Page 7 of Close Encounters of the Sexy Kind
Chapter Three
Deep in the shadows, Ryan looked at her watch and sighed. Leave it to a weasel like Drew to keep her waiting. She should be back in her warm, dry apartment, having a glass of wine and trying to psych herself up for Betty’s birthday tomorrow.
Clubbing definitely wasn’t her scene. Just thinking about spending the evening listening to loud music, drinking, and fending off guys only interested in hooking up gave her the hives. But she would do it. She would go and pretend to have a good time for Betty’s sake, because Betty was her best friend and that was what friends did.
Instead of drinking wine and lamenting the rules of best friendship, however, she was standing in the drizzling rain and hoping her informant was keeping to his regular schedule.
Something had been niggling at the back of her mind since Jose appeared on the precinct steps three days earlier. Namely, his repeated sobs of “I’m sorry!” had been playing on repeat like some annoying song.
What had he been sorry for? And what, or more importantlywho,had he been apologizing to?
She had pulled the reports and spoken to the officers who were handling the case. According to Jose’s statement, he had smoked a little too much of his own product and then had decided to crash on a small commercial fishing vessel. He vaguely remembered stumbling along the deck and falling into the water, subsequently getting himself entangled in the nets.
As Pam would say, that story didn’t hold water.
Jose couldn’t remember the name of the boat, nor exactly how he had come to be on it. Further questioning of local fishermen had failed to determine to whom the netting belonged, and everyone questioned along the docks had denied having seen Jose that night.
Something was definitely fishy.
The prevalent theory was that Jose had stepped on the toes of some other dealer, and what happened to him was a message.
The message part made sense. Dealers were very territorial and didn’t take kindly to someone infringing on theirs.
Whatdidn’tmake sense was that Jose had been delivered to the police station. If a rival dealer was behind Jose’s unfortunate netting, why not leave him out at the docks, swinging in the breeze for someone to find? That would serve as a warning, not just to Jose, but to anyone else who might be entertaining the idea of crossing a few of those boundary lines.
Putting him on display somewhere else would also be more in line with the typical modus operandi of those guys.
Drug dealers – even the small fish - had a kind of code. They had their own methods of dealing with things, and those methods usually did not involve drawing the attention of the police.
So Ryan had dug a little deeper, checking the records of drug-related activities over the past three months. The findings had been intriguing.
While the crime rate in the Golden Beach area as a whole had remained relatively consistent, drug busts were down and solicitation arrests were practically nonexistent. That inevitably led her to ask: if her department wasn’t cleaning up the streets, then who was? Did they have a possible vigilante on their hands?
Those were the questions that had her standing in the alleyway, muttering curses under her breath while amplifying her bad hair day. Drew would have answers. He was a weasel, but he was a weasel who knew what was going on.
Finally, a familiar looking figure appeared around the corner. His face was hidden beneath the overlarge hoodie, but Ryan would have recognized that cocky swagger anywhere. She waited until he walked by then fell into step with him.
“Hey, Drew.”
Drew cursed and sidestepped, but Ryan had anticipated the action and snagged his skinny wrist before he could take off.
“Jesus, Winslet. What gives?”
“It’s been a while since we’ve had a chat. What’s the matter, Drew? Aren’t you happy to see me?”
The man rolled his eyes and tugged on his wrist. “Not even a little.”
“Now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings.”
He snorted. “What do you want? I’ve got things to do.”
Ryan tugged him back into the shadows where they wouldn’t be seen. She wasn’t any happier about having to reach out than he was, but Drew had proven pretty reliable in the past. In exchange for information, Ryan pretended she didn’t know about his weed shack out in the boonies, and he pretended that he didn’t have one.
Ryan released his wrist and crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Drew avoided her gaze as he lit a cigarette. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Drew. You can start with why Jose showed up on the steps of the precinct with crab claws attached to his manly bits.”
