“Do we have people ready to track the cash and the delivery at the dock in Spain?” I asked.
“We’re working through the details using the FBI’s legal attaché at the embassy in Madrid and the Spanish National Intelligence Centre.”
“Can we trust Spanish Intelligence?” I asked as doubts filled me. The Kyōdaina had spies everywhere, and I doubted Spain’s CNI was immune any more than our own FBI. Ken’Ichi and Mori-sama paid handsomely, and they always found the weak link. Then, they rewarded those leaks with more money than they would otherwise see in their lifetime.
“We have to trust someone,” Malone said.
“I trust you,” I responded, and that was pretty much where my trust ended.
I knew the stakes if the truth got back to any of Mori-sama’s men about me. The bloody gauze from that last night at the villa in Tarifa bounced through my head as well as the severed finger that had shown up in a box at FBI headquarters. It had belonged to an undercover agent who’d been working for the Kyōdaina in Japan. A man whose body we’d never recovered.
I didn’t want Jada or me to be the ones losing body parts—or worse…our lives. I doubted Mori-sama would kill his own daughter. His only child. But he’d pretty much hold her hostage. Jada may not have been dispensable, but I was, and they wouldn’t hesitate to drop me off a boat in the middle of the ocean.
“It won’t be tied to you,” Malone said, reading my mind and bringing me back to the sunshine and the park. “Your name isn’t in any of the information we’ve shared with Spain.”
It was a small reassurance, but we both knew the truth. Because it was my yacht―mine and Dax’s―being used. If it got raided or chatter hit the streets about the shipment, I was the only one Ken’Ichi would suspect of having spilled the beans. I was already under suspicion after the bug in the study had been found.
There was nothing more I could do at the moment except to try and bring the whole house down before I was a card that got tossed out.
I pushed away from the bench and slipped into the crowds. I wound my way through the busy streets, changing direction several times until I ended up back at the hotel where I’d parked my car. I had a drink at the bar and then made my way out to the valet stand.
When I got back to Jada’s place, Dax had arrived. They were in the parlor, an expensively decorated room with real art costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was a house and a life so different from how I’d grown up with the cheaply framed Flower Fairy prints on the walls that it was hard to keep up sometimes.
Being in any of Dax’s and Jada’s houses was like living in a museum. A place you would never quite feel comfortable kicking off your shoes and resting your feet on the coffee table. The fact that I could afford some of it myself—if I ever bought a house and settled down—was even more of a foreign idea.
When I walked in, they all had drinks in their hands as they waited for dinner. Violet was laughing up at Dax, her eyes sparkling. It twisted the knife in my chest. Another reminder that she used to look at me that way. With laughter and teasing. She used to dance around from foot to foot as she talked about whatever was on her mind. I wanted that look to be mine again. I didn’t want it directed at my suave friend.
“Whatever he’s telling you,” I growled, “I can almost guarantee it’s only fifty percent true.”
Dax chuckled and then asked, “Who were you meeting with?”
I shrugged. “An old friend from Clover Lake.”
Violet frowned at me. My little genius. She knew I pretty much had cut ties with the town I’d grown up in long before now. The toxic relationship I’d had with my dad was not a reason to go back. The nonexistent relationship with my mom wasn’t much more of one. The guilt of what had happened to Carlos walking with me through every single street whenever I returned made it practically impossible.
Jada handed me a glass that smelled strong enough to knock out a cow.
“What is this?” I asked. “And how many ahead of me are you all?”
“Obaasan’s special Juyondai sake. They print a special label