Page 22 of Wicked Love
CHAPTERTEN
Madelyn
The van had looked old from the outside, with smudges of dirt and patches of rust, but the interior proved that was just a disguise. I sat in the back on a bench padded with smooth leather while thin but soft carpeting rested beneath my feet. But the comfortable furnishings didn’t stop me from squirming on the bench as the vehicle swayed around a corner with a rumble of the engine.
A moment later, the driver parked. We must have reached the seafood market. He glanced back at Beckett, who was poised on the bench across from me.
Beckett gave him a quick nod. With no further prompting, the guy adjusted the collar of his polo shirt uniform, grabbed a clipboard that was part ofhisdisguise, and stepped out of the van.
We watched through the grimy windows as he headed over to a neighboring building and put on a show of theoretically inspecting the vents protruding from the brick wall. When I turned back to Beckett, he was watching me.
“Are you ready?”
I dragged in a breath. “Yes. Let’s get it over with.”
He handed me a burner phone and a slip of paper with a single phone number scrawled on it. The phone number that would give me a direct line to the store manager at the Fresh Catch Seafood Market.
“Do everything as we discussed,” Beckett said. He’d gone over the plan with me the moment he’d picked me up behind the theater. The market was just opening for the day. The manager was definitely in, but he shouldn’t be too busy yet.
There was nothing to worry about. Other than that we were pulling a con on someone who was probably connected to my dad’s murderer.
The people involved in the crime would undoubtedly know my face. That severely limited how much I could help with any hands-on investigations. But this maneuver wouldn’t be caught on any cameras, and the manager wouldn’t know my voice. Beckett had come through with a way I could be a part of our mission to take our enemies down, just as he’d promised.
I tapped in the number and willed myself to breathe slowly and evenly as the line on the other end rang. The words I was supposed to say whirled in my mind. I focused all my attention on the first sentence.
One thing after the other. It was no big deal, really. But the reaction we might provoke mattered a lot, in ways I didn’t fully understand but Beckett was clearly equipped to deal with.
My pulse jolted at the click of the answered call. “Carl here, Fresh Catch Seafood.”
My mouth moved automatically, the words I’d rehearsed spilling out. “Your next special delivery has been moved up by three days,” I said, keeping my voice monotonous but firm.
The statement sounded strange coming from my mouth, but the manager inhaled sharply. “No, that can’t be right.”
“We expect the market to be ready,” I went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. As he started to sputter something about usual timelines, I simply hung up.
A tremor ran through my body as I sagged back against the side of the van. Beckett tipped his head to me approvingly. “You were perfect. I’d love to see how he’s freaking out right now.”
“Ifhe’s freaking out.” But the guy definitely hadn’t sounded happy. “And now…?”
Beckett was already setting a small metal box on his lap. Two cables connected it to a laptop that was open on the bench beside him. He flicked a switch and scooted even closer to his side of the van, which had been parked just inches away from the back wall of the market. Studying the data that trickled across the laptop’s screen, he adjusted one dial and another before appearing satisfied.
“Now we wait for him to follow the bait.”
“I didn’t know you were a techie too,” I said, raising my eyebrows.
He laughed. “I wouldn’t know how to use this gadget without help. I got it from one of my friends back in Paradise Bend—a county I’ve spend a bunch of time in.He’sthe real techie, a tech genius really. He’s brilliant at this stuff.” Beckett paused and glanced over at me. “I’d bet in a few years, Logan could get to where Gideon is if he keeps working at it.”
What would Logan have made of that compliment from the guy he’d been so hostile to? The lack of respect must have only gone one way. “You really think so?”
One corner of Beckett’s mouth quirked up into a crooked smile. “I might not appreciate his attitude toward me, but I can recognize talent when I see it.”
He checked the screen again and fiddled with the controls a little more. “This should pick up nearby cell signals, but I don’t want the range to be too broad, or we’ll catch people all the way over on the street… We just need to cover the market building, and maybe only the back. That’s where the manager’s office is. I don’t think he’d make this call where the regular employees can hear—”
He cut himself off at an emphaticbeep!from the machine. “Here we go,” Beckett said, and tapped a couple of keys on the laptop’s keyboard.
As I leaned forward, my heart thumping in anticipation, a voice I recognized as the manager’s burst from the speakers with a faint hum of static. “—got a call about the special deliveries. I don’t know how they even had my number! Aren’t you supposed to deal with this stuff, Sharply?”
The voice that answered sounded much more collected, low and cool. “When did they call? What exactly did they say?”
