“Not sure.” Mateo shrugged. “It was too dark to identify them.”
“You’re certain they’re dead though?” she asked.
“Don’t miss what I aim for, JayJay.” Mateo had a big, barrel chest that puffed with pride.
Everyone else on the island referred to JayJay by her given name, but not Mateo. He used the nickname her mother had given her, the name she’d gone by until she opened her business. And it felt…intimate in a way that made her skin crawl.
“Well, that ain’t exactly right.” Ricky scratched his patchy chin. As far as JayJay could figure, Ricky only shaved about once a week. Around the same time he took a shower. “Took you a couple shots to get the woman.”
“Like I said, it was dark,” Mateo insisted. “Took the dude down with one bullet, didn’t I?”
“True, true.” Ricky had an annoying habit of doubling down his words, making him sound like a parrot. But he had a nose for finding fish, which kept JayJay’s customers happy, so…again…have to take the good with the bad.
Standing side-by-side, Ricky and Mateo looked like Mutt and Jeff. Mateo was so big you’d be hard pressed to knock him down with a hammer, and he liked to keep his jet-black hair high and tight. By contrast, Ricky was tall and scrawny. He nearly disappeared when he turned sideways and his stringy hair looked like the last time it’d seen scissors was back when Barack Obama was a senator.
JayJay didn’t care for either man. But what they lacked in likeability, they more than made up for with loyalty and the ability to follow orders without question.
Of course, those things might have less to do with their fealty to her and more to do with the fat paychecks she cut them after each shipment. A fistful of greenbacks tended to buy the devotion of guys like them—men whose moral compasses didn’t exactly point due north.
“And you didn’t leave any evidence behind?” She looked pointedly at the cigarette hanging drunkenly from Ricky’s bottom lip. “No cigarette butts? You wiped down the cargo door and the hard surfaces to get rid of any fingerprints?”
She’d been born and raised in the Florida Keys. She knew that while there were plenty of bar fights, some opportunistic thievery, and the occasional domestic dispute, the string of islands boasted very little gun violence. Which meant the local cops were going to be all over this like sunscreen on a tourist from Minnesota.
“Just like you said.” Mateo nodded.
“No one saw you leaving the scene? Your gunshots didn’t bring rubberneckers?”
“Ya know how it is down by the marina after dark.” Ricky made a dismissive gesture. “Can’t hear nothin’ over the music from the bars. And even if ya could on a normal night, ya can’t tonight. Wind’s up ’cause of the storm blowin’ in. The riggings on all the ships are makin’ an awful clatter.”
“And the cargo?” She lifted an eyebrow, her heart picking up its pace as she awaited their answer.
She flinched a little at the idea of a couple of locals being sent to meet their maker, but the thought of explaining a missing bale of snow-white Colombian gold to the cartel?Thatwas enough to have her breaking out in a cold sweat.
The seas between her and her Colombian contact hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing recently. A month earlier, the Coast Guard had intercepted a narco-sub near the Marquesas Keys. It’d been carrying 180 million dollars worth of nose candy, and the cartel was looking to make up for that loss by putting pressure on JayJay to accept additional deliveries.
Muling drugs was always a risky business, but it’d gotten more dangerous since the big bust had brought heightened Coast Guard and DEA scrutiny to the area. JayJay wantedfewershipments while the heat was on, not more. But her contact wouldn’t hear of it.
Because of that, JayJay had come as close as she ever had to getting busted.
Earlier in the day, Mateo and Ricky had been forced to jettison their latest load near the old warehouse when they realized the Coasties had been checking the ships coming into the marina. No easy task given the two men had been sailing with a boat full of customers.
Thankfully, the group of Kansas Realtors who’d come down looking to hook some mahi mahi had gotten so drunk on the way back from the fishing grounds, they’d been passed out on deck and hadn’t seen Ricky affixing weights to the bales of coke before chucking them overboard.
“We hauled up every ounce,” Mateo assured her. “Luckily, the tide was on our side and kept all the bales pushed up against the warehouse’s piers.”
She heaved a sigh of relief.
“Yeah, yeah.” Ricky nodded eagerly. “Everything’s copacetic.”
Big word for a guy who couldn’t read without moving his lips. Probably saw it on his word of the day calendar and had been itching to use it.
“Good.” JayJay dipped her chin. “That’s good.” Her heart rate returned to its normal rhythm, but picked up the pace once again when the high squeal of sirens sounded outside. Even muted by her office walls, she could tell the direction the emergency vehicles were headed.
The marina.
“That was quick,” she muttered, staring hard at Mateo and Ricky.
Mateo shrugged unconcernedly. He barely had a neck to begin with, and the gesture made it disappear altogether. “Some local probably tried to take a shortcut through the warehouse and found the guy. Or maybe the woman’s body floated up next to a boat in the marina. Like I said, we’re fine.”
