Page 58 of Tapped

I step over the prone body bag on the porch that will quite literally take the information I need to the grave. I follow Tim and Brax through the house and down a short hallway to the back bedroom.

“Holy shit,” I mutter.

“Told you,” Brax says.

Brax wasn’t kidding. This is a shitload of cash. We put the cameras up last week when we followed one of our main targets here multiple times. We’ve seen duffels come and go from the house, but this has been going on for a while.

“The dog hit the cash.” Brax, Tim, and I turn to the voice behind us. Lieutenant Carl Arriaga from Miami’s Narc unit is standing there in a pair of BDUs and a T-shirt. He crosses his arms and looks around. “In fact, the dog hit on almost half the contents of the house. It’s like they rolled around in a mountain of blow before coming home from work every day. I heard you’ve got cameras up outside.”

“We should have the video soon. We’ll share it with you,” Tim says.

I glance around the house and take in what could have been. “After today, this location will be dead to my targets. No way will they use it to stash or move anything.”

“You know we’re going to have to take everything for evidence,” Carl says.

I nod. “If the DEA could stay out of it, that’ll keep my case clean. If I found this house, I’ll find the next one, but I can’t lie—this sucks. Not to mention the dead body out there died with the information I need on a double murder-for-hire case.”

“No shit?” Carl whistles and shakes his head. “We can do that. They’re going to want their money. I need to get it out of here fast. I feel like a fucking sitting duck with all this cash,” Carl says.

Brax looks at his phone. “The video just came in.”

“It’s my case,” I complain. “Why’d they send it to you?”

Brax pins me with his eyes. “Because we work everything together and when you didn’t answer your phone this morning, they called me. That’s what happens when you go MIA and sleep places other than your own home.”

Tim lets out a low chuckle. “That’s why you keep showing up looking like that.”

“Can we get to the video?” I bite. This shit is exhausting, even though I am more rested than usual. I know for a fact it has more to do with the woman I shared a sofa with than the sofa itself.

A laptop would be easier, but everyone in the room is anxious to see what happened. We huddle around Brax’s phone as he pushes play.

The street is dark, almost as dark as the house was when Adder walks up carrying two duffels and a backpack. He’s the reason I have cameras on this house to begin with. He’s also the one who led us to Jeff Michaels. Cases like this are nothing but a complicated flow chart. Then it’s like following ants that are building tunnels. They’re either moving product or burying the dead.

In this case, it’s the latter.

“Here we go,” Tim says, as we all watch a dark form move from the shadows of the bushes.

“And there he goes,” I mutter. “Drug dealers get robbed too.”

The assailant is wearing a mask in Florida during the dog days of summer—never a good sign. My target sees the barrel of a gun raised to his head just in time. He flips around and knocks the man in the mask off balance.

One shot goes wide.

Two people in the house burst through the front door. A man I haven’t identified yet takes the kill shot, and Adder falls to the ground.

That’s when the getaway car comes into view. Tires squeal on pavement and a barrage of gunfire hits the house.

A guy who came from inside the house is hit in the shoulder when he tries to pick up the bags of money. Two others return fire toward the street. So many bullets fly, it’s good this happened in the early morning hours, or someone would’ve been caught by a stray.

We watch the car speed off. The second guy who got hit is dragged to a van in the driveway by the other two. The only thing they bothered to grab were the bags that had fallen next to Adder’s dead body.

“That was fast,” Brax said. “The office flagged both plates in the system. We’ll see if the license plate readers pick them up around town.”

“I’ll get surveillance on the other known locations.” I sigh and look around the house. I’m not sure things could’ve been worse. Adder is dead and the stash house is burned. “They’ll turn up eventually, even if they don’t come back here.”

“There won’t be anything to come back for in about another hour,” Carl quips. “Time to get this shit hauled out and logged into evidence. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Let’s get out of here before the media realizes the feds showed up and report it to the world,” Tim says. “Shit like this always happens on the weekend. I have a tee time this afternoon that I’m going to have to cancel.”

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