Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,1
it’s worth money on the black market,” Kai said. And then she turned to Harrison and frowned. “Wait. You said that.”
“That was me,” Harrison said with a nod. “But it doesn’t matter. Drugs that go missing are an issue. Have they contacted the cops?”
“No. See? That’s a funny thing. Joy said that she brought it up with her boss, and he just laughed at her, said she must have miscounted, so she should go back and do it again.”
“Did she?” Johan asked, interested in the way the system worked over here. Africa was a whole lot more lax in some ways because you could be staring down the barrel of a rifle pretty damn fast. So Africa had less of a certain type of crime because the on-the-spot punishment would be so much more severe. But Johan had done many jobs in Europe, and even in the US too, and he knew that things were on a much different scale here.
“She did, indeed, and, when she went back to him, he said it must have been an inventory error.”
“Did she go to their accountant over it?”
Kai looked at Harrison and nodded. “The accountant wasn’t happy and commented that the stuff was expensive but didn’t confirm whether he had entered an invoice for a case of ketamine or not.”
“Sounds like she’s trying to do the right thing and to track it down, but nobody else seems to care.”
“I think that’s a problem for a lot of large companies,” she said. “Because somebody else will end up taking the blame, if it did go missing.”
“And is that our problem, or is this just a thought exercise that we’re all talking about?” Johan asked.
“I dumped it in Ice’s lap,” Kai confessed. “So I’m not sure what she’ll do with it. Considering the type of drugs we’re talking about, I imagine she’ll bring in the cops.”
The steady clip-clip sound of footsteps coming down the hallway said they were about to find out. As Ice walked in, her hair in a long braid down her back, wearing a simple white flowing shirt over jeans and sandals, she looked as cool, calm, and collected as ever.
Johan had heard that she was pregnant, but she wasn’t showing much, if at all, if that was the case.
Ice had on reading glasses and pulled them down her nose so she could see over them. “I spoke to Joy,” she said. “She’s really worried, but her section boss is apparently brushing it off.”
“Yes, that’s what she told me,” Kai said.
Ice nodded. “However, I went several rungs higher on the ladder to somebody I know on the board.”
“Of course you know somebody on the board,” Kai said in a drawling voice. “Is there anybody here in Houston that you don’t know?”
Ice flashed her bright grin. “It helps to know a lot of people, not only the local ones,” she said. “I just had a private conversation with him, and he’s not impressed. He said, whether it was a clerical error or a theft, it’s not a drug they want to have floating around, particularly as the lot numbers would lead back to his company’s research lab.”
“Never thought of that,” Kai said. “That gives more weight to getting this solved.”
“Well, it should have been resolved right off the bat,” Johan said.
Ice looked at him with interest. “You wanted to do a job, right?”
He nodded immediately.
“Good,” she said. “Then you and Galen can go.”
At that, a silence hung around the place. Johan looked around and said, “And why is everybody all of a sudden staring at me that way?”
“You’re not one of our regular guys, don’t know the lay of the land here,” Harrison said easily. He looked at Ice and said, “Don’t you want one of us to go too?”
“You mean, besides Galen, who is also one of Bullard’s men?”
Harrison gave a one-armed shrug. “Yeah. Like which streets to avoid and who to call at the police department. And which restaurants to avoid.” He chuckled at his own joke.
She pondered it and said, “Well, I do have a job in the same area. I could send two of you over there, and, if these guys needed help, you could step up to aid them, and vice versa.”
Harrison frowned but said, “I’m game. It’s in Houston, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “And so is the other job.”
“We don’t get many jobs close together like that,” he said. “What’s the second job?”