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“Wha—?”
Joe giggled. “Hey, Cisco. Got caught in a little sting, did you?” she preened, unable to contain her mirth.
“Fuck! You’ve been on his phone speaker. I call no-fair-sies,” the man whined.
“I’m crying buckets,” Mike gloated chokingly. “You know the chief didn’t specify any rules. We were told we could use anything at our disposal, so suck it up.” The man was laughing so hard he could barely finish his sentence.
“Okay, Mike,” Cisco warned, “I will deal with you later. But you, sneaky-spy-girl,” Cisco mock-growled at Joe. “Just wait. Payback’s a bitch.”
“Bring it on,” Joelle snickered. It felt hella good not only to be included in the banter, but to be teased. “I have to warn you, though, Cisco. In general, I don’t lose.”
“Challenge accepted,” Cisco returned enthusiastically. “I’ll hit you with a mountain of shit when you least expect it.”
“You can try,” Joe continued to taunt. She was loath for the fun to end.
“What do you say, Joe?” Mike had finally gotten himself under control. “You wanna do two against one?”
“I’d say yes, but is that really fair?” Joe speculated, tongue-in-cheek. “Your friend doesn’t have that much going for him in the first place…”
She trailed off as Cisco howled.
“Hell, no. You are so going down for that,” he gasped out between belly laughs. “If you two can team up, I’m employing Kyle and Doug to help in my court.”
“Aww,” Joe responded. “I feel bad, knowing you have to bring in the big guns. But don’t worry. We’ll smoke them, too.”
“He always needs back-up, Elle,” Mike played along. “Maybe someday he’ll get his training wheels off so he can ride bikes with the big boys.”
“Ooh, then he can?—”
The phone in her hand suddenly came to life with an alert. She quickly changed screens while leaving her speaker engaged.
Her adrenaline spiked.
“Skittles, Mike. I’ve got to go. That semi is on the move again.”
“Okay, Elle. But please be careful,” he responded, and she could hear the worry in his voice.
“Always. Good night, handsome.” Her impish side came out again. “And good night, Mike.” She hung up before either man could call her out.
Moving quickly back into her small bedroom, she pulled out dark clothes and dressed as quickly as possible. She didn’t want to waste time. If her man Benji was taking his truck out at this time of night, it could only be for nefarious purposes. She’d already ID’d him as a day-hauler for a meat packing plant nearby, so there was no good reason for him to be out and about after hours.
Making sure to holster her gun, and gather up other pertinent equipment, Joe also grabbed a water bottle and a couple protein bars, just in case her stakeout was prolonged. In a way, she hoped it was. Because that would mean being closer to her goal of breaking the fentanyl ring wide open. On the other hand, it would suck to wrap things up too quickly. Joe was hankering for more time with Mike, so solving the criminals’ activities would be counter to her personal goals.
Tough noogies, she told herself, shaking off her desire to draw out her op. Her job came first. Always. If and when this particular one was over, and if it looked like things with Mike might go somewhere, she’d contemplate her next move. But for now, it was game on, baby, with the task to which she’d been assigned.
Twenty minutes later, Joe watched as Benji and the man he’d met at the bar, took bags that could only be fentanyl from a storage facility, loading them into the storage compartment of his tractor. It didn’t take long to load the four dozen, one kilo packages, but holy hell, each one was enough to kill a half million people. Joe wanted nothing more than to take down the rasp-bowls immediately, but snapped a series of pictures instead because apprehension was not her job. Besides, she needed to cool her jets until she could trace this to the top dog.
She hunkered down to wait, then followed the semi and the car when they left.
Joe had her headlights turned off, and stopped several hundred yards from a rusted out, extremely rundown looking warehouse, parking her car in a heavily treed turnout where hopefully it wouldn’t be spotted.
She stealthily made her way to the metal structure where Benji’s tractor and his buddy’s vehicle sat, idling. Three men, two of whom she’d already tailed tonight, stood next to a closed, overhead door, conversing.
There was Benji, as well as the other guy whom her office had yet to give her ID on. But they were accompanied by an older, well-dressed individual who had to be higher up on the food chain since he was doing most of the talking.
Joe couldn’t get close enough to hear what they were saying, but it seemed like perp number three was laying down some kind of law because the other two were nodding their heads in deference to him.
Schmidt. Why hadn’t she thought to put ears on Benji’s semi? Duh. Because the device wouldn’t work beyond a nine-hundred-foot radius. But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t have intuited that a scenario like this might arise. Rookie error.