“Oh, we do. Only when we’re feeling magnanimous, though. Only for people we take a special interest in.”
“And how do we remove ourselves from your special interest list, Denise? We don’t really like people showing up here unannounced. It makes our club members…twitchy.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have nothing to be twitchy about. Right?”
I hang back, waiting to see how Jamie plans on handling this situation. He’s way more diplomatic than I am normally, but can tell by the way he charged down the hill toward us that he isn’t in the mood to be cordial today. “Cut the shit,” he snaps. “What do you want?”
Lowell glances at her partner, who appears to be just about as vacant and useless as a human being can be and still qualify for the title. She sighs heavily, shoving her thumbs into the waistband of her dress pants. “I just want to do the right thing. I just want Hector Ramirez to be handled in the correct way. Now, I hear from multiple sources that you’re a good guy. That you like to do the right thing too. You were deployed out in Afghanistan for two tours, weren’t you? How does a guy go from serving his country to breaking her laws in such a short space of time?”
“If putting Ramirez away is your primary focus, Denise, maybe you should spend more time pursing that goal instead of Googling my ass. I’m sure that would be far more productive use of tax payers’ resources and effort.”
Lowell scowls. “I have minions who do my Googling for me. It’s really no skin off my nose. And besides, I get the feeling that leaning on you will get me Ramirez in the end. Call it intuition.”
“You can call it whatever the fuck you want. Are we done here?”
“That depends on whether you want to talk to me about your uncle,” Lowell says. Jamie’s hands twitch, but aside from that he shows no sign of annoyance or recognition.
“I don’t have any uncles.”
“But you did, didn’t you? Your uncle Ryan was murdered last year. He was found down a back alley in Seattle. Didn’t take much digging to discover he was presiding over a murder trial that Hector Ramirez was being prosecuted for. Ryan ended up dead, and the case was dropped. I found that highly coincidental.”
Jamie folds his arms across his chest, staring Lowell down through the wrought iron bars of the compound fence. “I hadn’t spoken to Ryan in years. I had no idea he was involved with Ramirez. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some business to take care of.”
“Tattoo shop business? Or gun running business?” Lowell smiles a sickly sweet, innocent smile that makes my fucking teeth itch. I’m sure it has an even more unpleasant effect on Jamie, since he’s standing that much closer and she’s aiming the smile at him. He takes three deliberate, slow steps toward the gate and stops right in front of her.
“Fuck. You. Denise.” With that he turns around and walks away from her, heading in the direction of the workshop and barn. Lowell watches him go, eyes slightly narrowed, thumbs still tucked into her waistband. She only turns away when Jamie’s disappeared into the building beyond and she can’t drill holes into the back of his head anymore.
“We’ll be back,” she says lightly; I’m assuming she’s talking to me, but who the fuck knows? Who the fuck cares? She can come back here as many times as she likes. She’ll never find guns here. She’ll never find drugs. It would take her twenty years to get inside Jamie’s office, and even when she did, she’d only find a few burnt out servers and three destroyed hard drives.
There’s only one thing Agent Denise Lowell might come across that could cause us problems, and that’s Sophia. Hopefully, that will never come to fruition. Hopefully Lowell never lays eyes on the girl again, otherwise our shit will seriously be fucked up, and my best friend will likely be arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Better hope and pray it doesn’t come to that. “You should get a pet, y’know,” I tell Lowell. “It’d be calming. Give you a reason to actually go home at night.”
She angles her head, glaring at me. “Thanks for the concern, Preston, but I have enough on my hands as it is. I don’t need a dog under foot, pissing and shitting all over the place when I have you.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SOPHIA