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“Thank you for telling me,” he murmured.
Her smile was tired. “Are we going to look for them now?”
“Of course.” Another lie. They were going back to his camp, but she wasn’t drunk enough to sleep through the trip. He needed her passed out and couldn’t risk her waking up at any point along the way. “We know a few more places he could be hiding. We made some coffee for the road. Ed?”
Ed handed a travel mug over the seat. “Here’s yours, Dianne. I made it just like you like it. Three creams, two sugars.”
And a couple of sleeping pills.
“Thank you,” Dianne murmured. “That was nice of you, Ed.”
“No problem,” Ed said, then handed another travel mug over the seat, this one sedative free. “Corey, here’s yours.”
The three of them sipped in silence, Ed driving in circles until Dianne’s blinks grew heavy. “I’m so tired,” she said, slurring her words.
Corey took the cup from her hand and unbuckled her seat belt. “Then sleep. We’ll be there before you know it.” He waited until Dianne was snoring softly, curled up with her head on his thigh. “She’ll sleep for a few hours. At least until we’ve got her safely stowed in my quarters.”
“Tell Bobby our ETA so he can move Rick and Jace into the comm room,” Ed suggested. “We don’t want her seeing them in case she wakes up.”
Their communication room was a man cave with leather sofas, an eighty-five-inch flat-screen, a very strong Wi-Fi signal, and doors that locked securely so that no one could break in and snoop. Because it was also where Corey and his team conducted their dirty business—the planning, the surveillance, and the execution.
Meaning, sometimes they executed people there, then dumped the bodies into the water for the gators if the client never wanted the body found.
Others, like their current client Trevor Doyle, wanted to avoid any suspicion of witness tampering. So that was exactly what they would provide. They’d even set someone else up to take the blame, so Doyle would walk away a free man.
Corey fished his burner phone from his pocket and dialed Bobby, putting him on speaker.
“It’s about time,” Bobby grumbled. “I saw the interview. You did good, boy. Especially there at the end. That reporter hit low, asking about your no-good daddy.”
Corey and Bobby had been friends since they were kids, and Bobby knew how much Corey hated his father. How hard he’d worked never to become a loser like his father had been. “I agree. Feldman’s a real bitch. Look, we’re an hour and a half from the camp. Can you have the assholes moved to the comm room before we get there?”
“Sure. But why? I thought we were keeping them out of there.”
Corey sighed. “Because we’re bringing Dianne back with us. NOPD’s been snooping around and if they catch her when she’s drunk—”
“Which is always,” Bobby interrupted.
“Yeah, I know,” Corey snapped. “But she’s my alibi. I can’t have her fucking it up. We’ll keep her sedated until it’s safe to take her home.”
“Okay,” Bobby said dubiously. “She could just have an accident and fall down the stairs. It happens to drunks every day.”
“No.” Corey drew a sharp breath, sickened at the very thought. “Just no. We’ll keep her quiet, then take her home and convince her that she blacked out and lost a few days. It’s happened before. Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “have you checked Ed’s social media accounts? How was the interview perceived?”
“Pretty much like we hoped,” Bobby reported happily. “That you’re a terrible guardian but everyone understands how hard it is to raise a teenager. And that if he’s fallen in with Sixth Day, his life is already too fucked up to repair. People are remembering how bad they were and how much of the city’s drug trade they controlled. So my pal on the force saved the day with that heads-up about Dewey.”
“I wouldn’t have even begun to guess that they’d think Dewey Talley was the driver,” Corey grumbled. “I didn’t know that Jace had a tattoo.”
“I saw the tat on Jace’s arm myself,” Bobby said. “It’s real.”
Corey frowned. “I believe you. But I also can’t believe the kid found someone to tattoo him without ID. He can’t read or write, but he can convince a tattoo artist to give him ink?”
“Let it go, Corey,” Bobby said with an impatient sigh.
Corey scowled. “At least we’re making it work in our favor.”
“We are. Like I said, it’s working better than we expected. I checked the pro-Doyle subreddit and the dudebros have been very active. One suggested finishing what Rick Gates started so Cardozo would be forced to throw the trial Doyle’s way.”
The Doyle trial had been covered to death in the mainstream media, but they’d found that Doyle’s fans—and Bella’s enemies—were most active in communities on Reddit. They fumed about lying women in general and Bella in particular. A few had been very graphic, suggesting “how awful” it would be if some someone “did to her” what she’d accused an innocent man of doing, “to teach her a lesson.” Most of the comments were couched in “how awful would it be” language to keep the moderators from kicking posters out of the community, but their intent was clear.
