His brother cursed again, impressing Nick. With language like that, Rafe could go undercover as a DEA agent and blend right in with the dealers as if he were one of them. Too bad he’d wasted his talents as a detective and part-time bomb-squad technician in the Saint Augustine Police Department.
“How can I help?” Rafe asked.
“Answer me a question. If you were heading up a task force whose sole goal was to catch a drug dealer with ties to Heather and Lily, what would you do right now?”
“If I was dumb enough to waste my talents as a DEA agent, you mean?”
Nick grinned. “Yeah. That’s what I mean.”
“If I believed the girls were a lead to a major drug dealer, I’d keep my distance. I’d wait for the dealer or some of his lackeys to show up.” His gaze shot to Nick. “I’d use the girls as bait.”
“Exactly.”
Rafe groaned. “Ah, hell. You want me to keep an eye on your girlfriend for you.”
“Ex-girlfriend. And I want more than that. I need you to keep her alive.”
* * *
HEATHER FINISHED CLEANING the kitchen and stood with her hands braced on the edge of the sink. She stared through the cutout into the family room and shook her head. To say her apartment was a disaster was an understatement. Lily had always been incredibly messy, but this was the worst Heather had ever seen. Lily usually tried to confine her piles of dirty clothes and discarded items to her bedroom. This morning, Heather’s entire apartment looked as if a tornado had gone through it.
Probably Lily’s way of paying her back for flushing the cocaine.
Heather’s shoulders slumped. She slogged her way through the mess to the short hallway that led to the two bedrooms. She paused outside the guest bedroom door and tried the knob. Still locked, like when Heather had first gotten home. She hadn’t even seen Lily yet, because her sister was acting like a spoiled brat, hiding behind a locked door with classic rock blasting from the room. Heather banged her fist against the door. Still no answer.
“Come on, Lily. You can’t ignore me forever. Open up. We need to talk.”
Heather rested her forehead against the door. Maybe she should give up on her sister for now and get that shower she’d been longing for since she’d gotten home. The only reason she hadn’t taken a shower already was because when she’d walked into her apartment the smell of rotting garbage coming from the kitchen had nearly knocked her over. How Lily could have ignored that smell was beyond her. It had permeated the entire apartment.
After taking out the garbage, Heather had started setting the rest of the kitchen to rights and one thing had led to another until she’d ended up scrubbing the entire room. Now the thought of a hot shower sounded like heaven. She might even soak her aching, tired muscles in that bubble bath she’d been wanting since Friday. She hurried into her bedroom, shut the door and took off her clothes.
* * *
NICK PAUSED IN the opening to the conference room, surprised to see an assistant district attorney sitting at the table, along with another man Nick had never met. His boss, Zack Waverly, was at the head of the table and motioned for Nick to come in.
Nick shut the door and took a seat beside his boss.
“Nick,” Waverly said, “you already know ADA Tom Hicks. He only has an hour window before his next court appointment next door. That’s why we met over here instead of at the DEA office.”
Nick leaned over the table and shook Hicks’s hand.
“And this,” Waverly said, motioning to the man sitting at the other end of the table, “this is Special Agent Michael Rickloff. He works out of the Miami office and is heading up the Key West Task Force. He’s the one who called and asked us to perform the sting on the club Friday night.”
Nick shook Rickloff’s hand. “Miami? You’re not from Key West?”
“Miami native, born and raised. Key West is my current target, thus the name of the task force I put together. A major drug pipeline is coming up from the Keys into my city, and as you found out, even as far north as Saint Augustine. I want it stopped. And I need your help to do it.”
Nick turned to Waverly. “My help? Is my suspension lifted?”
“Assuming you agree to Rickloff’s plan, yes.”
“But the internal investigation will continue,” Hicks said. “And if we find anything that concerns us, you’ll be pulled from the operation.”
So that was why the ADA was here? To warn Nick to be a good boy? If it weren’t for the carrot of having his suspension lifted, he would have gotten up right then and walked out.
Ignoring Hicks, he focused on Rickloff. “What plan? What operation?”
“When you raided the club for us, we were obviously hoping you’d find more than a knapsack with four kilos of cocaine. We were hoping you’d catch Lily Bannon meeting her contact here in north Florida. I wanted a bigger fish than Miss Bannon, to ultimately lead me to the head of the pipeline. Since that didn’t happen, I need another way to bring my target down. That’s where you come in.”
Nick crossed his arms and sat back. “I’m listening.”
* * *
AFTER PAMPERING HERSELF with a shower and a long soak in the tub, Heather was finally starting to feel normal again. She’d clipped her nails short the way she liked them and filed them smooth. She’d styled her hair into long curly waves that hung down her back, and she was wearing one of her favorite pairs of slacks—the soft, copper-colored chinos, with an exquisite pair of Italian leather sandals cushioning her feet—clothes she rarely got to wear because she was usually working.
Her typical work clothes consisted of T-shirts and jeans, things she didn’t mind getting dirty or torn if she had to duck behind a Dumpster to avoid her mark catching her with her camera.
Thinking about work reminded her of the disastrous phone call with her client she’d made a few minutes ago—correction, former client. He’d been furious that she hadn’t called him Saturday, and no amount of apologizing or telling him there was an emergency had soothed him. Now she’d have to work extra hard to be even more frugal until she could get another big case lined up.
Determined not to think about her business and financial woes for now, she straightened the bathroom and went to work on her bedroom. Lily must have searched through all of Heather’s drawers hoping to find some hidden money, because every single one of them was hanging open. Heather sighed and straightened the mess, then headed into the living room to tackle the mess in there.
She stood in indecision, not sure where to start. Not only were there piles of laundry, papers and DVDs lying around wherever Lily had chosen to drop them, but some of the drawers and doors in the entertainment center on the far wall were hanging open.
She blinked and studied the room more carefully. Was it a coincidence that her apartment was so horribly trashed, after everything that had happened? This wasn’t a typical “Lily mess.” It was far worse. The apartment looked like it had been...searched. She’d worried about Greary and his “employer” finding out about the fate of the drugs. Had they broken into her apartment and searched it? She gasped as an even worse thought occurred to her. What if Lily had been home when they broke in?
Her entire body started shaking. She whirled around and rushed back into the hall. She twisted the knob on Lily’s door. Still locked. She pounded on the door, praying the awful, sinking feeling inside of her was because she was overtired and overreacting.
“Open up, Lily! Please. I need to know you’re okay.” She pounded on the door again. No answer. “Are...are you in there?”
Nothing except for the beat of the music, the same