Page 102 of Garrison's Creed

They drove past a warehouse with boarded up windows and no signs of life except for the hip-high weeds littering the parking lot. Trees lined both sides of what looked like an electrified fence. Parts of it were rusted out. The building looked ready to be condemned.

“Leave your family alone? Now why would I do that?” Antilla asked. “I won’t walk away from this opportunity. The CIA killed my brother. In return, I’ll kill your family. David was smart enough to out himself as CIA and to try to protect the Smooth family. You remained one of the infidels, part of the organization—”

Nothing made sense. “You were shot. I saw you.”

“Wrong again. Welcome to the Smooth family secret. Not even David knew the truth until after the incident, but there were two of us. My identical twin brother was named Fernando. My father, a businessman, raised us as if only one child existed. It was a strategy of sorts. We were to take on his empire, which we did successfully. My name is not Antilla. Antilla isourname, the joint name my late brother and I embodied in the public eye. My name is Javier. He and I were perfect replicas. We spoke the same, fucked the same. No one knew the difference. Not our business partners. Not our whores. You never knew.”

“And I never fucked you. Either of you, so I wouldn’t know,” Nicola spat.

“Like I said, that will change tonight. Willing or not.”

The driver stopped the sedan in front of an abandoned building, smaller than the first ones they’d passed. She studied it. The door had new locks and hinges that gleamed in summer’s early evening light. Three car doors opened, and the men got out. David and Antilla walked a few steps away, and the driver trained a subcompact machine gun on her. This driver was a real winner.

“Give me your purse,” the driver said.

Of course she’d lose the purse. It was Louis Vuitton. She always lost the good stuff.

David’s bag was on the floorboard.

The driver motioned with his baby machine gun. “Now get out.”

He wouldn’t shoot her yet, right? “No.”

She stomped her feet like a child readying for a terrible two throw down.

“Listen, lady, out.”

Stomp. Kick. Stomp, stomp. “No!”

Grabbing at her, the driver pulled her from the backseat, but not before she tried to do serious damage to David’s bag. The jammer had to be in there. It wouldn’t have worked in the plane if had it been in their luggage. Hoping to hell she did enough damage to the sensitive piece of equipment, Nicola relented and finished exiting on her own.

“Can you just search my purse and give it back to me? I’ve got gum and lip gloss that I need.”

David shrugged. “Christ, yes. Search her stupid bag. Take anything with a bullet or blade. Just stop whining. How are you so stupid?”

Moron, the better question is, how are you this dumb?

Nicola picked up her purse, grabbed the lip gloss listening device, and smoothed on a fresh layer of Berry Cherry shine. She powdered her nose, slipping on a geographical tracking tag that dissolved immediately on contact with her skin. “Thank you.”

“Whatever.” David seemed frustrated. Maybe not just at her.

“Trouble between criminals?” she asked.

“Destroy her phone,” Antilla, or Javier, or whoever he was demanded.

“No problem.”She handed it to the driver, knowing it was her burner phone. If she had a fighting chance of Cash hearing or locating them, it had nothing to do with her phone.

“We’re not transmitting out here anyway,” David offered. “I set up a portable jammer after she ineffectually planted a listening device on me.”

A listening device? As in one?That was good news.

She was fifteen minutes shy of a check-in with Beth. Someone would wonder about her whereabouts, and Cash was out there somewhere, as her backup. No way he’d leave her hanging, though no doubt he was sweating their loss of communication.

She had a few minutes until they realized the jammer was out. If one of their phones rang, the jig was up. No time like the present to go after the dirt. “Antilla.”

“Javier.”

“Whatever. Seen one twin, seen them all. Same person, right? I had no idea you were so good with bombs. Your daddy taught you that in your gun running education?”

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