Liberty then turned to Medusa. “I want a full sweep. Make sure nobody else got in. Make sure there isn’t someone hiding. Check every shadow. Every inch.”
“Yes, Prez,” she replied.
We then went back to her office.
“Send your pictures,” Liberty said.
I scrolled through the shots from the basement on my phone. Then I pulled up the photos Liberty had already taken at the junkyard and of the dead Serpent. Stack of proof. She also had taken photos outside while I must have been checking on Cali.
I forwarded them all to Blackjack and followedit up with a simple text.
He called thirty seconds later.
I put him on speaker and set the phone on Liberty’s desk between us.
“You all still breathing?” were his first words.
“For now,” I said.
“Valkyrie?” he asked.
“Present,” she said from where she leaned against the filing cabinet. “Annoyed.”
“Liberty?” he asked.
“Still Queen,” she said.
“Good,” Blackjack said. “Tell me what happened.”
We did. Quick and clean. The SUVs. The breach. Anaconda’s leg. Arizona’s almost-accident. Cali’s near strangling. The dead man behind the bar, the one in the street, and the other one’s self-inflicted exit with a toast to Bolivar.
“Roman’s not going to like hearing the cartel’s testing the fences this hard,” Blackjack said when we finished. “He already had suspicions. This kind of hit confirms his docks and his people aren’t the only things Tesauro’s been playing with.”
“You get the photos?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Ledger pages, bodies, junkyard and clubhouse shots. I’m going to send them to Roman with a nice little note that says, ‘Told you so.’ Between that and the Vincino head himself answering Liberty’s call, there’s no way he can pretend this is just a lover’s spat between us and Philly.”
Liberty’s lip curled. “You tell him the Vincinos triedto strangle our world,” she said. “And we strangled them back.”
“I will,” Blackjack said. “He’ll move faster now. The idea of a rat is getting less hypothetical.”
He paused, and I could almost see him rolling his shoulders on the other end.
“Liberty,” he said. “Keep that ledger buried. I don’t want it moving unless both of us say so and I sure as hell don’t want it in Roman’s walls until he tells me which of his walls are bad. You’ve got the safest hole right now even though it was hit. You’re furthest away from where all the carnage is about to take place.”
“It’s not going anywhere,” Liberty said. “Valkyrie and Jersey Boy tucked it in nicely.”
“Good,” Blackjack said. “Because if Tesauro and the Bolivar Cartel are willing to hit your compound in broad daylight, they’re certainly planning on doing the same to mine. And I expect them to come down even harder on us.”
“That’s my read too,” Liberty said. “They poked us, then pulled back. They’ll regroup, rearm, and look for the next pressure point. They already came for Miami at Shoreline. They’ll be looking at your clubhouse, your bars, your people. If they can crack the Devil’s Aces, they can send a message to Roman and everyone else that their reach is longer than anyone thought.”
“I’ll bump security,” Blackjack said. “We’ll lock down the gate, double our watches, keep family away. But I want more than just a stronger fence between us andthem.”
“What do you want?” Liberty asked.
“I want my Enforcer where I can see him,” he said. “War’s not a theoretical anymore. I need Jersey Boy back at the clubhouse. If we’re getting hit next, I want my sharpest teeth at my door, not at yours.”
Silence for a second.
