Deep Blue Trouble
Steph Broadribb
Contents
Title Page
Prologue
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About the Author
Copyright
Prologue
They met just before dawn in the unremarkable parking lot of an out-of-town motel. Dodge arrived in his sedan dead on five forty-five; the man in the convertible showed a few minutes later. They parked hood to trunk, driver’s-side windows level. Neither wanted to get out.
The man in the convertible rested his elbow on the top of the door and leaned towards the sedan. His body language made it clear that he believed he was in charge. He had a sporty ride, better-cut suit and designer shades. He spoke with the authority of a man used to getting what he wanted. ‘Have you decided?’
Dodge chewed his gum real slow. Nodded. He spoke no more than was necessary – he was too smart and too cautious for chit-chat. He’d taken the job because it paid four times more than his usual commission, but that didn’t mean he trusted the man in the shades, not even a little.
‘Good.’ The showy guy took an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out the window. ‘Half up front, as we agreed.’
Dodge took the envelope and slipped it inside his jacket. He was old school, didn’t like bank transfers and online whatnots. Cash was better. Less chance of being traced, getting identified. His business thrived on anonymity and he guarded his own fiercely.
‘Not going to count it?’
Dodge kept chewing the gum, a slow rhythmic grind. Shook his head. There was no need. The showy guy had been less careful about his anonymity. He’d sent emails to one of the many intermediary addresses. Lots of emails, with specific details. They knew everything about this man. They could get to him fast and easy, and if the money wasn’t right, retribution would be swift.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’
‘No,’ replied Dodge.
‘Don’t let them get too close,’ said the showy guy. He shifted in his seat and lowered his elbow from the convertible’s door; subtle signs he was getting spooked.
It didn’t surprise Dodge none, people usually got twitchy after handing over the money. It tended to be the moment reality hit them; when the guilt of what they’d put in motion kicked in. Not this guy though. He doubted this guy felt anything. It was something about the look in the man’s eyes, barely visible behind the tint of the shades, but still somehow empty and hollow.
Killing could do that to a man. Dodge recalled the pictures he’d been shown of the yacht’s interior: fresh blood splatter across a page of Vogue magazine; bloody fingermarks smudged on a half-completed Sudoku puzzle; two bodies – one male, one female – punctured with bullet holes; a child’s ragdoll saturated with blood.
‘Timeframe?’ asked the man in the convertible.
Dodge hated that question. It was impossible to be specific when so many variables were in play. ‘It takes as long as it takes.’ He glanced at the sky. The sun had started to rise. It was time to leave. He looked back at the man. ‘There’s a woman in the mix now – a hired professional. She could be a problem.’
The man grimaced. His voice was hard and cold as granite when he spoke. ‘Watch her. If she gets too close, end her.’
Dodge kept his expression solemn. Chewed the gum in the same steady rhythm. Nodded again. ‘Whatever it takes.’
1
‘If he’s so innocent, tell me why he confessed to multiple homicide?’
Special Agent Alex Monroe kept asking me the question. He looked real pissed, like I’d messed with him bad, yet he knew what’d happened on my last job right from the get-go. We were supposed to be confirming the details of a new, off-the-books job I’d agreed to do for him; instead, he seemed fixated on the recent past.
‘I told you already.’
Monroe ran a hand over his unruly brown hair. ‘You told me a version of what happened, but from the way Tate tells it, things went down a whole lot different.’
‘He’s lying.’
‘One of you is for sure.’ Monroe looked at me over the top of his shades. Frowned. ‘You want the deal we made to hold? Then convince me I’m not exchanging one killer on the loose for another.’
I looked away, across the coffee house to where my nine-year-old daughter, Dakota, was sitting cross-legged on a beanbag chair, reading a book about horses as she sucked her strawberry milkshake through a straw. The bruising across her left cheekbone had faded from blue-black to yellow-tinged purple. I knew it’d take a damn sight longer for the horrors of the previous week to pale, but she was alive; we all were. If James Robert Tate – JT – hadn’t been with us, none of us might have survived to tell any kind of version of the truth.
‘It’s not right for JT to take the fall,’ I said. ‘He didn’t kill those people.’
‘Convince me.’
I sighed. ‘When I took the job to fetch him back from West Virginia I hadn’t seen Tate in ten years. It was supposed to be easy money – just a collect and deliver.’
Monroe nodded. ‘I’ve seen the job details. Tell me, the two of you were real cosy back in the day. What happened?’
I held Monroe’s gaze. Knew he was trying to figure out the nature of our relationship. I could tell him in two words – damn complicated. Ten years ago JT had had trained me to be a bounty hunter and we’d become lovers. Then it all went to shit.
Monroe cleared his throat. Sounded impatient. ‘Did you fall out?’
I looked down into my mug, swirled the dregs of my Americano around the bottom. Old Man Bonchese, the head of the Miami Mob, believed JT was responsible for the disappearance of Thomas ‘Tommy’ Ford – my husband, the Old Man’s enforcer, a man he thought of like a son. But the Old Man didn’t know the half of it. JT wasn’t the cause of Tommy’s disappearance; I was. Tommy murdered my best friend and, when I’d tried to take him in for it, he’d taunted me, threatened me, and I’d shot him dead at point-blank range. JT helped me hide his body, and we’d split soon after. Until the previous week I hadn’t known he’d taken the blame and lived with a price on his head, exiled from Florida by the Old Man, for ten years. I’d hadn’t spoken to JT in all that time, not even to tell him we had a daughter.
I looked back at Monroe. ‘We had a professional disagreement.’
‘But you’re backing him now. Why?’
I said nothing. I was fed up with going over it. What I needed right then was for JT to be free and out of danger. With him locked up in the Three Lakes Detention Facility the Miami Mob could reach h
im, kill him and get their revenge real easy.
Monroe looked irritated. ‘You came to me, don’t forget that.’
It was true. What should have been an easy job had turned out to be anything but, due to JT having been framed by a man named Randall Emerson – an amusement-park owner who made kiddie porn to order. When Emerson’s henchmen kidnapped Dakota we were forced to take the law into our own hands to get her safe, and the damage and body count kept on rising. That the Miami Mob had been gunning hard for JT as well had added a further complication. ‘We did what had to be done.’
Monroe raised an eyebrow. ‘We?’
I knew what he was implying. JT hadn’t been my prisoner the whole time, even though it’d started out that way. We’d gotten close again – emotionally and physically. I’d trusted him. We got Dakota back, brought Emerson to a rough kind of justice – one that meant he’d never harm another child – and then I’d had to take JT to jail in order to get the bond percentage that would help me pay some of the sky-high medical bills Dakota’s leukaemia had racked up. That’s when JT’d been charged with multiple homicide.
Monroe had offered me a way to clear JT’s name, and what with the DA saying they’d go hard for the death penalty, I’d been all kinds of desperate to get JT free. Without Monroe’s help, our only chance would be for the state trooper shot by Emerson’s man to wake from his coma and say JT was innocent. That didn’t seem likely real soon. I held Monroe’s gaze. Shrugged. ‘It’s just a turn of phrase.’
Monroe shook his head. ‘He’s confessed, and he looks guilty as hell.’
‘But he isn’t.’ I balled my hands into a fist. JT wasn’t supposed to take the fall. He was meant to stay silent. But if he’d confessed to things he’d never done I could guess why: he wanted to stop any blame falling on me, to make sure his daughter stayed with her momma. By confessing to stuff he hadn’t done, he thought he was keeping us safe.
He was wrong.
Ever since we’d split I’d been so determined to be independent, to prove I didn’t need a man to take care of me, be responsible for me, that I’d not told him about Dakota’s illness. Even when she was sick I kept putting off contacting him, telling myself I’d do it just as soon as she needed a donor – if she needed a donor. So I’d never told him about the cancer or that, if it returned, she’d need a bone-marrow transplant. Or that, as I’d already been tested and failed to be a compatible match, he, as Dakota’s father, would be her best chance of life. I realised now how selfish I’d been, but the mashed-up emotions of love and fear oftentimes threatened to overwhelm me. They made me vulnerable and I hated that. But still I regretted not telling him about Dakota’s condition. She needed him alive. I needed him alive. I couldn’t let him be sent to the electric chair.
So there was no way out. I’d studied it every which way and come up with a big fat zero. We might have been sitting there all civilised in that brightly lit coffee place, but metaphorically Monroe had backed me against the fence of the corral, ready to sack me out and get me broke. There was no play to be had. I was all out of options. I needed the deal.
‘Look, enough with the naval gazing,’ I said. ‘Let’s do this. You going to get me to sign something?’
Monroe pushed his shades up onto the top of his head. ‘Nope. You get our guy, your service gets recognised, and I’ll get Tate free. Screw up, and you’re on your own.’
Get their guy, not mine – Gibson ‘the Fish’ Fletcher. He’d been serving triple life in supermax until the previous week. After an emergency transfer to hospital for a bust appendix, he’d gotten free – killed three guards and disappeared. Monroe thought, because I’d caught Fletcher before, one time when he’d skipped bail, I could catch him again. I guessed it was probably true. Thing was, back when I’d caught him the worst I thought he’d done was some high-value thieving. The double homicide he’d been charged with – and found guilty of later – wasn’t a part of that bond ticket.
‘It’s high risk.’
Monroe shrugged. ‘It is what it is.’
I studied Monroe for a long moment. His words were don’t-give-a-damn tough, but there was a nervousness in his expression, different to his usual Kentucky cool. Seemed he needed me on the job, so perhaps there was a play to be had here after all.
I narrowed my gaze. ‘Before I do this, I want to see him.’
Monroe didn’t answer. He took a mouthful of coffee and swallowed it slowly. We both knew it was a stalling tactic. ‘Not going to happen.’
‘You’ve made me a deal that isn’t even written on a piece of paper. A deal I’m going to risk my life for.’ I glanced over at Dakota. She was still reading the horse book, her milkshake almost finished. ‘That deal means I’ve got to leave my daughter right after all the shit that just happened. The least you can do is give me and JT a little bit of time.’
Monroe’s jaw tightened. ‘It’s been three days already. Meantime Fletcher is still in the wind. I need you on him as of now.’
‘Tomorrow. I’ll start then, just so long as you get me a visit.’
‘Goddammit, Lori.’
I held his gaze. Didn’t look away. Didn’t blink.
Monroe exhaled hard. Flipped his shades back down over his eyes and stood up to go. ‘Fine. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.’
‘There’s something else you should know.’
Monroe turned back to face me.
‘I think I’m being followed.’
2
I checked the rear-view mirror. The black SUV was still there. I inhaled slow, trying to keep my heart rate steady. Looked across at Dakota sitting in the passenger seat and forced a smile; didn’t want her to see I was worried.
But I was worried, real worried. The SUV had been tailing us for seven miles. I’d seen it idling at the side of the street as we turned out of the parking garage of our Clearwater Village apartment. They’d pulled out when we were five cars clear, and stayed at that distance ever since. No faster, no slower, no jostling for position like the other vehicles on the freeway. And they’d made no obvious moves; that’s why they stood out as suspicious.
Monroe hadn’t put any store in my concerns, but that didn’t mean I was wrong. That black SUV was following us, I just didn’t know why. My chest tightened as fear gripped me. After all that had gone down in the past week, I could not allow my daughter to get caught up in another dangerous situation.
Pulling across the freeway, I accelerated. Knew I needed to get rid of the tail before we got closer to our destination – Camp Gilyhinde. I’d figured the kid’s summer camp would be the perfect place for Dakota to stay while I was hunting down Gibson Fletcher; somewhere she’d be kept safe from danger. But that safety would be shot to shit if I couldn’t lose the tail.
Five cars behind us, the SUV pulled into our lane and matched our pace. My stomach lurched. I was going to have to take more evasive action.
I looked at the navigator on the dash, assessing my options. Glancing at Dakota, I tried to keep my tone light as I said, ‘I think I’ve found us a cut-through, might save some time.’
She said nothing. Stayed slumped in the passenger seat with her arms folded across her stomach, her eyes staring straight ahead, very pointedly ignoring me. The thing of it was, she didn’t want to go to camp.
‘Look honey, it’ll only be a few weeks. Three at the most,’ I said. In truth I’d no clue how long it’d take to hunt down Fletcher. It’d been hard enough getting Dakota a late entry to camp. Harder still to have them believe me when I warned them about her bruises and how she’d gotten them. In the end, I’d enlisted Monroe’s help, pacified them with his FBI credentials. ‘You’ll have fun, and I’ll be back before you know it.’
Dakota leaned forwards and turned up the volume on the radio.
I clenched my jaw. Looked in the rear-view mirror again. The SUV remained five cars behind.
Gripping the wheel tighter, I pressed the gas and set us head-to-head with a huge eighteen-wheeler. I assessed the
distance to the next exit ramp and planned my next move. I’d have one shot at it. I had to get it right; it was all in the timing.
I turned down the radio, looked at Dakota, my concern making my tone sound harsher than I’d intended when I said, ‘Sit up straight.’
Dakota glared at me, rolling her eyes. ‘Why are you leaving JT in jail? He’s not a bad man.’
We were three hundred yards from the exit ramp. I glanced at Dakota again. ‘Because I have a job.’
‘That sucks.’
She was right. It did. So I didn’t pick her up on the cuss, not this time. ‘I wouldn’t be going if it wasn’t super important.’
‘I don’t get why you’re going. It’s like you don’t even care.’
‘I care.’ We were two hundred yards from the ramp. The SUV was five lengths behind us. We were neck and neck with the eighteen-wheeler. I needed to focus.
Dakota turned to me, pouting. ‘Then why are you leaving?’
I didn’t answer. We were a hundred yards from the ramp and closing. I accelerated harder and nosed ahead of the eighteen-wheeler. Concentrated on the speed, holding hard for the perfect angle. Kept my breathing regular.
‘Momma?’
‘Hold on,’ I said, flooring the gas. We shot a length ahead of the truck and I yanked the wheel hard, turning across its path, my focus on the exit ramp. The tyres squealed on the blacktop. Dakota shrieked. The truck driver blared his horn as we cut across him. No warning, no blinker, and barely an inch to spare.
I checked the mirror. The black SUV was blocked by the eighteen-wheeler and a pick-up truck; it couldn’t switch lanes in time. It didn’t make the ramp.
We were free and clear.
I exhaled hard.
‘Momma … what… why did you…?’
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