“You believe in heaven?” Ricky blinked at her.
“I believe in hell.” She made a face. “After the last couple of days, I’m in it.”
“Good one.” He snorted and parroted, “Good one.” Then he fell into step behind Mateo’s retreating back.
She waited until they were out of earshot before answering the phone. Her stomach clenched into a hard fist when the unmistakable accent of her Colombian connection sounded in her ear.
“We hear bad things are happening on Key West.” The man’s voice was perpetually hoarse, like he smoked two packs a day or else had lived to tell the tale of a garroting gone wrong.
“I have things under control. Your last shipment is safe.”
“And the next one? Will it be safe?”
“It’d be better if you waited until—”
“Our deal is not to wait. Our deal is we deliver and you receive.”
JayJay wasn’t afraid of much. Not skin cancer—which she’d survived twice—not hurricanes or well-hung men, but she was absolutely terrified of the Colombians.
“Fine. Tell me when.” When he said one word, she heard her voice crack. “No. It’s too soon. I can’t possibly—”
“Be careful when you refuse me,carechimba.”
JayJay didn’t speak Spanish, but she couldn’t imagine the word was a compliment. Once again, she rubbed her aching eyes.
“What time?” she asked wearily and made note of the Colombian’s answer. Then, “My men will be there.”
“See that they are,” was his answer right before the line went dead.
Tomorrow.
So on top of dealing with the disaster that was Chrissy and Winston, she now had to scramble to book a fishing charter and get Mateo and Ricky back out on the water.
Another of old man Allensworth’s lines of wisdom had been,“A woman’s work is never done.”
Amen, brother,she thought.A-fucking-men.
Chapter 16
10:43 AM…
“So what you’re saying is, you don’t have a clue who those men in the warehouse were.”
Chrissy tried not let her annoyance show. But it was difficult given she’d spent the last thirty minutes listening to Detective Dixon take her down every path he’d wandered in his bid to identify her and Winston’s attempted murderers, only to discover each avenue had netted him exactly nothing. Jack squat. A big ol’ pile of nada.
“Yet,” Dixon stressed. “I don’t have any cluesyet.But I’m a tenacious sonofagun. And this job has taught me if I keep pulling strings, something usually starts to unravel.”
Chrissy didn’t miss his qualifier.Usually.Which meantnot always.
If the warehouse guys were never found, would she spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder? Would every heavy-set man who crossed her path make her shudder? Would she forever be waiting for the moment when those assholes decided to finish what they started?
Dixon must’ve sensed her inner turmoil. “Don’t lose faith, Miss Szarek. We’ve barely started. There’s still plenty of work to be done.”
She liked to listen to true crime podcasts while folding laundry, but now she wished she knew a little less about police work. The podcasts made it sound like the first twenty-four hours were the most important, and after that, the chances of catching the culprits dropped exponentially.
Here we are already closing in on hour fourteen since the shooting.
“What string are you pullin’ next?” Wolf asked from beside her.
