“But unless she killed him in the back of whatever vehicle was used to transport him to the vineyard, she had help,” Callie said. “Kurt wasn’t huge. A hundred and eighty pounds?”
“One ninety-three,” Leo said.
“That’s a lot of dead weight,” Callie finished.
Helia’s brain swam with all the information they’d gone over in the past hour. The picture Scipio, Leo, and Kendall painted was missing a few pieces, but still clear enough. At the heart of it all, Roger, Kelly, Justin, and either Akin or Greg were very likely involved in a drug ring. A business that left two dead and the others in the crosshairs.
“Okay,” she said. “The drugs are at the center of it all. What can we do about that?”
Scipio shared a look with his brothers. Collin nodded at some unasked question, then Mantis did the same.
His gaze settled on her. “We need to bring in the DEA.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“The DEA?” Helia asked him. “Not the police? Not Carter and Jess?”
No doubt calling in the Feds sounded big and scary, but for those in the room who’d worked with them, it was less unpredictable than working with local police.
“There are two reasons,” Monk said. Helia nodded, her hazel eyes filled with questions. “The first is that this is too big for the locals. Players like Pena and DKZ are not only out of their jurisdiction, but out of their realm of experience. The second reason is Sundaram.”
“What about it?” she asked, her body tense in anxious anticipation.
“The Feds will see Sundaram as little more than a small piece of a much larger puzzle. They will have no reason to focus on it other than for the slice of information they can glean from it.”
Her eyes slowly narrowed as the import of what he said sank in. “Whereas with local law enforcement, Sundaram willbethe story.”
He nodded. “Jess and Carter don’t strike me as the most experienced detectives, but they don’t strike me as gossips,either. I can’t say that about the rest of the force they’d need to bring into this.”
“And they’d end up handing it over anyway,” Callie added. “Like Monk said, it’s too big for them. They might salivate over the opportunity, but in the end, if they areanygood at their job, they’ll know it’s too big.”
She hesitated. “Okay then, the DEA it is. Do they have a hotline or something?”
Callie and Lina smiled. “They do,” Callie said. “But I’m thinking Scipio has someone in mind to reach out to directly.”
“I do,” Scipio said. Monk already knew what he’d say, so he kept his focus on Helia. His father had brought this on all of them. A week ago, he didn’t think he could loathe Roger Wilde any more. His revulsion had doubled for what the aftermath of his decisions was doing to Helia.
“A former teammate of ours is DEA now. He runs a team out of the LA office. We didn’t want to put a call in to Reaper until we ran it by you,” he said.
“Reaper? As in grim?” she asked. Monk bit back a smile. Helia had a habit of focusing on the small things when the big things got too big. Not that she avoided the big things, but she needed a little time to work her way around to them.
“From the pepper,” Lovell replied.
Helia swung her head around to where he sat with Marley and Hawkeye. “His mom’s from Trinidad. He pops peppers like candy,” Hawkeye said.
Marley nodded. “We’re talking food so spicy you can’t even taste it.”
“Why would you eat food you can’t taste?” Helia asked.
The guys all chuckled. “Sometimes it’s better not to taste the food they gave us,” Mantis said.
“But he did it for the high, no question,” Stone said.
“And the bragging rights,” Philly added. “Remember the night he ate that ghost pepper raw?”
Hawkeye ran a hand over his face. “I thought I was going to have to perform some not-so-minor surgery.”
“That bad?” Joey asked.
