“We don’t use crew cars for this shit, man. The less connected we are the better.”
“So you want me to steal something,” I said, understanding what he was getting at.
“You do that. Do it without getting caught, and I’ll let you make the delivery.”
Slater, who’d been making out with some blonde in the corner until this point, looked up. I ignored the fact he was looking at me. I wondered what he was thinking.
“You gonna pay me for the delivery?”
Dom smiled. It was a cold and calculating smile. “You’ll get a cut.”
“Consider it done.”
“Gray,” Dom said.
I looked back.
“Don’t fuck this up. I only give one shot.”
Little did he know this was my one shot to take him down, and one shot was all I was gonna need. “I’ll be back in a couple hours.”
Dom seemed surprised. “You’re doing it now?”
“Time is money,” I said.
“Slater, go with him.” Dom ordered. “Watch him.”
Slater untangled himself from the blonde and followed me out the door. We didn’t speak until we were both shut in my Mustang and pulling away from the house. Slater glanced at me with a smirk. “Tired of waiting around?”
“Fuck,” I said. “I don’t know how you do this shit. How long you been under?”
“I stopped counting a long time ago,” he said, low. Something about the way he said it made me wonder how much of himself he’d lost along the way.
“One shot,” I said, bringing us back to the topic at hand.
“Better make it good.”
“I can do better than good,” I said and pulled out my cell phone I used when I needed to contact the department. I hit a button and a few minutes later spoke into the other line. “It’s Markson,” I said when Watson picked up his end.
Slater looked at me and smiled.
“I need a tow truck and a junker on the back of it,” I told Watson.
“Where?” he said, not bothering to ask me too many questions. He would never ask me unless the situation was dire. He had no way of knowing who was within earshot and what angle I was working.
I rattled off the name of a street across town.
“I’ll have it there in an hour.” Watson confirmed.
I hung up. “We got an hour. Want to grab something to eat?”
Slater laughed. “Hell yeah.”
I drove to the nearest drive-through and pulled into the line.
“A tow truck?” Slater asked.
I nodded. “I figured I could sell it to Dom as being cop proof. Cops don’t usually look twice at tow trucks on the interstate. Those guys are just doing their jobs, hauling damaged cars to the junkyards and service centers.”
“The supply can go inside the car its hauling,” Slater said, nodding.
“Exactly. Keeps it out of the cab with the driver. Plus,” I added as I drove one car length forward, “it will just look cool I had enough balls to ‘steal’ a frickin’ tow truck in the middle of the day.”
“What would you have done if Dom had sent someone besides me with you?” Slater asked.
I smiled. “I would have really stolen something.”
We ordered our food and drove to the location I told Watson. While we waited, we ate. Watson was true to his word and about an hour later, someone pulled up in a tow truck with a four-door sedan loaded on the back. The man driving parked it and then got out and jogged to the idling car waiting behind him.
The men drove off in the direction they came from, leaving Slater and me alone with the truck.
“I’ll drive it back to Dom’s. You drive this.”
I made a move to get out of the car when Slater stopped me. “I hate to rain on your parade here, but I got to warn you.”
“About what?”
“The last time anyone saw Milo was when he was doing a run for Dom.”
“You saying Dom’s gonna kill me after I deliver the supply?” Julie’s face flashed before my eyes and my insides turned to ice.
“I’m saying having a guy disappear after a job is an awfully convenient way to get rid of them and not have to pay them their cut.”
It was obvious Dom didn’t like me. He didn’t trust me. He thought I would fail today. He certainly wasn’t expecting me to show up barely two hours after he issued me a challenge.
I started to doubt the way I handled this. Should I have acted like this job of proving myself was harder? Should I have acted like I wasn’t quite as good at this?
The burger I just ate sat in my stomach like a boulder. It was too late now. I had the tow truck, the junker to keep the supplies in, and a plan. Slater would keep his mouth shut about how I got the car, and I would get the job of delivering the supplies.
I wasn’t going to worry about what would happen to me after the job was done because I planned to set up a sting and bust these assholes before any of them had the chance to try and kill me.
I felt better after thinking about it. The burger I ate went back to digesting, and I gave Slater a level stare. “I appreciate you telling me that.”
“I don’t want to see you die. Sometimes I wonder why the hell the good guys even try anymore.”
Being undercover for so long had turned Slater bitter. I needed to end this case, not just for me, but for him too. I had a bad feeling that if this case didn’t wrap, he was going to end up shifting alliances.
“We’re gonna get him, man,” I said confidently.
Slater nodded.
“See you at Dom’s.”
“Be careful,” Slater said before I shut the door and jogged away.
15
Julie
I was wearing purple sweatpants. Oversized purple sweatpants. My butt probably looked like a swollen raisin.
Check out the swollen ass on that chick, said NO man ever.
“Is everything okay?” I asked as I backed up toward the sofa, refusing to turn around and give him the worst view of his life. Suddenly my favorite sweatpants seemed like the top contender for the next time I made a donation to the Salvation Army.
But even my careful way of walking didn’t stop him from roving his eyes over my entire body. Beneath my T-shirt, I felt my nipples pull taut with need. Well, damn. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I resisted the urge to cross my arms over my chest and dove onto the couch, yanking the blanket over my purple lower half and holding it against my chest.
“You weren’t in bed?” he asked, stepping around the sofa into my line of sight.