pricked up. ‘How rare?’
The guy grinned. ‘Only four hundred and twenty of this model were ever made with the extended barrel.’
It was like fucking Christmas.
Lindsay almost forgot to ask. ‘What’s the bad news?’
‘They’re made in Italy. There’s only ever been a few recorded in the United States. Course, doesn’t mean it didn’t come here illegally.’
Like Christmas and a blowjob all at once. He knew a man who favoured Italian weaponry. His name was Emilio Ross. Could it really be that easy?
Il Sangue. Of course. The very people who’d no doubt been depositing money into Allie’s bank account.
A quiet sense of excitement began to build in Lindsay’s chest; the thrill of the chase in these cases was addictive. It was what he lived on. It was the thing that kept him going through the long nights and the harsh realities and the midnight autopsies.
Having someone to chase.
‘What does the gun look like?’ he asked, almost breathless.
The tech clicked around a few more pages and pulled up a picture that made Lindsay’s dick want to go hard.
The bullet striations. A rare handgun with a wooden inlaid grip. The Il Sangue Cartel.
Lindsay Price knew exactly where he’d seen a gun like that before. In a gym locker in Santa Monica.
Seemed a visit to Mariana Rodriguez was long overdue.
CHAPTER TEN
MARIANA
‘You ever think about leaving?’ I asked Guillermo, as we sped down the freeway some twenty minutes later, headed back to the apartment minus a box of ashes, a funeral procession without a body.
Guillermo reached a hand out without warning, grabbing my upper arm. Not rough, but insistent. Stop. I felt his fingers dig into my skin as I squinted against the harsh sunlight, trying to make out his expression.
‘These are dangerous times, Ana,’ Guillermo said, his expression grave as he watched the road in front of him. ‘Dangerous times. He’s testing you, don’t forget. He wants you to fail. He wants you to run, so he can aim at your back and pull the trigger.’
