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“He’s intelligent enough to get me, any of us, killed.” One word to Rex was all it would take.
“We’re smarter than him.” Kat stood. “Really think about getting together somewhere else with your mom, Veronica. You need it. So does your mom.”
“You’re right.” Veronica stood, wiggled her fingers. “Time to get my claws done. Tell everyone I said hello.”
Chapter 8
Veronica pulled in behind Frisky and parked in her usual spot underneath her apartment. She had some time before the club opened in an hour, and planned to use it to text her mom and set up her next “salon appointment.”
Stepping out of her vehicle, she spied a familiar black Range Rover. Her blood turned icy and she fought to keep her breathing even as well as her thoughts.
Rex.
The armored vehicle was a dead giveaway to the trade Rex engaged in, as he sure as heck wasn’t working for the Secret Service or doing any kind of private protection duty. The SUV was a drug trafficker’s wheels, pure and simple. Her training kicked in and she forced herself to breathe deeply, to round her shoulders back and down. Her heart rate wasn’t cooperating, though, and neither was her perspiration as her scalp prickled with sweat that she couldn’t acknowledge. Not without risking breaking cover—if her wig moved an iota, it could prove deadly. An image of Rex’s stunned surprise if he saw her sans wig, wig cap making her appear bald, flashed across her mind.
A sudden giggle threatened to come out of her mouth and she bit the inside of her cheek. Her dark sense of humor was a great survival skill on the force but not so much in this moment when she had to play her undercover role to a T.
Get it together, Officer Martin. Veronica.
As she continued to stare at the SUV, the passenger door opened and first one, then two lumberjack boots appeared, followed by the hulking form of Rex’s main bodyguard, Bulldog. He stared at her through mirrored shades, eliciting pure revulsion deep in her belly. Bulldog had watched her with undisguised lascivious hunger while Rex had interviewed her last month. According to the background information provided by the sheriff, Bulldog had a rap sheet longer than the Enchanted Highway, including sexual assault and battery that he’d served hard time for. She had no doubt what he’d do to a woman he perceived as having any iota of power in what he thought was exclusively a man’s world. As far as the cartel was concerned, drug running was a man’s world. There were no female kingpins that Veronica or local law enforcement was aware of. Hawk hadn’t mentioned anyone but Slim, either.
Bulldog walked to the front of the vehicle, waited for his boss to join him. Rex took his time unfolding his lanky form from the driver’s side. Another indication of Rex’s need for total control—she’d observed that he was always the one driving, and never allowed Bulldog at the wheel.
She stood tall, held a steady gaze with Rex’s sunglasses as he approached.
“Rex. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Business is never fun, Monique.” He stopped inches from her, pushed his sunglasses up on top of his completely shaven head. A large diamond sparkled from one ear. “I understand you’ve had a large increase in…patronage, shall we say?”
Her blood ran cold. Did he know she and Hank were moving Hawk’s product? Her fingers itched for her revolver. If Rex wanted to execute her on the spot as he’d done with the previous two managers, he could. Even if she escaped his murder attempt, Bulldog would pull his weapon and take her out in a flash.
“It’s been brisk, that’s for sure.” She adopted a casual stance, did her best to send vibes that she had nothing to fear as she was loyal to Rex. “As I promised you when you hired me, I’m doing my best to make Frisky as profitable as I can.” She smiled.
“It’s interesting how much your foot traffic has increased in just the last week, Monique.” His flat tone was unreadable. Either he was on to her and Hank, or he was asserting his maniacal dominance by his intimidating behavior. Or both.
A door slammed behind them—the back door of the club. Hank. Phew. He’d be a distraction that could save her life if this went south.
“Boss! Great to have you in!” Hank rushed forward, reached out to grasp Rex’s hand, which Rex ignored. “Why don’t we go inside and have a nice cup of coffee?” Hank didn’t appear offended, but motioned for Rex to enter the club. Bulldog indicated for her to fall in behind Rex, and the bodyguard walked behind her, his energy dark and palpably threatening.
Hank’s offer of coffee wasn’t random. Everyone who worked for him knew that Rex never touched booze or drugs. One of his odd quirks was that he was a coffee connoisseur. He afforded the finest beans from the mountains of Colombia, flown in fresh weekly. At the expense of all the sad souls who bought his product.
Veronica often wondered how Slim, whom she’d never met, lived. As one the two kingpins, he was worth hundreds of millions. Rex was one of his many worker bees.
Which made her and Hank mere pissants, and yet Rex had shown up here, several days before their weekly payment was due.
As trepidation rocked her usual steadfast demeanor, threatening to boil over into fullfledged panic, she kept placing one foot in front of the other. Veronica entered Frisky’s back door, knowing full well it wasn’t a given that she’d come back out alive.
Dylan logged into the FBI laptop he kept locked away in a safe that he hid under the floorboards of his bedroom. He had the main suite on the second floor of the sprawling home located in Red Grove’s most exclusive community. Gated, with each property no less than three acres, it seemed more like an English countryside manor than the custom build that illicit narcotics had built.
He’d made sure that Brick, Slash and Scar were otherwise occupied—the two former on a video game and the latter doing his laundry—before he disappeared, claiming he needed a power nap.
What he read in the recent intel reports concerning the cartel made any kind of rest impossible. The organization had brought in triple the amount of revenue this past month than any three previous. Such a steep curve might precede the cartel’s head honchos mixing things up, to keep law enforcement off their backs, make the chase that much more difficult. Which often meant dead bodies, and not just the cartel’s patrons who’d OD’d.
Frisky was a prime example of a money front that, because it was doing so well, a person like Rex would want to shut down before the “heat,” aka Dylan, showed up and shut more than the drug distribution down. When LE made their final takedown of the cartel, the goal was to completely dismantle the sinister group.
“Don’t wake him up for that, man,” Scar said on the other side of his closed door. Dylan quietly clicked his laptop shut and shoved it between the box spring and mattress, tiptoed to the door to hear better.
“We gotta keep him informed, don’t we?” Brick’s fierce whisper underscored the man’s concern. “What if Frisky gets the hammer?”
