Page 52 of Mike

His mouth hardened. “In my jurisdiction? And you went in?”

“Duh,” she snorted. “You want to compare credentials, or hear about my night?”

“Tell me,” he grunted.

“Well, you know my tracker alerted me to movement, so I followed it a storage facility, then to a remote location west of town.”

Mike nodded and she went on.

“I witnessed a meet-and-greet at this out-of-the-way warehouse, where my two previous suspects were having a conversation with what appeared to be a boss-figure. The building was a piece-of-shmuck-rust-trap that otherwise would have been a place of no interest, but it had been given some recent and serious updates that gave me pause.”

“Updates such as…?” Mike inquired, still not looking happy.

“Such as a new, overhead door, with shiny, state-of-the-art locking devices on both it and the walk-in entry on the side.”

“So you hunkered down…” Mike prodded.

“I did. And from there I watched my two original suspects chat with guy number three before they left in a car, and the tractor I’d previously tagged. The third perp went into the building, and I waited him out until Mr. Nugget finally left the premises an hour or so later.”

“Mr. Nugget?” Now Mike’s lips twitched.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m calling him until I get an ID. The dude wears a gold nugget earring in his left lobe and is missing the pinky finger on his left hand.”

“Shit.” Mike’s face went from indulgent to furious in a hot second.

“What?” Joe asked.

“That’s Anthony Galici.”

“You know him?” She sat forward, expectantly.

Mike practically snarled. “Indeed, I do. He’s on every Maine police department’s radar. The man is known to have ties to the mob, and has had his grubby little fingers in a lot of illegal pies. It’s just that nobody’s ever been able to pin him down to charge him with anything specific.”

Joelle’s whole body lit up. “Shritt, that’s good news. Because now that I have a positive ID from you, I can make a prediction. Anthony Nugget’s reign of terror is almost over,” she gleefully informed Mike.

“Tell me what you found when you broke in,” he commanded. “Because I know you did breach, new locking devices be damned.”

Joe grinned, but Mike’s whole body tightened as he waited, placing his clenched fists on the table.

Oooh. Mike in seduction mode was damned potent. But Mike in bad-asp operative mode was a total turn-on. And the fact that he hadn’t blinked over her breaking in? Steeeeamy!

“After Anthony left,” Joe filed that name away so she could do her own research, later, “I did break into the warehouse and found cases of liquid xylazine, a cooking station, and bags of the resulting xylazine powder they’d manufactured already.”

“Shit,” Mike swore. “The man’s cutting fentanyl.”

“Exactly,” Joe agreed. “But there wasn’t any at the warehouse. At least not yet,” Joe told him.

Mike looked anything but pleased. “You know your findings so far won’t put Galici away, as much as I’d like it to. It’s not illegal in Maine to possess xylazine.”

“I’m aware of that,” Joe commiserated with a pat of her hand to the back of his clamped digits. “But I’m following some pretty solid leads, and I’m sure he’ll implicate himself with the fentanyl, as soon as it gets to its final location.”

“Final location?” Mike questioned, and why wasn’t she surprised he’d picked up on that unintentional slip of the tongue.

“Yeah,” Joe sighed, knowing she’d just opened a door.

Well, hulk. She guessed there was no time like the present to fill her back-up in on everything she’d uncovered so far.

She started her intel sharing with her initial discovery. “You know I’ve been undercover as a server at the Local Moose.”

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