Page 98 of Dirty Hearts

Instead, her hair was a light brown, but the ends where it curled up were a soft shade of lilac.

It made her look more professional, although she still had some color.

“Morning,” she smiled, looking around the room. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. You guys look a little tense.”

“We always look like this. Come in and sit down.” I pointed to the chairs where Alex and Jude had previously sat.

She bit the corner of her lip and made her way inside. As she passed Alex, I didn’t miss the look she gave him. It was the look he gave her, however, that caught my attention more. It made me wonder if anything had happened between them last time we were all together. The slight blush in Cora’s cheeks told me that maybe I was right.

It was all shit to me though. Business was business.

“Guys, you remember Cora.”

Dante and Gio nodded. Cora gave them a sheepish smile back. Still wary of us.

“Cora, I know you just got here, but do you think we could get down to business?”

“I’m ready.” She nodded.

* * *

“I took the liberty of checking out a few things on my way here. Sinclaire said the main goal was to see what was currently hot in Chicago. Anything worth stealing. I found five things and a possible sixth.” Cora brought up a file on her laptop, and her fingers fired across the keyboard as she opened one of the files.

“What made these things so special?” I asked. The obvious answer was money, but as I knew all too well, there were some things worth more than just money.

“You’ll see.” She clicked on the folder in the file, and an image of a jade stone popped up. “This was found in a dig in Indonesia. The current market value is not listed because of the possible significance. Sold on the black market, you could make an easy million. As with these.” She opened an image of a Japanese art collection. It looked of the priceless variety too. “These are here for an exhibition.”

“It can’t be any of those,” Dante said. “David Shipel wouldn’t offer up all that money to make an easy million, especially when he was being offered a billion dollars.”

“I agree.” I pulled my chair closer. “Cora, these guys wanted to use my shipping company to smuggle something valuable. The thing would have gone as far as England undetected because of the arrangements we have and leniency on shipping permissions. Whatever it is, is that valuable.”

She pulled in a breath. “Well, let me jump to number six. Maybe we should start with the worst-case scenario and work our way down.” She pulled up an image of three cylinder-shaped objects. They were silver but reminded me of Fabergé eggs due to their glossiness.

“What the hell are those?” Gio asked.

“Nukes,” Pa stated.

Cora nodded. “They’re nukes currently being stored at the military base in Illinois.”

“What made you think it was these?” I had to know.

“When I was told about Barabbas Antonella. His name popped up a lot for illegal weapons trafficking. But he’s not a thief of sorts. He’s the orchestrator. Joe Manello’s name never came up, but I saw the type of wealth he has. I’m willing to bet he’s the investor. I think you’re looking at a crew setup here. Not just one of two people. There’s someone big missing from the picture. Someone you haven’t seen yet maybe.”

I looked at Cora as she spoke, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. There was one person I could think of, but I knew my heart wanted it to be him.

Goliath…

This was the sort of thing that was up his alley.

“How are we going to know? The nukes are just speculation. It might not be them.” That was me trying to be objective.

“There’re these two things.” She clicked the files below. One brought up a research paper from some doctor on cold fusion, and the other a tech-looking chip. “The chip allows you to hack into any system. It’s actually a decrypter devised for Homeland Security as an antiterrorist measure. It could be that too.”

It could be, but I didn’t think it was.

“I think it’s the nukes,” I said, glancing at the guys. “It feels more fitting with the shipping company. I’m pretty certain if it was a chip, then they wouldn’t need to get gone by sea. Let’s say it is the nukes, and they want to steal that, what would they do? Just grab the things and go? Taking something like that is bound to cause a big fuss. Don’t you think?”

Cora smiled. “Definitely. If I wanted to steal something like this, I’d have friends on the inside. You can’t get your hands on something like this in any simple way. If our theory is right and this is the thing they’re after, then they have some seriously big plans going on in the background. What we’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg.”