Distortion (Moonlighters Series)

  “Oh. Sorry. I need her to babysit right now. I have an emergency.”

  “But she’s only twelve. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. She knows how to change diapers, right? You have a dozen kids.”

  “I have five.”

  “So she knows what to do. I’ll pay her.”

  The woman hesitated. Amber wanted to scream.

  “Why isn’t he at daycare?”

  “He was sick this morning, but he’s better now.” He wasn’t, but Amber couldn’t take the chance that the woman would refuse. “He’s sleeping, anyway. He may sleep the whole time I’m gone.”

  “How long do you need her?”

  “Just a couple of hours. Come on, I’m in a hurry!”

  “All right. I’ll send her over.”

  Amber waited, fidgeting, about to go crazy, until she heard the knock on her door. She opened it. The girl was smaller than she remembered. She looked ten at the most.

  “Hurry up, come in,” Amber said. “I have to go.”

  The girl looked up at her. “Well, where is his food? Does he take a bottle? Where are his diapers?”

  Amber quickly gave her a rundown.

  “My mom says he’s sick. What if he has a fever?”

  “Then call your mom. I’m sure she’ll step in.”

  The girl just looked at her.

  “Okay, I’m outta here. Call me if you need me, but if I don’t answer, I’ll get back to you when I can.”

  She went to her car and pulled out of the driveway. As she drove, she called Lenny on the disposable phone he’d given her.

  He answered quickly. “Amber, did you forge the documents?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I worked on it all night. I think I can prove I’m his wife now.”

  “Amber, don’t screw this up.”

  “I won’t!”

  Last night, he’d made her reset her phone, take the battery out, and throw it out the car window a few miles from her house, just in case it was wiretapped. But the question of who had pretended to be her plagued her.

  “Lenny, do you think it was the police who had my phone? Yesterday they came to tell me not to leave the baby in my car. Maybe they’ve been watching me.”

  “Doubtful. Stealing your phone would ruin their case if there was one. But somebody had it. It’s too much of a coincidence that you happened to misplace it at the exact moment somebody hacked into it. No, I think somebody stole your phone out from under your nose. They probably bugged it and put it back. Your head wasn’t in the game yesterday.”

  “I didn’t expect to have a sick baby with me!”

  “It doesn’t matter. It cost us a mint. We lost the load because of that, Amber. You have to pay attention or we’ll lose the rest.”

  Amber closed her eyes. “But what if we can’t get into those accounts? I’m not going to walk away with nothing!”

  “There’s cash in the house. We can settle for that.”

  “But we haven’t figured out how to get in there yet! And that load is worth another couple of million.”

  “Amber, it’s not worth the risk. You screwed up yesterday, and now somebody’s onto us. Trust me, the transporters are going to call it off anyway.”

  She grunted. “Then what’s your plan?”

  “I think we need to get to Juliet Cole. She got the codes today, and they reprogrammed things to her fingerprint and retina.”

  Her mouth fell open. “How do you know?”

  “I told you I have a contact at Griffin Security. But she’s low level—she doesn’t have computer access and she can’t get to the codes. She only knows that Juliet came in and got what she wanted.”

  “So Juliet has the address? How did she even know about that place?”

  “Who knows, Amber? You’ve botched a lot.”

  Amber almost couldn’t breathe. So Juliet knew where Bob’s delivery point was? She would tell the police, take them there, and all that cash in those safes . . . This couldn’t be happening. She had to get that money!

  “Lenny, call your contact at Griffin Security. Threaten her if she doesn’t get you the codes. We have to get in there before Juliet drags the entire Panama City police force in there with her.”

  “It’s worse than that. She’ll drag the FBI and the DEA in. Maybe she already has. Maybe we should just focus on the bank accounts.”

  “But there’s no guarantee we’ll get into those either! I’m not going to be penniless, Lenny. I earned that money. I worked with Bob on all of this. He couldn’t have done it without me. I deserve it and I’m not going to walk away without it.”

  “And I’m not going back to prison. I haven’t stayed under the radar all this time by taking stupid chances.”

  “There’s got to be a way! Lenny, do you understand how much money we’re talking about? It could be fifty million dollars altogether. More, even.”

  He was silent for a long moment.

  “Lenny, we could take Juliet. Force her.”

  Lenny seemed to consider that. “What do you know about her?” he asked.

  She tried to dredge up everything Bob had told her about Juliet. “She’s rigid. Unbelievably rigid. And she’s been working as a PI, so she’s not stupid, and she has a little training.”

  “What about her kids? We could use them.”

  Amber’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes, that could work. Bob said she’d throw herself in front of a train for her boys. If we could just make her think that they were in enough danger. Threaten them somehow.”

  “We’ve done that.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” She tapped her solar nails on the steering wheel. “It needs to be something more. If we could . . . take her kids. Then we’d have leverage. She’d do anything we told her.”

  “Do you realize what you’re saying? If we did that, how would we end it? There’s no exit strategy. It’s not like we could let the kids go once we got her to do what we wanted. They’d know too much about us.”

  She hated this. Why did things have to be so complicated? Everything had gone so smoothly for so long when Bob was alive.

  If only he hadn’t turned on them.

  “We could lock them up somewhere until we could get out of the country,” she said. “Your friend who flies planes. We could hire him to take us to Mexico.”

  “Juliet and the kids would talk when they’re found. The authorities would be waiting for us when we landed.”

  “Then we’ll have to kill them!” The minute the words were out of her mouth, Amber knew that was the only possible solution. “We use them to make her give us the codes and the cash, and then we kill all of them. That’s our only option.”

  Lenny thought it over for a moment. “It’s too messy. Too much could go wrong.”

  Amber’s plumped lips grew tight over her teeth. “The only other option is to walk away with nothing, and I won’t do that. I had it all when Bob was here. Now he’s gone and I have nothing. I’m not going to be left with nothing, do you understand, Lenny? I’m not going to be destitute. I’m getting something out of this.” She tried to think. “Juliet will pick the kids up from school today. You could find her there and follow her to where she’s been staying. Are you with me on this, or not?”

  For a moment she thought he would balk, but finally, he said, “Yeah, I guess it’s our only choice.”

  “Do you have guys you can trust to take them?”

  “Yeah. You know which schools?”

  “Yes.” She told him the names. “She’ll pick up Abe first. Go to the second school, the middle school, wait for her there. She’ll either be in Bob’s silver BMW or in her van. Bob said she bought a Caravan, but I don’t know what color it is. Just drive up the line and look for her. Red hair . . .”

  “I know what she looks like. She came to my trial every single day.”

  “Good. Follow them home after she’s gotten Zach. Bob said they were outdoor kids. If they go outside when they get home, grab them then. If the kids don’t go out, y
our guys might have to go in. Once you get them, we tell her that we’ll kill them if she brings in the police. We’ll have her meet us.”

  Lenny was quiet, and she held her breath, waiting. “Come on, Lenny,” she said at last. “It’s the only way. Millions of dollars. We could live the rest of our lives on an island in the Caribbean, eating shrimp and drinking margaritas.”

  Finally, he spoke. “All right. If we do it right, it could work. But the plan has a lot of moving parts. Things could go wrong.”

  “Things are already going wrong.”

  He let out a hard sigh. “All right. Let me get the Harper boys to help. I have enough to pay them some up front. We’ll promise them more money than they’ve ever seen on the back end.”

  “Perfect. Call me the minute you have them.”

  “All right. Don’t lose this phone, Amber.”

  Amber didn’t find that funny.

  CHAPTER 48

  That afternoon, Miller went to pick up Caleb Harper, who was built like a linebacker. Caleb wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he always did what Miller told him. As long as he kept him in dope, he was up for anything, usually with no questions asked. But today he had questions.

  “You said if we made that call to that doctor, it wouldn’t be traced to us. But it was, and the police questioned us. We could’ve gone back to jail.”

  “I didn’t think they’d find you. It was a prepaid disposable phone. If you hadn’t put your real address on that credit card, they’d still be in the dark. You never do that, Caleb. That’s just stupid.”

  Caleb brought his cigarette to his mouth and took a long drag. “And you got Jerome to kill that guy, and it turns out to be some big-shot dude and it’s all over the news, and Jerome’s going down for murder one.”

  “Jerome’s being taken care of. We’re going to get him out. Look, Caleb, there are risks. I paid him a lot of cash for that job. There’s a lot to be made in this one too. You do this for me, and you can buy all the dope you want.”

  Miller knew that, to Caleb, that incentive was stronger than the risk. There were benefits to working with addicts. They didn’t even realize they were slaves.

  Just as he’d expected, Caleb gave in. “What do you want?”

  “I need you and your brothers to pick up some kids for me and hold them until I get what I want out of their mother.”

  “What do you mean, pick up? Are we talking kidnapping?”

  Miller sighed. “There’s big cash to be made, Caleb.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten grand for each of you up front. Ten more when the kids are released.”

  “Nope. Not enough. Twenty up front—each—and twenty at the end.”

  Miller thought about the millions of dollars he could get from that house, if he could just control Juliet Cole. And after he had what he wanted, he wouldn’t even have to pay the rest of what he owed the Harpers. He’d be long gone.

  Still, he had to pretend to negotiate. “Ten up front, twenty at the end. Final offer. I can get somebody else if you’re not game.”

  He thought for a moment that Caleb might balk, but finally, he said, “All right. We got a deal.”

  He drove Caleb to pick up David. He, too, was huge and fast and had proven himself useful. Caleb told him what their task would be. The money quieted any debate, and when they called Steven, he seemed eager to score that cash too.

  “So where are we going?” Caleb asked as Miller drove.

  “To the school where the mother will be picking up her kid. Then we’ll follow them to where they’re staying.”

  He drove slowly past the front of the middle school. There was a long line of parents already there to pick up their kids. In the circular driveway, buses were lined up, waiting for the final bell to ring. Miller drove past the line, looking for Juliet’s van. He finally saw her. She wasn’t alone; he assumed the younger kid was in the car already. He went around the block and got into the back of the line, keeping his eye on her van up around the curve.

  Just being here was risky. But he couldn’t leave this part to Caleb and his brothers. He had to make sure they found the place where she was staying and came up with a good plan to grab the boys. He was tired of rookie mistakes.

  Miller wished he could keep the distance Bob had always kept. Bob had rarely gotten his hands dirty, and few of his cohorts could even identify him. But Miller had started as a dealer and then had risen to off-loading and transport on this side of the deliveries. Finally, he’d become a distributor. His hands had been dirty from the beginning.

  Killing a cop hadn’t helped.

  School let out, and Miller kept his eyes on Juliet’s car. Her kid came out with his backpack and got into the car. “That’s the oldest kid,” Miller said. “He’ll be easy. And the other one’s only nine, so he’s even smaller.”

  Juliet pulled out of line and drove away. Miller pulled out too.

  Grabbing two at the same time would be problematic, but he knew the guys could do it. He trailed her, silent. The two men were also silent as he drove.

  Miller followed Juliet to a different side of town than he’d expected and watched her pull into an empty parking lot. A sedan pulled in behind her. Had someone been escorting her all along? He hadn’t noticed, and that worried him. He drove past and pulled into a parking lot across the street. From there he watched as she and the two boys loaded into another car. Then, abandoning her van, they pulled back onto the street. Miller waited until the sedan had pulled out, then he followed when it seemed safe.

  Were those the cops, taking her somewhere? Was this a setup?

  He followed cautiously for a few blocks, and the car pulled into the driveway of a small house set alone on a huge wooded lot. Perfect. This place was isolated. No one around to see them.

  “All right,” Miller said as they passed the house. “You come back here in the van, park in the trees. Hide until the kids come out in the backyard.”

  “What about the guard?”

  He knew the brothers wouldn’t agree to murder. “I only see one guy. Chloroform him first, then tie him up. Use your military training. Then watch for the kids to come out.”

  “And if they don’t come out?” David asked.

  “Then you’ll have to go in. Just take all three of them if that happens. The mom too. We have plenty of chloroform.” He pointed to the bottles in the back of the van and the pile of torn-up towels. “Pour some into a towel, get it good and wet, and press it against their faces. It’ll knock them out. Grab them and throw them in the van. Then get out of there.”

  “Who are these boys?”

  “Bob Cole’s kids.”

  Caleb frowned. “Not him again.”

  Miller’s jaw popped. “If you’re cowards, tell me now. But you’ll stay poor cowards.”

  He saw Caleb looking back at David. “We’ll do it. But if we get arrested, I’m not taking the fall. I’ll tell them everything.”

  “Then I’ll have to kill your mother.”

  Caleb gaped at him. “You’ll what?”

  Miller grinned. “Don’t worry about it. You won’t get caught.”

  “Why aren’t you doing this?”

  “Because I’m not as big and fast as you. You guys are professionals.”

  Caleb grinned as if he’d just been awarded a medal of valor. “What do we do with them after we get them?”

  “Take them to the trailer.”

  “That run-down rattrap? I hate that place. Besides, my uncle lives there.”

  “He’s just a crazy old man. Don’t worry about it. He doesn’t know which end is up. That’s where you’re taking them. It’s out of the way, where nobody’ll look. Hold them until we get what we want.”

  “How will we keep them from ID-ing us afterward?”

  Miller didn’t tell them there wouldn’t be an afterward. “I have ski masks in the back. They won’t see your faces.”

  Caleb looked back, taking quick inventory of their supplies. “Where will
you be?”

  “When we pick up Steven, you guys take this van and I’ll drive his car. Once you’re at the trailer, we’ll swap back. I’ll need the van.”

  Caleb frowned as if considering that scenario.

  “I don’t know how long the chloroform lasts. But if you need to, do it over and over to keep them unconscious.”

  Caleb was quiet for a long moment. “I’m not going to prison again, man.”

  Miller shook his head. “Neither am I.” But he also wasn’t going to be poor. This was his ticket, but it wasn’t theirs. He couldn’t tell them he had millions riding on it, or they’d want more money—and they wouldn’t let him out of their sight till they got it. He tapped the Bluetooth earpiece in Caleb’s ear. “Wear your earpieces, and put your phones on vibrate. I want to communicate the whole time.”

  David pulled his Bluetooth out of his pocket, shoved it into his ear, and set his phone.

  They went to pick up Steven. He was full of protests when he got into the van, but then Miller handed them each the ten thousand he’d promised. That shut them all up.

  Steven would drive the van, and Miller would drive Steven’s car. He didn’t want to be anywhere near that van if the Harper goons botched this.

  Uneasy about how all this would go down, Miller decided to hide the car off the road near the safe house. He hung binoculars around his neck and jogged toward the house. When he reached the woods adjacent to the house, he saw that his van was already there, tucked into the trees on the opposite side. He climbed a tree and sat on a branch, watching through his binoculars. He couldn’t see David or Caleb. They were doing a good job of hiding. The guard pacing out front seemed oblivious to their presence.

  He watched through the binoculars as David ran around the back of the house. He stopped on the side Miller was on, grabbed a stick, hit the side of the house, then stepped behind a tall bush. What was he doing?

  As the guard drew his weapon and came to investigate, Caleb ran up behind him. He threw his arm around the man’s neck and pressed the wet rag against his face. The guard struggled for a moment, then went limp. David came out and lifted the guard’s feet. They took him to the side yard, bound him with rope, and stuffed the rag into his mouth. They started to leave him there, but David turned back, as if uncertain. Finally, he knelt beside the man, lifted his head, and gave a twist, snapping his neck.