“We know he’ll just slip through the courts. Again,” Costello said. And he knew better than the rest of them. Jordan with all her money and influence had tried and still failed to bring him to justice.
Fia folded her arms. “I vote sharks.”
All eyes turned to her.
“I like that,” Atlantis said, looking her over.
She smiled at him. “Do you now?” She looked around the room. “Shall we have a vote about it? Helicopter or shark?”
“Are you serious?” Gina asked.
“Hang on.” Fia looked around. “Do I need a pencil and paper to keep track, or do you trust me to be honest? Wait, don’t answer that.”
Jake raised his hand. “I vote shark.”
Camden raised his. “Make that three votes for Jaws.”
Fia pulled out a Sharpie. “You know, I think I’ll just write the tally on the table next to Marcus’ head, shall I? Okay, Helo or Jaws.” She scribbled the words.
Porter made a gurgling sound.
“Another vote for Jaws,” Fia said. She made four tally marks on the table in front of his face. “Let’s make this go faster. All in favor of sharks, raise your hand.”
Hands flew into the air while Elissa’s voice came from Gina’s phone on speaker. “Put me down for sharks.”
Fia clapped. “Oh, it appears to be unanimous.”
“No,” Malcolm said from the back of the room. “I vote helo.”
Gina was surprised people didn’t give themselves whiplash the way their heads turned.
“Really?” Fia put a hand on her hip. “Helicopter? Do you recall what we just spent the last three hours doing?”
“Clearly. Their faces have been chiseled onto my brain for eternity. So I vote helicopter. I vote we take him up in the helicopter with a chum bucket first, then drop them both from a great height into a hungry school of sharks.”
“Oh! Can I change my vote?” Elissa asked over the phone.
* * *
They didn’t have to fly high and they didn’t have to fly far to find the sharks.
The chum went into the water first and helped to draw some of the biggest bull sharks they’d ever seen. But Gina liked to think what really attracted them was the stink from the very special chum she dropped in.
Porter’s right hand. The hand that caused so much pain when it slapped a face. The same hand that locked cages and condemned innocent people into darkness and slavery. The one that wrote checks and moved blood money and built fortunes for monsters. It fell glistening and red into the clean blue waters below and the sharks loved it.
Almost as much as they loved the rest of Porter, judging by all the blood.
It took a while, but even the blood disappeared, and the sharks dispersed, and the waters were clear and blue and clean again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Gina, early December, Los Angeles
“Ithink you’d rather be the one out there handling the dogs than in here running the place,” Gina said. They were standing at one of the windows watching Kyle McGuire examine each dog carefully. He and Arden were in town for the upcoming wedding and as the former kennel master, Kyle couldn’t resist the dogs.
“It’s the best job here,” Lachlan said. “Kyle agrees. Told me he has the same problem I do now running his agency. He just wants to escape from behind his desk and get back out there with them.”
“I believe it. I don’t know which one of you loves dogs more.”
