“Cassie was looking at the bar on Instagram,” I said. “They do a midnight tournament tonight.”
Cassie opened the app on her phone again, and I asked her to page down.
“There,” I said. “Zoom in.”
She used her fingers to drag the post wider. And there was Travis Wells, along with a silver trophy on a pool table.
“You’re thinking what?” Shooter asked. “We start playing? Look cute? The two boys wander over?”
I shrugged. “There’d have to be ground rules,” I said. “You can’t buy them a drink.”
“Easy,” Shooter replied.
“You can’ttellthem to drink.”
“Still easy,” Cassie said. “They’re men. We’ll just rebuff them.”
I blinked.
“We say no.” Shooter looked from me to Vincent. “Your gender doubles down.”
I turned to the tech. “I’d need audio.”
“Oh, my turn to talk?” Vincent smiled. “Sorry, this is fun.” He looked around. “I mean, I could wire someone up, but… it wasn’t in the package you requisitioned.”
I narrowed my eyes at the tech. “We’re sort of a specialty group, Vincent. You’ve heard of us, right?”
“Some things,” he said.
“We’re assigned cases that others can’t solve. It requires a different way of thinking.”
“I feel that,” he said. “And I mean—I got ideas if you’re open, Agent Camden. Good ones. They’re just more legal-ishthan legal.”
“Like what?” Shooter asked.
“Like I could tap into your cell phone.” He turned to her. “Use it as a listening device.”
Shooter pulled her iPhone from her back pocket. “I got no objections. This is for Agent Camden to listen, not for court.”
Vincent looked at me, and when I nodded, he pulled a backpack from under the passenger seat and removed a laptop. Plugged Shooter’s phone into it.
A minute later, he unplugged it.
“Done,” he said. “Your microphone is now my speaker.”
Vincent attached a dongle to his laptop and connected the other end to the bank of screens in the van. “Say something.”
“Something,” Shooter said, and her voice warbled out of the speaker above the monitor.
I looked to her and Cassie. It was go time.
CHAPTER SIX
The main bar at the Rotten Coconut featured a faux-thatched roof with shaggy palm fronds that hung down in irregular patterns. An attempt to reinforce a Key West theme, even though we were 320 miles from the vacation area.
On camera one, Cassie ordered two longnecks of beer and two shot glasses filled with something clear.
My eyes moved to Shooter, who slowed in the large room near camera two. I scanned the seven-inch color screen, counting nine four-tops. On the wall above a jukebox were two large inflatables, a coconut tree and an oversize duck with a female blow-up doll atop it.
