Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) - Karen Rose Page 0,150

else. He’d told DJ that he’d have a house of his own. Now he realized that Kowalski had just wanted someone else’s name on the deeds. On the leases. The bastard didn’t want anything to be traced back to him.

We’re just his stooges. He’d fallen into Kowalski’s hands just like he’d fallen into Pastor’s.

Because I’m the fool.

“Not anymore,” he muttered, and if it sounded a little slurred, that was okay. Life owed him a little numbness, because everything had gone to shit.

He’d missed killing Mercy. He’d missed killing Gideon. He still didn’t have Pastor’s money. Kowalski had tried to eliminate him. And he was front and center on the FBI’s radar.

He sat in a stolen house, drinking stolen whiskey. He didn’t mind the stealing. But he’d had his own house. He’d had his own whiskey.

“Not anymore,” he muttered again. The Feds had taken everything.

The worst part of it was, DJ was on his own. He hadn’t realized how much he’d depended on Kowalski’s organization until he’d been cut off.

Weapons, customers, safe houses. Hired muscle. Fellow operatives. Gone. He was alone.

“So get them back.” He set the bottle aside and focused on his laptop. The document he’d been working on was nearly full. He’d noted the jobs that he’d pulled for Kowalski, the jobs that others had pulled, and the customers and suppliers he could recall.

The jobs, the names of customers and suppliers, those filled the page. But DJ realized he didn’t know a single other member of the Chicos who had any power whatsoever.

Only Kowalski.

He laughed bitterly at his lists. Isolating a person from others? Making them dependent on a single source of financial and personal support?

Classic tactics of abusers.

He’d jumped from Pastor’s frying pan into Kowalski’s fire.

“Not anymore,” he said again, so forcefully that he finally believed it himself.

He’d find a way to make Kowalski do what he wanted for a change. He’d get the weapons. He’d get those damn bank codes.

Then he’d blow everything up and shoot everyone down. It was time to take charge of his own damn life.

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

FRIDAY, MAY 26, 6:00 P.M.

“I’m glad you’re all here.” Raeburn sat at the conference room table, which was more crowded than it had been Wednesday morning.

Since DJ Belmont’s attempt on Gideon’s life that afternoon, the “Eden Team” had become significantly bigger. Molina sat at the table, although she’d told them that she was there to provide insight on Belmont’s sniper skills, rather than taking a leadership role. Tom wasn’t the only disappointed person at the table. It seemed that Molina, while not universally liked, was universally respected.

Raeburn was improving, though.

There were logistics experts and a few experts in the local gangs, including Agent Rodriguez, who’d been providing protection for Mercy until now. Mercy, therefore, had new protection, as did Gideon.

Liza finally had protection as well, which was the one good thing to come of her involvement with Sunnyside Oaks. But her detail would be staying outside Sunnyside’s gates. Tom had been racking his brain trying to figure out a way to get someone inside with her. He’d considered hiring a bodyguard on his own.

Liza might not like the idea, but he couldn’t concentrate if he was worrying about her safety. It was hard enough to concentrate with her voice in his damn head.

I need more than that.

“Agent Croft?” Raeburn asked, yanking Tom’s attention back to the briefing. “Update?”

“SacPD ballistics analyzed the bullet that was lodged in Agent Reynolds’s vest,” Croft said, having been put in charge of communications between the FBI and SacPD.

Tom had spent most of the afternoon searching for any sign of Kowalski or Belmont, running facial recognition checks at airports and toll stations. So far, there’d been no sign of them.

“The bullet matches the two taken from Penny Gaynor’s body,” Croft went on. “It also matches a bullet taken from a drive-by shooting a year ago. The victim was a drug dealer who, according to witnesses at the time, was infringing on the Chicos’ territory.”

“That’s a connection,” Raeburn said. “Has Belmont been back to Sunnyside Oaks?”

“Not today,” one of the agents answered. “We’ve had eyes on the place from outside the gates since last night. A Lexus like the one Belmont was driving when he shot Agent Reynolds was seen leaving the facility late last night, though. The driver had long dark hair and was not identified as Belmont. Unfortunately, we didn’t know about the Lexus then.”

“So he wore a wig last night,” Raeburn said. “And had colored his hair by this morning. Agent Hunter,