Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 57216 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57216 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
“They’ll talk carefully around you about this. Better to give them a few minutes to get down to brass tacks. It’s annoying, but their way,” she said. “How long has the cartel been fucking up your life?”
“Since the month after I opened,” I admitted as she turned to the coffee maker and started to put a pot on.
“I know A says it’s ‘just business,’ but he does understand there’s a human element to this. I wouldn’t say he is above involving innocent people like this crew is doing with imports, but you wouldn’t have to worry about him murdering you if something like this happened. If for no other reason than because he would never let someone else step in and steal his shit. His shipments would always be secure.”
“Yeah, it seems careless to involve me without making sure nothing happened. Unless…”
“Unless they were watching and think it was you who stole it,” Hope filled in.
“Yeah. Especially if their disguise was convincing enough. I’ll try to look into things for you too.”
“I can’t ask that.”
“You’re not. I’m offering. Hopefully, between the four of us, we can come up with something, so your life can get back on track.”
“It’s killing me to have the shop closed,” I admitted.
“As a fellow workaholic, I understand,” she said, grabbing cups and pouring the coffee. “So how did you get involved with Junior?”
I resisted the urge to say we weren’t involved.
We were, in more than one way.
“He’s been, like, my only regular at the shop since I opened,” I admitted. “He noticed I was… off. And he kind of browbeat me until I told him what was going on.”
“Then jumped to action to fix it. Typical for these guys.”
“What guys?” I asked.
“Oh, just the whole lot of them in this town. The bikers, the mafia guys, the loansharks. This is kind of their M.O. They are always taking over situations.”
“I don’t mind in this case. I was kind of just waiting for someone to kidnap and murder me before he stepped in.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t let that happen,” she said, shaking her head, then moving toward the back door to open it when there was a scratching sound.
In rushed three dogs.
All of whom were covered in mud.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said, sighing. “I have to deal with this,” she said, giving me an apologetic head shake as she demanded the dogs go upstairs.
I was alone in the kitchen for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the men speaking in low voices in the other room, before Junior came to find me.
“Where’s Hope?”
“Muddy dogs,” I said, gesturing toward the stairs. “Everything okay?” I asked, not seeing Andrés anywhere.
“Yeah. Let’s head out,” he said. “We’ll talk about it in the car,” he added, voice low.
He didn’t speak again until we were out of the gates.
“A might not seem like it,” he started, “but he’s fucking pissed. Andrés has this outer cool that can make it seem like nothing bothers him, but he doesn’t take it lightly when people are disrespecting him. He just recently had to deal with some dissent in his ranks, so having more shit like this going on is pissing him off.”
“I guess, if he’s on our side, having him pissed off is a good thing.”
“He’s on his side, make no mistake about that. But his side and our side happen to be the same on this issue. So we’re lucky to have him.”
“Hope seems nice.”
“She can be,” he agreed.
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“Hope is just a badass. If she’s not happy with you, you will know it. We grew up around the same crews, so there were definitely times she chewed my ass out over shit when I was young and stupid.”
“I somehow like her even more now,” I said, getting a smirk out of him. “So… now… we wait?” I asked.
“No. There’s still shit to work on,” he said.
“Like?”
“Like trying to catch that SUV on some traffic cameras. See if I can trace it to some endpoint. Get better images of the woman in the wig, so I can do some facial recognition. Then set up some people to come hang at your shop tomorrow, so you can be open for a while.”
“I have no good way to thank you for all of this. Save for… free coffee for life,” I said, knowing how short that fell for all he was doing for me.
“Careful. I don’t think you want to underestimate just how much coffee I can drink,” he said. Then his hand landed on my thigh, giving it a squeeze. “You don’t need to thank me for shit, doll.”
His hand stayed planted there until he needed it to parallel park outside of his place.
We made our way up.
I made coffee.
We each brought our cups to our respective places for the evening. Junior, his desk. Me, the TV with the gaming system.