UNKNOWN: It doesn’t matter.
ME: I don’t get paid until they’re delivered, so it matters to me.
UNKNOWN: Do your part, and you’ll get paid by the end of the night tomorrow.
The party Jada was throwing. There were going to be catering trucks, and florists, and who knew what else coming and going at the estate. It only made sense they’d use it to cover the arrival and departure of the rocket launchers. It put it much closer to Tsuyoshi Mori than he normally liked, but I was pretty sure he had his ass covered. Who would go down if the deal was discovered? Me for sure. I was disposable.Saito-sanif he was the one handling the guns. Maybe Ken’Ichi if the money could be tracked to him once it was transferred into my account for my transportation fee.
“I’m on my way,” I told Malone. “I just got confirmation. Sounds like the party is definitely the drop.”
“We’re working our way in with support staff, so we’ll be on site.”
“And the bomb?”
“They aren’t going to blow it if Jada goes back. We have time.”
“Take care of it,” I growled.
“Just get your ass up here,” he said and hung up.
I left the conference room, dropped the key in the hide-a-key box in the water tank of the toilet, and went in search of Dax.
He was clanking glasses with Demario and Angelica at the club’s bar.
“Dawson! We were wondering where you’d disappeared to,” he said with a large smile still stuck on his face. Mine had been wiped away, and he seemed to read it. “What’s wrong?”
I forced a smile. “Nothing. Exhaustion. I’m heading up to New London so I can sleep for twenty-four hours straight. Do you need a ride up, or are you coming tomorrow?”
“Stay in town. Celebrate with Demario, Angelica, and me,” he said.
“Nah. We have the party tomorrow. I’m wiped. I just need sleep,” I said.
He eyed me for a minute, trying to place how much of it was true and how much had to do with the partial conversations he’d heard in Spain—Jada, and theKyodaina,and our business mingling into one.
It was Demario who replied, smirking. “Tell the truth. You’re really going to see a blonde-haired vixen with purple eyes, right?”
I was. I’d wanted nothing more than to lose myself in Violet when we’d docked. But now I had other balls flying in the air that weren’t going to let me just forget the fact there was a bomb sitting in Mandy and Leena’s garage. None of that was anything I could tell them, however, so I just let my wide, lazy grin slide over my face. “Yep. Nothing you three have to offer could come close to that. I’ll have my own private celebration instead.”
Demario winked at me while Angelica rolled her eyes.
Dax was still weighing all of my words in a way that he hadn’t ever done before, and it killed me a little that I was going to have to earn back a layer of trust that had once been so easily handed to me. I started to leave and then turned back.
“Hey, man,” I said. Dax looked up. “We did it.”
His face lit up like it had when we’d first pulled into the bay. “Putain ouais, we really did.”
I let the joy of it settle in for a brief moment before the anxiety of everything else pushed its way back in. We’d won theConquistar de la Atlánticacup. We’d taken a twenty-year-old record and smashed it to hell.
Whatever else happened,thatcouldn’t be taken away from us.
Violet
UNCHAINED MELODY
“Woah, my love, my darling,
I've hungered, hungered for your touch.”
Performed by LeAnn Rimes
