Unable to deny Chrissy anything, he cleared his throat and softly began singing Garth Brooks’s “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places.”He expected her to chuckle at his song choice, but instead she snuggled closer, her breaths growing slower and deeper as he made it through the first verse and partway through the chorus.
“Wait,” she cut in, sounding suddenly wide awake. “Did you just sing, ‘I’m not big on sausage gravy’?”
He’d been known to get song lyrics wrong before. She herself had given him hell for thinking Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up”was about breakfast cereal.
“Y-yeah.” He frowned as her laughter filled the hospital room.
“Ow.” She gasped. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts when I laugh.”
“What did I get wrong this time?”
“It’s, ‘I’m not big onsocial graces.’” She continued to chuckle. “There you go again thinking all these musicians are singing about food.”
He felt his lips quirk. “I guess not bein’ big on social graces makes more sense. I mean, who doesn’t love sausage gravy?”
“Heathens,” she declared vehemently. “Otherwise known as health nuts.”
“Exactly.” He tightened his fingers around hers. She was now fully pressed against his length. His nose touched her cheek and he very much wanted to replace it with his lips.
Up until that moment, the biggest threats he’d ever come up against had been measured in calibers. But now he had Chrissy. More than anything or anyone, she had the power to end him. To shatter his heart into a million pieces.
Some guys would turn tail and run at the thought.
Not him.
When the devil offers you something you can’t live without,he thought, gently rubbing his nose across her temple and loving the way she let loose with sigh,you dance with the devil.
Chapter 9
12:58 AM…
JayJay paced behind her desk, waving her hand through a cloud of cigarette smoke when she ran face-first into it.
“Put that damned thing out.” She scowled at Ricky, coughing when the foul smoke invaded her lungs. “I need to think and I can’t do it if I can’t breathe. Your brain might not need oxygen to function, but mine does.”
Ricky sat in one of the two armchairs facing her desk. He obligingly snuffed out his smoke on the sole of his flip-flop before tossing the crushed butt into her wastepaper basket. She waited for the used tissues inside to ignite, and then breathed a sigh of relief when they didn’t.
An office fire would be exactly what she needed to make this clusterfuck of a night complete.
Mateo shot Christina Szarek and Winston Turner. Chrissy and Winston!
The news was all over the island.
“Not sure what there is to think about,” Mateo muttered. Between his overpowering aftershave and Ricky’s cigarette smoke, her office smelled like a dive bar. “She doesn’t know who we are. I told you that big, black-haired dude said as much to the detective at the hospital. And didn’t you just say—”
“Tonight,” JayJay stressed. “She doesn’t know who you aretonight. But that doesn’t mean she won’t recognize you from the warehouse if she sees you out and about tomorrow or next week. This isn’t New York City. You’re bound to run into each other eventually.”
If that happened, if Chrissy fingered Ricky or Mateo, the next stop for the cops would be JayJay. Even though the fishing boat Ricky and Mateo ran wasn’t in her name—she operated it under a limited liability corporation—the cover was flimsy at best. A little digging was all it would take to discoverCatch of the Daywas owned by none other than JayJay herself.
“No way, no way. I’m not movin’, if that’s what you’re suggestin’.” Ricky crossed his arms and set his jaw at a sullen angle. “I like it in Key West.”
She pushed her reading glasses down to the tip of her nose and stared at him over the tops of the frames. “Are you allergic to logic?” Her jaw was so tight she could barely form words. “Of courseyou can’t move. I need you here, running the business, taking the deliveries.”
“So what’s the solution?” This from Mateo. He had on a baseball cap now, but it was flipped around backward, making him look like he had thug-life written all over him, and jackass written all over that. When JayJay hesitated, he continued, his voice drilling a hole into her already aching head. “Never mind. Youknowwhat the solution is. I’m just waiting for you to say it.”
She had absolutelyzerointerest in going where this boatload of shit wanted to take her. But she didn’t have a choice. She was being carried along on a tide that wasn’t of her making.
Damn the Colombians and their eagerness to recoup their losses!
