Page 72 of Tony

“Yeah.” I smile. Because she was paying attention earlier. “Tara is fine.”

“I don’t know if I would call her fine. She was weird too. I could never put my finger on it, but she always came across as… fake. For some reason. Not that she wasn’t a nice girl. I liked her. But there was just something off about her.”

“Yeah, that’s because she’s one of the witnesses.”

“OK, you’ve said that twice now. What’s it mean?”

“This is where Vann comes in. Because he was the one who noticed that this Fort Collins place is crawling with… witnesses. People who saw something they shouldn’t have. And they all got sent here. And my brother sent me here—I mean, I did come to figure out why I couldn’t get Rosalinda off my mind, but I was actually sent here by Alonzo. To hit up Vann and figure out what he knows. Because we’re pretty sure that the FBI people we’ve been working with aren’t… like… on the up and up.”

“They’re dirty.”

“Yeah. We think so.”

“And now you’re caught up in their dirty plans?”

“Yeah.” I sigh. “We think that too. And it doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going, does it?”

“Prison. All of you.”

“Or death,” I add. I don’t want to admit that, but… it’s so obvious. It would be dishonest to leave that possibility out.

Soshee swallows hard and takes a deep breath. “OK. So… let me get this straight. Tara and Belinda both saw something you Dumas people did—”

“No, Tara was in LA. I don’t know what her other name was before she became Tara. I kinda zoned out during that part of the meeting—”

“Tony!”

“What?”

“Oh, my God. What meeting? And how did Tara see something you guys did in Key West if she was in LA?”

“She didn’t. She saw something else. Maybe related? Maybe not? I don’t know. None of us knows. All we know is what Vann told us. He’s the one with the missing information. And now that I know you’re actually related to the Boston family…”

“Now that you know that what? You’re done with me?”

“What? No, Soshee. Not at all. I was going to say now that I know that you’re involved… well, I’m not leaving this town until I figure the whole thing out. I’m not leaving until you’re safe. And if that means I have to take you with me when I go home, so be it. I will not abandon you. Do you hear me? I mean it. I will not.”

She sits in silence for a few moments, the car shaking a little as other cars whiz by on the highway, thinking about how I just turned her whole world upside down in the span of ten minutes.

I’m good at that now, I guess. Turning people’s lives upside down seems to be a bad habit of mine.

“OK,” she finally says. “What does this have to do with what you saw this morning on your way home from Vann’s house?”

“Are you sure you want to hear it?”

She nods. “I’m sure. I feel like my mother and I have been running from this truth my whole life. And I guess we have. Two thirds of it, anyway. I’m done, Tony. Whatever it is you guys are planning, I’m in. I’m all in. So tell me what you saw.”

I do my best to explain the yippy dog and the various people I’ve seen walking him over the past few days. And then how I followed them back to the coffee shop next door to Sick Boyz. “The walker was thinking about breaking in to the shop,” I say. “Like maybe the Vaughn brothers have something to do with all this too?”

“Or maybe they thought Belinda was hiding something in there?”

“She’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she understands even less then I do. I’ve been thinking about this and it only makes sense. All Belinda knows is that she witnessed our illegal smuggling eight years ago and all she got for her trouble was a fucked-up second chance. I think it’s Vann they’re after. They must know that he’s on to them.”

“Oh,” she breathes. “Oh, no.” She looks at me. “We have to go tell him. Both of them.”