Kip released a long sigh. “What have you done, boy?”
Wesley still didn’t take his eyes, or gun, off Jake.
“There was this guy,” Wesley said. “He told me that if I helped him intercept the payments, he would turn me into a made man in his gang. Imagine that future. Not this working-at-the-store-taking-classes-at-night bullshit. Something better. Something I could share with all of us.”
“You’ve bankrupted this family!”
“And now you’re aiming a gun at a police officer,” Jake said.
Wesley scoffed, Mr. Tough Guy, but the sound that escaped his lips was as much a shudder as a snicker. “Yeah, a cop who’s way out of his jurisdiction.”
“Very true. But how do you think this is gonna turn out for you? Man Kills Police Officer in Family Home. You think this gang you’re trying to join is gonna want that kind of ink? You think they’ll make you a made man then?”
Wesley digested Jake’s words, distraught.
All eyes were on Wesley. Jake’s, Kip’s, the teenage daughter’s, those of the mother and the young boy she sheltered. Horrible sounds interrupted the quiet—whimpers, sniffs, crying from the toddler.
Wesley continued to think. The gun rattled in his hands.
Jake watched the small movements, those nearly imperceptible elements that could tell you which way a situation was going to swing. Wesley’s eyes twitched. Muscles rippled over his long face. Movement in the lower lip. And just when it looked to Jake like a bit of the steam was releasing, that disaster would be averted...
Wesley’s finger tensed.
His trigger finger.
Jake leapt from his chair. Screams from the family as he crashed into Wesley. The two of them flew back, landing on a coffee table. The wooden legs snapped, glass surface shattering.
Jake had hold of Wesley’s wrist, right below the weapon. He smashed it in the shards of glass. A yelp from Wesley, but the gun remained in his hand.
Wesley squared a fist, swung, and Jake juked to the left, dodging the blow. He yanked Wesley’s hand behind his back, rolling him onto his stomach, then twisted the other arm.
The gun dropped, clanged on the floor.
Jake gave Wesley’s arms a final yank, tangling them up behind him.
Then he leaned into Wesley’s ear and said, “Let’s talk, shall we?”
Chapter Nine
Val was no longer kneeling beside Silence’s table. Now she sat in his booth, directly across from him.
“It’s rough out here for a single mother,” she was saying. “Not just the lack of money or the quality of life; it’s all the time I lose with my son.”
Val’s speech faded from Silence’s attention as he looked at his notepad.
The last set of notes he’d written—the traitor connection between Wesley Bowman and Benito Ramirez.
Surely Benito wasn’t the traitor that Wesley had been. Silence thought of the framed photo that had been on Adriana’s end table, the strapping youth in a cap and gown, tall, dwarfing his mother as he stood with his arm around her. The pure-looking eyes, clean-cut face, ready to take on the world.
Surely not…
Maybe Silence was over-analyzing, jumping to conclusions, allowing the similarities to cloud his judgment, to create new connections where there were none.
Maybe he should meditate.
What would C.C. think?
“That’s why I have to keep doing this,” Val said. “You gotta have a ‘why,’ as they say. I just think of Toby, and I…”
Her words faded away again.
Silence’s attention drifted downward, away from Val, to the tabletop. His brow knitted, eyes squinted.
Dammit! He hated how chaotic his thought process was, the roiling pool of ideas and correlations.
Was there a connection?
What would C.C. think?
He turned back to Val.
She was still talking, animatedly. But Silence heard none of it.
A different voice. Another woman. Muted, barely audible.
“You’re thinking it to death,” C.C. said.
The sound of waves.
Val said something particularly important, something that produced a big flourish of her arms. And a silent laugh. Her lips moved rapid-fire, hands telling the symphony of her story, as the sound of the waves grew louder.
Waves. And seagulls.
Silence allowed his mind to visit the past again, going back even further, before he’d gone to New Orleans, before he’d met the Bowmans.
Where Val’s head, shoulders, and torso had faced him there was now a different woman, roughly the same age, in her late twenties, olive skin, full lips, Italian, her hair and bare shoulders shining in the sunlight, the field of sand surrounding her a blazing, pure white.
Pensacola Beach, Florida.
Jake and C.C. were cross-legged on towels, a few feet apart and facing each other. People in swimwear all around them, lying out in the sun, walking, laughing, tossing footballs and frisbees, swimming in the emerald green waves. In the distance were a large pier and towering condominium buildings.
Jake wore standard beachwear—a pair of sunglasses, tank-top, shorts. By contrast, C.C.’s clothing, while definitely not out of place, had a quirky flare different than those around her—a long, sheer sarong over a pair of bicycle shorts, white tank with spaghetti straps and a mass of dangling necklaces. Her dark, curly hair was tied up with a red-and-white headband that looked straight from the 1940s, stripped from the head of Rosie the Riveter herself.
“How can a person think too hard about something?” Jake had said. “That makes no sense at all.”
“Exactly.”
“Huh?”
“It makes no sense because of the very fact you think things to death.”
“Now I’m thinking too hard about the concept of thinking too hard?”
“Precisely.”
Jake groaned. He loved this woman, but sometimes she confounded him. He let his chin drop to his chest, which was moist with sweat.
“You’re so confusing.” He looked back up, gave her a smile, before turning to look at the beach surrounding them. “Can we stop sitting like this? People are staring.”
“Who cares? Now, listen, we’ve been working on this, clarifying your mind. You’re a thinker, love. You think so much. And you believe that if you think really hard, you’ll find your answers, that if you don’t think really hard, you’re somehow being negligent. Let’s go back to where we
