“Damn. Too bad ya missed her, boss.” Hood’s Southern drawl grated on Grant’s already shredded brain tissue.
“If he wanted to kill her, fucknut, she’d be dead.” Grant met Sam’s piercing gaze. “So, there’s a leak.” That was the reason he was still alive and in this room. Sure as shit, Sam suspected one of them had a loose tongue. It also accounted for the gun on the table within his easy reach.
Sam nodded once.
“Doesn’t have to be one of our guys. The leak could be from Wright’s camp,” Hood said.
Deflection. Never a good idea with this crowd.
“You sound a little worried there.” Ryerson cracked his massive knuckles.
“Been singing like a birdy?” Francisco flapped his hands at his shoulders to make sure his meaning was clear.
Hood rolled his eyes. “You can’t be serious, Francisco. We all know you’d sell your own daughter to make a buck.”
Francisco was a small, wiry mother. The second he lunged, he had Hood by the throat, fingers dug into his carotid, and a knee jammed into his ball sack before the limp dick could react. “You’re offside. And my daughter’s not on the player roster. Got that, shit for brains?”
Eyes bulging and puckered lips working for oxygen, Tom Hood did an excellent imitation of a fish out of water. Man, these boys needed to learn to keep their gobs shut.
“Enough.” Sam’s voice carried an edge, and it did the trick. Francisco released his hold, straightened Hood’s collar, smacked him on the cheek, and resumed his place two chairs over.
Drummond slapped Hood on the back while the douche doubled over in an attempt to convince his lungs to re-engage. “Hood does have a point,” Drummond said. “It had to be one of Wright’s boys who killed him. Nobody else would’ve had access to the car.”
“The crispy critter’s not Wright,” Ryerson replied.
“So why bother setting a meeting only to bomb the hell out of a car?” Hood wheezed.
His limit reached, Sam took over. “It was a message. Wright was pissed. Bodak threatened to cut him out if they didn’t meet face-to-face. Wright wanted to remind him who wears the pants. Here’s where we’re at.” He pointed across the table. “Drummond, Hood, you’re on the next flight to Miami. Sit on Emerson’s house and pinch her if she shows.”
Grant didn’t believe Grace Emerson would be found at home. She seemed to have reasonable cognitive abilities, although her survival instincts were for shit. Sam must have been thinking the same, which explained why he chose those two for the useless job. Doing nothing should keep them busy and out of trouble.
“Ryerson, Francisco, find out where Jackson Lowe is and pick him up.” There was some general nodding around the table, and the scrape of a chair as Hood made to get up.
Wait for it.Sam’s fist hammered the table, making Francisco’s Diet Coke can jump two feet, keel over dead, and roll off the edge, a trail of aspartame left in its wake. The effect on the geniuses around the table was comical.
After a whole lot of throat clearing and back straightening, Sam resumed. “I need them both alive. So when you have them, you wait for my orders. And you bring themto me. Is that clear?”
A chorus of “yes, sirs” bounced around, and Sam dismissed the group with a flick of his wrist, a look of total disgust on his face. Grant didn’t budge. He wasn’t brainless enough to think Sam had finished with him.
Grant eyed his boss, who eyed him right back. “As much as I’m enjoying this moment, I have a hot date with a bottle of Tylenol. So can we get on with”—he waved his hand between them—“whatever this is.”
With a rare smile, Sam leaned back in his chair and slid a phone across the table. Grant palmed it and watched a stationary red dot flash in a sea of green. A couple of taps on the screen and the red dot became a pinprick in the vast emptiness ofEC Manning Provincial Park.
“You planted a tracker in my truck.”
“Yes.”
“You think I’m the rat.”
Sam eased out of his chair and stood. “I have trackers in every vehicle.”
Grant met his boss’s eyes. They were gun-barrel gray and just as hard and cold as the Beretta he reached for. When Sam plucked the forty off the table and holstered it, Grant knew he’d dodged a bullet.
Recognizing the question he’d asked hadn’t been answered, he tossed out a new one as Sam turned to go. “Now what?”
“Now, you go get your truck back.”
“And then?”
