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Bayou des Allemands, Louisiana
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 10:00 P.M.
Corey stood on the dock. Ed and Bobby were approaching with Zach and Allyson, the members of Bella Butler’s security force who’d been extorted into aiding them. With Zach and Allyson feeding them Bella’s movements, they’d be able to silence her before she ever took the witness stand against Trevor Doyle.
Doyle might have raped the woman. Corey didn’t know, nor did he care. Doyle wasn’t paying for Corey’s approval. He was paying for Corey’s expertise.
This was the big time and Corey was ready.
He and Bobby had done a string of small burglaries for more than a year after he’d been discharged from the army, but they’d attracted the attention of NOPD because they hadn’t realized that they’d created a noticeable pattern in their thefts. They’d had to stop their operation when Bobby had been told to either resign or be fired and prosecuted.
The failure had chafed both Corey and Bobby—Bobby because he’d lost his job and Corey because he hated to fail. He’d been basically kicked out of the army and his ego had been battered. Nearly getting arrested for theft hadn’t helped him at all.
But he’d realized back then that he needed to think bigger and better or he’d be a small-time thief for the rest of his life, just like his father had been—and there was no way Corey would allow that to happen. His father had been a loser who’d spent most of Corey’s childhood in a cell in Angola. When he’d finally gotten out, he’d fathered two more children before dying in a puddle of his own blood and piss after losing a bar fight.
Corey had vowed to never be like his father. He’d stumbled a few times after getting out of the army, trying to find his place. He’d tried to get a job but hadn’t been qualified for anything that earned a decent wage. Even construction didn’t earn him a decent wage. And he didn’t want just a decent wage. He wanted more. He deserved more.
He knew how to kill, so that was what he’d decided to do, and now he finally had a profitable business that was only growing stronger.
The idea for their dirty-jobs business had come from one of Aaron’s upscale drug customers. Corey had been making a delivery, having driven his construction truck into an exclusive neighborhood. He’d overheard the customer fighting with his wife, who was threatening to expose his drug use in their very ugly custody battle. Corey had casually suggested that the wife could disappear. The customer had said yes and paid him up front in cash, and Corey and Bobby had killed the woman, making it look like an accident.
Ed had joined them shortly thereafter. Corey and Ed had served together in the army, and Corey knew that Ed had bent the rules whenever it had suited him. That had included the diversion of arms and supplies to whoever would pay the most for them. Ed had had quite a little operation going during the years he’d served and had never gotten caught. So Corey had recruited him.
That had been three years ago. Now they were in the big leagues. Doyle was their first celebrity client. He’d been impressed with them because they’d found two people on Bella’s security team so vulnerable to extortion.
Discovering vulnerabilities was one of Ed’s specialties. Zach’s fiancée, a fellow veteran who’d returned from the war with a prosthetic leg and a nasty drug habit, had caused an even nastier accident while driving under the influence. Zach was a paramedic, but claimed he was working security for Bella Butler to pay for his fiancée’s state-of-the-art prosthetic leg. In reality, Zach needed the money to continue paying the crash victims for their silence.
He’d folded like a cheap suit the first time they’d threatened to expose the two of them. Unafraid for himself, he couldn’t stomach his fiancée serving time for her “mistake.”
Allyson’s sin was actually much worse.
Bella Butler exclusively hired veterans for her security force, so Ed had consulted his network of soldiers still serving about every name on the list. They’d hit the jackpot with Allyson—the rumor mill whispered that she’d slept with an enemy agent while serving in Iraq and that the pillow talk she’d shared with her lover had included the movements of her team. Four American soldiers had been killed in the resulting ambush.
She hadn’t been charged by the army, so Corey had had his doubts about the veracity of this information—until he’d confronted Allyson with it. She’d gone so pale that she’d nearly fainted. And then she’d agreed to do whatever he asked if he didn’t report her, erasing all doubt.
Corey felt confident that he could control both of them, but that didn’t mean he was blindly trusting. And because of that, he’d asked Ed and Bobby to blindfold them.
The boat sped around the bend, the light of the moon revealing Ed, Bobby, and their two blindfolded accomplices.
Ed brought the boat up against the dock, edging past Dewey’s old jon boat.
“Welcome,” Corey said jovially, moving out of the way so Bobby could lift their still-blindfolded guests onto the dock.
“I don’t feel very welcome,” Allyson said coldly. “Was blindfolding us necessary?”
Corey ignored her complaint. “We have a lot to talk about. Bobby and Ed, please escort our guests. We don’t want them spraining an ankle, now do we?”
The four followed Corey into the freshly cleaned comm room, where he allowed Zach and Allyson to remove their blindfolds. The two eyed each other warily. Neither had known the other was compromised until they’d met at the boat launch.
He directed them to sit around the table. “I trust that you’ll keep what you hear tonight to yourselves,” Corey said, eyeing each of the two in turn. “Or your secrets will be found out.”
Both Zach and Allyson tensed, but neither said a word.
Corey smiled. “Excellent. Let’s get started.”
9
Bayou des Allemands, Louisiana
