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‘And the club’s meeting as well?’
Dornan peered at me with what seemed like suspicion. ‘Yeah. Why?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘So I can mentally prepare myself to see those boys of yours again. You should teach them how to treat a lady with respect.’
Dornan revved his engine loudly. ‘If I have spare time, I’m going to use it disrespecting you in that bedroom up there, not teaching them shit.’
What a stand-up father. I fought the urge to respond with something sharp and condescending. Instead, I stood and watched as Dornan took off down Santa Monica Boulevard, not taking my eyes off him until he’d disappeared.
As I was turning to head upstairs to my apartment, something made me look back to the road.
A black Escalade was parked on the corner. No big deal, right? Common car, especially in LA. Except the window was down, and the guy at the wheel was staring right at me. He was wearing dark tinted sunglasses, and had one of those earpieces attached to a cord that disappeared under his shirt collar. He was FBI, plain as day, and he wasn’t even trying to hide it. They’re watching me, I realised, sickened. Lindsay’s making sure I don’t slip away. Maybe he did know me better than I thought. I turned and took the stairs two at a time, bursting into my apartment and slamming the door behind me.
Guillermo was at the breakfast bar, shovelling Cheerios into his mouth. I ignored the drips of milk all over the counter and walked right up to him, my hand outstretched.
‘I need your phone,’ I said, breathless and insistent as my eyes bored into his.
He lowered his spoon slowly, licking milk from his lips. ‘Why do you need my phone?’ he asked slowly, pushing the cereal bowl away as he held my gaze. I didn’t respond. I just looked at him, and sure enough, he reached into his pocket and withdrew his cellphone, placing it in the centre of my palm.
‘You’ve got five minutes,’ he said, his face unreadable. I watched as he walked past me to the front door, opened it, and then closed it silently behind him.
I dialled John’s number. He answered after two rings. ‘Yeah?’
‘It’s Ana,’ I said. ‘There’s FBI sitting outside my apartment.’
‘Shit,’ John muttered. ‘Watching you?’
‘I don’t think they’re watching Mrs Mayflower downstairs,’ I said, referring to my geriatric neighbour who was both legally blind and almost deaf.
‘What’s your feeling?’ John asked.
‘My feeling is bad,’ I said, looking around the apartment nervously. Was this place bugged like the hotel room had been? Shit, I hadn’t even considered that possibility. ‘Wait a minute.’ I switched on the small radio that sat on my kitchen windowsill. Placebo blasted out of the tiny speakers, and I turned that fucker up as loud as it would go without drawing suspicion. Then, I stepped out onto the balcony and closed the glass door behind me. If the balcony was bugged, I was shit out of luck, but I felt like it was the safest option.
‘Okay,’ I continued. ‘Dornan says the Sunday meeting’s been moved to tomorrow at noon. I say we leave right after. Any longer and the FBI will make it impossible. Any sooner and they’ll notice we’re gone before we even make it through downtown LA traffic.’
‘Yeah. My thoughts exactly.’
Something else occurred to me. It was useless to leave if we didn’t have a means to fund our escape.
‘Did you find it?’ I asked.
He knew what I meant by it. ‘All of it,’ he said, and it sounded like he was smiling.
‘Good,’ I said, sagging back against the balcony wall as relief flooded my limbs. ‘That’s really good.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
LINDSAY
‘Morgan,’ Lindsay barked across the packed briefing room.
Lindsay’s colleague and fellow FBI officer, Peter Morgan, stood up at the desk he was occupying and made his way to the front of the room. Standing next to Lindsay, he addressed the twenty-odd federal agents who were assembled, ready to jump into action as soon as they were given the command.
Another officer handed out clipboards with photos and vital information while Morgan elaborated. ‘There’s a shipment of young girls coming from Mexico,’ he said, his expression grave. ‘There are babies, people. We have to take these bastards down before we end up with a shipping container full of dead Mexican children.’
The room was deathly quiet. Mentioning children and trafficking tended to have that effect.
Their raid had been scheduled for Sunday, but intel suggested that the Gypsy Brothers members and their overlord, Emilio Ross, had brought the meeting forward to Friday – and today was Friday. Lindsay had scrambled to grab as many bodies as he could to help pull off such a raid, and so long as the LAPD sent over a couple of officers for manpower if things got ugly, they’d be fine. He could have waited until the following Sunday, but something in his gut told Lindsay not to give Mariana Rodriguez a week to rethink her agreement to testify, or for Emilio Ross to be tipped off by someone inside the Bureau and hightail it to Colombia.
