Deeper Than The Ocean by Julie Ann Walker

 

 

Chapter 9

 

12:58 AM…

 

JayJay paced behind her desk, waving her hand through a cloud of cigarette smoke when she ran face-first into it.

“Put that damned thing out.” She scowled at Ricky, coughing when the foul smoke invaded her lungs. “I need to think and I can’t do it if I can’t breathe. Your brain might not need oxygen to function, but mine does.”

Ricky sat in one of the two armchairs facing her desk. He obligingly snuffed out his smoke on the sole of his flip-flop before tossing the crushed butt into her wastepaper basket. She waited for the used tissues inside to ignite, and then breathed a sigh of relief when they didn’t.

An office fire would be exactly what she needed to make this clusterfuck of a night complete.

Mateo shot Christina Szarek and Winston Turner. Chrissy and Winston!

The news was all over the island.

“Not sure what there is to think about,” Mateo muttered. Between his overpowering aftershave and Ricky’s cigarette smoke, her office smelled like a dive bar. “She doesn’t know who we are. I told you that big, black-haired dude said as much to the detective at the hospital. And didn’t you just say—”

“Tonight,” JayJay stressed. “She doesn’t know who you are tonight. But that doesn’t mean she won’t recognize you from the warehouse if she sees you out and about tomorrow or next week. This isn’t New York City. You’re bound to run into each other eventually.”

If that happened, if Chrissy fingered Ricky or Mateo, the next stop for the cops would be JayJay. Even though the fishing boat Ricky and Mateo ran wasn’t in her name—she operated it under a limited liability corporation—the cover was flimsy at best. A little digging was all it would take to discover Catch of the Day was owned by none other than JayJay herself.

“No way, no way. I’m not movin’, if that’s what you’re suggestin’.” Ricky crossed his arms and set his jaw at a sullen angle. “I like it in Key West.”

She pushed her reading glasses down to the tip of her nose and stared at him over the tops of the frames. “Are you allergic to logic?” Her jaw was so tight she could barely form words. “Of course you can’t move. I need you here, running the business, taking the deliveries.”

“So what’s the solution?” This from Mateo. He had on a baseball cap now, but it was flipped around backward, making him look like he had thug-life written all over him, and jackass written all over that. When JayJay hesitated, he continued, his voice drilling a hole into her already aching head. “Never mind. You know what the solution is. I’m just waiting for you to say it.”

She had absolutely zero interest in going where this boatload of shit wanted to take her. But she didn’t have a choice. She was being carried along on a tide that wasn’t of her making.

Damn the Colombians and their eagerness to recoup their losses!

Although the cocaine business was criminal, JayJay had initially agree to get into it because she figured it was largely victimless. It wasn’t like she was muling laced meth to the projects and watching the poor and pathetic overdose on it. No. It was the richy-riches in Miami who bought the blow she trafficked. They liked their nose candy about as much as they liked their Brazilian butt lifts and fake boobs.

But now there was no more fooling herself.

Painful circumstances call for painful solutions.

“Do it,” she said forcefully thinking of her family, of her children and grandchildren. “Wait until she’s released from the hospital and then do it. But make it look like an accident if you can.”

“No problem.” Mateo’s grin was positively evil. He was being subtle about how much he was looking forward to the task. You know, if “subtle” was hitting someone in the teeth with a tire iron.

There was enough of the old JayJay alive and kicking that she felt compelled to add, “And try to make it quick, okay? I don’t want her suffering if there’s a way around it.”

Mateo’s expression was pitiless. “Death is always dirty.”

Death.

She hated that word. Preferred more euphemistic terms like kicked the bucket or gave up the ghost.They were far more palatable. Less…final.

Chrissy Szarek. What a shame.

“Fine,” she spat. “However you want to accomplish the deed is completely up to you. But once you’re finished with…” It was hard to say Chrissy’s name aloud given she was standing there openly discussing the young woman’s demise. “Once you’re finished with Chrissy, we still have another problem.” She lifted a finger in the smoke-tinged air.

“Winston.” Ricky proved he wasn’t completely lacking in functioning synapses.

“Exactly.”

Again, Mateo hitched one massive shoulder. “Word on the street is he probably won’t wake up.”

“And if he does?” JayJay lifted an eyebrow.

“Then we take him out too.”

Mateo was right. They needed to make sure two attempted murders became two successful ones.

This whole thing started spinning out of control the moment the Coast Guard ran into that narco-sub. And it’s swirling faster and faster with each passing day.

JayJay was caught in a whirlpool. The only thing to do now was to ride it down and see where it took her.