“That’s not your business,” Kenny said. “But I could use a foot soldier. You’re a hunter. You can provide recon. We need to figure out where the cameras are so we can disable them.”
“I didn’t see any cameras.”
“You weren’t looking for them,” Kenny snarled. “That’s the point, asshole. We need to find them. You in?”
“Sure,” Elias said, trying an angle to get hard data. “But I want to know who is on the team. I don’t like the looks of that guy Daniel that’s at the pub sometimes. Crazy eyes. Is he part of the team?”
Kenny scratched his cheek. “You don’t need to know our command structure. You have to prove yourself.”
Elias growled. “If Daniel is on your team, I’m not.”
“You have to be,” Kenny said. “I already let you in. Don’t fuck with me.”
“Critter and Blake are all right,” Elias said. “But I won’t take orders from Daniel.”
“You’ll take them from me,” Kenny said. He rubbed his temples. “I’m letting you in because we’ve got to do it this week. We don’t want to kill any men, good, hardworking men. Just stop the bitches. So it’s got to be blown this week.”
“You just want structural damage.”
“Yeah.”
“And you don’t want to get caught.”
“Right.” Kenny exposed his dirty teeth again. “We want to do this again, you know, just make it clear that this county is being run by the men.”
“Okay,” Elias said. “Should we walk the perimeter again and look for cameras?”
“Come back tomorrow and do it then,” Kenny said. “Then come by the bar after and let me know. I want a map. Draw one.”
Abruptly, he crossed the street toward the mossy rock fence and walked south. Elias assumed he was making a circuitous route back to his truck and the cemetery. He shook his head. Kenny was doing more than just drinking beer. Totally disorganized thought process. Crack cocaine maybe, or meth again. But at least he had a great deal to relay to Justice, even a timeline.
~
Angela felt well enough to return to work on Thursday. Tying on her apron just before five, she had almost reached the door into the bar when Vicki caught up to her.
“So?”
“So what?”
“Are you preggers?”
“Oh, that.” Angela forced a smile. “I wasn’t feeling well enough to go shopping yesterday.”
Vicki frowned and touched her arm. “I would have brought you a test.”
“I know.” Angela made a face. “Sorry.”
She and Vicki went into the bar. Her father was there, placing beer bottles on a tray. “Can you take this over to Murphy’s table?” he asked Vicki.
“Sure thing.” Vicki slipped around the bar and grabbed the tray from the other side.
“You feeling better?”
“Yes,” Angela said. “Much better.”
“What’s going on? The flu?”
“Maybe a twenty-four hour bug.” She wore a thin tank top, since she felt really warm, but her thermometer didn’t show a fever.
“Do you know if Elias had a chance to talk to your brother?” her father asked. “I really need Kenny to get his act together and start picking up the slack around here.”
“He stopped by last night but we didn’t talk about Kenny.” Guiltily, she thought about the gentle lovemaking that had taken up their evening. She hadn’t known Elias could be so tender. He’d make a wonderful father.
Her father made an irritated noise as she glanced toward the dartboard. Given that Kenny was clowning around with his friends over there, she was willing to guess that his discussion with Elias hadn’t gone anywhere. Kind of funny since Elias had such a way of getting her to do what he wanted. His charisma must only work on one of the Stan family members. She’d feel worse if she didn’t know how lazy her father was.
“You don’t think Kenny has been doing drugs again, do you? His hygiene has slipped.”
He grabbed a couple of empty mugs, discarded on the bar, and dumped them into a tub, then placed a fresh tray on the counter and set up a trio of glasses they used for Jack and Cokes. “He’s always been lazy.”
“Maybe you should move Vicki up to bartender when I go,” she suggested. She knew her father didn’t want to entertain her question. “I can teach her the few drinks we tend to serve other than beer, and it’s easier to find a waitress than a bartender.”
“She does know everyone. Ouch.” Her father stuck his thumb in his mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
He showed her a jagged cut on the end of his thumb. “What did I catch it on?”
“I don’t know. Go wash it and get a bandage,” she said. “I’ll finish the drinks.”
Suddenly, she heard a flurry of conversation over by the dartboard. Lots of profanity directed at women. Robert Critter was waving his hands around, talking nastily about some woman he’d been sleeping with over the holidays. She felt bad for the woman, and not a little fear for herself. Why was Elias so intent on befriending these losers? She was agreeing to move to the East Coast without knowing what his friends were like. He tolerated her friends and they seemed to like him, but he didn’t cultivate them the way he did with Kenny and his crew.
She kept her ear half-cocked to the dartboard area as the crowd came in, ordering burgers and fries and beers. Kenny stayed in his group of friends, ranting about Section 8 housing for bitches and brats. All their laughter was cruel, and their conversation disgusting. If her father had returned after she sent him to get a bandage, she’d have sent him over to stop it. She’d already seen a couple of families cut their evenings short after being forced to listen to their vileness, so it was costing the pub money.
By eight-thirty, she had a pounding headache and her father hadn’t reappeared. The door opened again and Elias walked in. Instead of coming toward her, though she thought that had been his intent, he went toward Kenny who was gesturing eagerly at him.
“So now they are BFFs?” Vicki asked, appearing in front of her. “Are you okay?”
Black spots dotted Angela’s vision. “Dehydrated,” she muttered.
Vicki walked around the bar and poured her a glass of water. “It’s about time for you to take a break anyway.” She pulled out the stool her father kept under the bar and made Angela sit down.
When the glass of water was empty, Elias walked up to them. “How are my two favorite ladies?”
“Your fiancée isn’t feeling so good, and your deadbeat future father-in-law has left her alone yet again,” Vicki snarled. Her rant was cut short by the entrance of a party of six.
“Did you talk to Kenny yesterday?” Angela asked as Vicki went to help a new group of customers.
“Yeah, I met him for a walk.”
“Planning a cougar assault?”
“Something like that.”
She couldn’t interpret his tone. “Did you talk him into working more than one day a week?”
Elias shook his head. “The problem is, he doesn’t want to make any more money. Critter is practically supporting him. He gets free beer and food here. One day a week is enough for pocket money and he claims if he made more it would all go to his ex-wife anyway.”
Angela blinked. The black spots had diminished. “You mean for child support, right? I can’t believe I have to say this about my own brother, but he’s such a jerk. I’m sure he’s right. His wages would get garnished for back support.”
“Yep. Doubt you’re going to get much help there.” Elias shrugged.
“I’ll tell my dad to put up an ad for a waitress then,” she said.
His lips twitched. “Vicki’s getting promoted?”
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to be a bartender, if her pay isn’t cut as a result.”
“Less tips?”
“That’s how it works around here. But it might lead to a better job in the future.” She paused, blinking again. The spots seemed to have gone. “I’m concerned about more tha
n just him working more, though.”
“What?”
“Those guys are being really nasty tonight about women. We’ve had some diners leave without finishing dinner. They are being loud, rude, and profane.”
Elias nodded.
“I’m scared for my brother. I get that Critter has this ongoing sick fantasy that every woman he dates is cheating on him if she doesn’t answer every single one of his calls, but I’ve never heard the others be so nasty. They are hurting business and making me really uncomfortable.”
“I think you should stay out of it.”
“What?”
He smiled sympathetically, but it seemed false somehow. “You aren’t feeling well, Shelly. Don’t worry, I'll take care of it.”
“How? Whatever you talked about yesterday sure didn’t help.”
“You have to trust me,” he said. “Just give me time. I can’t right a ship in a day.”
“Is that what you are doing?”
He nodded. “You just have to give me time, honey.” He leaned over the bar and kissed her on the forehead. “And stop worrying so much. It’s not good for the baby.”
“What?”
He winked at her and went back to the dartboard area. Across the dining room, Vicki raised her eyebrows. Angela shrugged and started hunting for the notebook that had old ads they had run. She’d make her father talk to Vicki and post an ad the very next day. And hope Elias could do something to put Kenny on a better path. At least she was sure Elias wasn’t doing drugs. He barely even drank. His beer bottles were just props, given that they were always full.
Chapter Five
“How much damage do you want to do?” Elias asked, hunched over the hood of Kenny’s truck in the graveyard parking area. It was four p.m. and foggy, so they had to use the flashlight app on Kenny’s cell phone to see the rough map Elias had drawn of the substation.
“All it’s going to take is a grenade to take out the cameras?”
“Yeah,” Elias said. “I saw the wires leading to only one place.”
“That’s stage one,” Kenny said, pointing at the corner of the hand-drawn map. “Then on to stage two.”
“We’ve got the bombs, two of them.” Robert Critter finished his beer and tossed the can into the open passenger-side truck window. The last drips of beer splattered the inside of the half-lowered window. “Should be able to wipe the entire place out.”
Elias found it depressing to see the obvious evidence of how much damage some of life’s more misguided losers could do. The mere fact that they were dumb enough to trust him, someone they’d met only about five weeks ago and brought into the plot just a couple of days ago, was proof of that. He hoped that other members of Justice’s team had taken care of the back end, finding out who was jerking the puppet strings from the Middle East, because this little operation was about to go down.
“Did you make the bombs yourself?” he asked, trying for innocent curiosity.
“Nah,” Critter said, popping another top. “Turns out Fatima is actually good for something.”
Connor Blake snorted. “Bitch won’t cook American food and just lays there like a rock in bed, but she knows bombs.”
In his head, Elias did a fist bump with Justice. These boys didn’t know he was recording them. He’d preplanned today. They’d just incriminated Fatima Blake, whom he had yet to even meet.
“Never thought it was possible to get sick of pizza,” Critter said. “But I bet you could go in for some steak and potatoes, huh, Connor?”
Connor shrugged. “Beef curry ain’t bad. It’s just beef stew, really. You want something else, cuz, get a new bitch for yourself.”
“We’re on for tomorrow,” Critter said after an uncomfortable silence. As Elias surveyed the two men’s features, looking for the cousinly resemblance, Critter poked a meaty finger at the hand-drawn map. “Elias, you’ll drop the grenade, then we’ll do the bombs.”
Elias, wanting to entrap these morons, didn’t protest his role. They must think he was awfully stupid. He’d be the only one caught on camera. They thought they were getting away scot-free while Angela’s fiancé went to prison. Nothing made it clearer that Kenny didn’t give a damn about his family.
However, he didn’t want to appear too much of a moron. He’d never pretended to be dumb, just really interested in being Kenny’s friend. “I’m worried about Angela. She’s still not feeling well. What if I have to keep an eye on her?”
“That’s a good thing.” Kenny exposed his stained teeth. “She won’t be expecting you to party with her on New Year’s Eve. Nah, she’ll be at the bar, and we’ll be making our stand against bitches and whores.”
So this freeloading asshole figured that his sister should be working, ill or well, while he blew up a substation? Years of undercover training experience kept Elias’s fists from connecting with Kenny’s nose. He’d be in federal prison, bent over for his new boyfriend, soon enough.
“They’ll give up on that housing development,” Critter said with a smirk.
“Do you care about this particular one for some reason?” Elias asked. “Is it important?”
“She bought one of the houses,” Critter said darkly.
“She?”
“That whore that cheated on him,” Kenny said, in his role of educating the newcomer.
Elias stared at him. Critter had just been dumped by his girlfriend a couple of days ago. This plot had been going on for longer than that. He felt sorry for any woman who had ever come into these men’s lives. Why manufacture a new excuse to continue on doing something they would have done anyway, girlfriend or not? “Cool,” he said, pretending to sip his beer, while silently decrying how terribly these men treated the women in their lives. He’d like to ship the entire lot of them to Syria and see how they got along without the support systems they despised.
“Plus, no one is working on it this week,” Kenny added.
“Great,” Elias said, looking at his watch. “I need to get over to your grandfather’s house. I said I’d drive your sister to work since she’s still dizzy.”
Critter made a flicking motion with his wrist. “Pussy-whipped.”
Kenny giggled.
Elias wanted to gag but kept his expression neutral. “Don’t want to do anything out of the ordinary right now.”
“Good point,” Connor said. “I’ll be eating beef curry tonight like I don’t hate it, wishing I could drop-kick my wife into the substation before I blow it up.”
“See, you don’t like it either,” Critter jeered. “Let’s order a pizza.”
“Nah, Elias is right. Go home, act normal.”
“I’m gonna need this to act normal.” Critter reached into the inside pocket of his tattered jean jacket and pulled out a packet of white powder.
Elias pretended not to see it. He’d already said he had to pick up Shelly. His back to the boys and their packet of meth, he lifted his hand and climbed into his unlocked truck, driving away without looking at them again.
He kept driving until he was back in Woodland and pulled into the parking lot of the deserted church. After he turned off the truck he checked his recording and sent it to Justice.
His usual phone rang before he could call his controller on his burner phone.
“Elias, where are you?”
He recognized Shelly’s voice and checked his watch. “Sorry, I was with Kenny. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she snapped. “I’ll drive myself to work.”
“Don’t you dare. You’re too light-headed to be driving. Your father can manage another ten minutes without you. God knows he’ll take off as soon as you arrive.” Life seemed really extra complicated today.
“He isn’t that bad.”
“He’s exactly that bad, and that’s why I’m worried about you. Stay home and I’ll be there soon.”
“I took a long nap and I’m feeling better. I’m on the porch.”
He heard her engine. “Don’t
drive, honey. Go back inside, please.”
“No. I have responsibilities, which you seem to have forgotten in your desperation to make friends with my brother and his friends.”
“Shelly,” he growled, but she’d hung up on him. Swearing, he started his truck and pulled out of the church lot, then called Justice on the burner phone.
“You about done?” Justice asked. “I’ve got a nice chair ready to be warmed here.”
“Sounds good,” Elias said, focusing on the road. “I think Shelly is good and knocked up. She’s been feeling terrible but doesn’t have a fever.”
“Nausea, vomiting?”
“Indeed.”
Justice chuckled. “Good job.”
“I just sent you audio on a meet with the cell,” Elias said. “They want to blow the substation tomorrow night.”
“New Year’s Eve? How typical,” Justice said.
“You got it.” He knew he should be giving Justice a thorough rundown, but ninety percent of it had been caught on the audio. And he couldn’t risk Shelly. “Right. My main concern is that Shelly is picking up on the vibes. These guys are doing meth and you know how talkative it makes users.”
“Are they talking in the bar?”
“Not about the bombing, but they are letting their hatred spew. Shelly’s starting not to trust me. She doesn’t like that I’ve befriended them. Now, because I got stuck with them and was late picking her up, she’s driving herself to work and she isn’t well.”
“What do you want? We’ve got to take care of the pregnant woman. All this stress is bad for the pregnancy.”
His racing pulse slowed when he realized that Justice understood. “Exactly, but I’ve got to see this through until the end. I can’t explain myself.”
“No, you can’t. So what’s your plan?”
“Can you take her into protective custody until this is over? It’s obvious that her brother couldn’t care less about her. And I’ve got to be a part of this. They’ve of course thrown me under the bus, and assigned me to throw a grenade at the cameras.”
“You’re afraid your woman will get involved?”
Sex, Vows & Babies: Wedding with a Baby Bump (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 7
