She nodded toward the picnic table. “Over there.”
He hesitated, then started walking. She grabbed the helmet with her free hand and followed him, keeping behind him and to his right. If he went for a weapon, he’d have a hell of a time acquiring her from there before she dropped him. Though she hoped he would be more sensible than that.
When they reached the picnic table, she said, “Set down the bag on the far side of the bench. Then sit opposite. Your back to the parking lot.” She wanted the tactical view for herself.
Again he hesitated.
“Weed,” she said. “You just did sixteen years. You have a wife and daughter and a lot to live for. Do you really want to die today, in the parking lot of some highway shithouse? I’m not here for anything more than confidential information.”
He looked at her and shook his head disgustedly. But he did as she directed.
She circled around to face him. “Now, palms on the table. Good. Keep them there, where I can see them.” She straddled the bench, left leg under, right leg out, a flexible, mobile position. The benches were integrated with the table, and sitting the way he was, Weed didn’t have a move. But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t seize every advantage, either.
She held the Glock under the table. If anyone showed up at the rest stop, she and Tyler would look like just a couple of people taking a break from the road and chatting under the pretty blue sky.
A gust blew a snack wrapper past them and shook the pine trees. She paused for a moment, almost afraid to ask, afraid that after so long, what she thought would offer the way to Nason would be revealed as a dead end.
Come on, Livia. Do it.
“All right,” she said. “I want to know who hired you for that boat.”
He sighed. “Like I just said. I told the AUSA I don’t know anything. I didn’t handle any of the arrangements. That was my brother, and the cops killed him.”
She glanced over at the bag, then back to him. “Last chance. Then I search the bag.”
There was a long silence. Then his shoulders slumped and he sighed. “It was a Thai group, all right?”
Her heart started pounding, but she kept her expression placid. “Which one?”
“Which one? I don’t fucking know which one. The one we always dealt with.”
“The one you dealt with. Not just your brother. You.”
“Yeah. All right.”
“What was your contact’s name?”
“He called himself Kana.”
“What did he look like?”
Tyler shrugged. “Tall for Asian. Big cheekbones. Kind of a bony face. Okay?”
Her heart beat harder. “That’s the guy who handed us over to you? Kana?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he look different compared to when you’d seen him previously?”
“Different? No. Well, I mean, his face was bandaged. Actually, one of his guys was cut up, too. They said a steel packing strap broke loose and whipped across their faces. Sounded like bullshit, but I didn’t ask.”
“Bandaged how? Where?”
“His eye. It was, you know, like an eye patch.”
Skull Face. It had to be. He was telling the truth. So far. She took a few slow and steady breaths, working to ease her rampaging heartbeat. She so hoped she had cut Skull Face’s eye out. Yes. Please that.
“Why you? What was the arrangement?”
“No arrangement. Just . . . look, I’m cooperating, okay? Like you said, I have a wife and daughter. They’ve been waiting a long time for me. I give you what you want here, and you let me walk, right?”
“I want the truth. All of it. You give me that, and you walk. But only for that.”
He nodded. “We’d never done a shipment of people before, okay? And I didn’t want to. It wasn’t something I wanted to get mixed up in.”
“Then why did you?”
“Why do you think? Kana offered a sweet deal.”
“Sweet compared to what?”
“Compared to dope. Up until then, it had always been just marijuana. I mean, where do you think I got my gang name? The Thai dope was super high quality, much better than the domestic or Mexican. They tell me these days you can buy Thai and a lot better in any Washington State cannabis store, but back then, the profit margins were crazy. Like what you’d get for coke. That’s what we moved for them. Just ganja. High-quality Thai ganja.”
“So then Kana comes to you and says, ‘Hey, I have some people to move.’”
“That’s right. And that they’d pay us five thousand a head. Which was, shit, a lot of money.”
“How many heads?”
“Kana said ten. Six adults. Four kids.”
She kept her face frozen. “Tell me about the kids.”