Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(144)

“…barges and then they’d have to… You even listening to me?”

I felt Turk’s nudge. “Huh? Yeah. Barges.”

He smiled at me and then flashed his attention down the table. “You got it bad, bro.”

I sat up a bit, trying to figure out what I was looking at on his computer screen. “Where did you say this warehouse was again?”

Turk shifted in his chair. “Corner of you’re and in love, outside of Hoboken.”

Now he was just f*cking with me.

Turk waggled his eyebrows, grinning like an ass.

The baby monitor on the counter crackled and the little one who was babbling to himself started huffing, until he broke into an extended wail.

“Excuse me,” Joanne said, standing. “I’d hoped he’d sleep longer but Colton is nosy, just like his dad.”

“Hey,” Turk snipped. “We’re inquisitive. Nothing wrong with that.”

I studied the information on his computer screen; what Erin’s father had told me made sense. “Canada.”

Turk pulled the laptop closer, squinting. “What?”

“This ring… they have a spotter collecting VINs, they replace US registration for Canadian, and then the car is clean.”

“You shitting me?” Turk asked.

“Border patrol doesn’t check registrations. They only ID occupants. No barges, no bill of ladings or any cargo paperwork. It’s clean. Car disappears and reappears on a foreign lot to an unsuspected buyer.”

“They’d have to reprogram the on-board computer,” Erin added. “You’d have to add in someone who has access to the make and manufacturer software to override it.”

God, I loved her. This bit of info wasn’t news to me but hearing the words come out of her mouth was surprising. “And how do you know this?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “My dad owns two dealerships? There was a problem with the system in my SHO when it arrived. It kept giving false tire pressure readings. One of the guys in my dad’s shop showed me how he could plug in and reset stuff. It seemed pretty simple, but you’d need the right authorized dealer software to do it.”

“Did your woman just blow a huge hole in our case?” Turk asked, gaping at me in disbelief.

Proud was an understatement. “Or added a major component that we need to pursue. Either way, I don’t think these cars are going overseas.”

“Hey little man,” Turk crooned at his child.

“Here’s everybody, nosy boy,” Joanne said, bouncing a wide awake baby just a few months old in her arms. “Now you can see what’s going on.” She stood next to where Erin sat. “You want to hold him?”

“We’ve got several hours of surveillance video,” Turk continued.

“What? Um, no. That’s okay,” Erin said, edging away.

“Just for a minute?” Joanne prodded “You can feed him if you want.”

Erin backed up as if a bomb had just been set on the table instead of a baby bottle. “No. I can’t. Fingerprints. Er, I mean my dirty hands.”

Her hands looked clean to me.

“I don’t want to get any germs on the bottle. I should wash them. It’s cold and flu season and…” She stood and stumbled aside, her wooden chair scraping across the floor. “May I please use your bathroom?”

I held my hands out. “Pass him over. I’ll hold him.”

Joanne placed the little guy in my arms. “Got him?”

I settled him in, watching his little features scrunch up at me. “Hey little dude. What’s up?” He didn’t know who the hell I was, so I tried to set him at ease with some guy babble.

Erin stood stock-still, slightly gaping at me. Maybe I should have washed my hands, too? I didn’t touch anything and I sure as hell had no plans of sticking my fingers in his mouth.

Turk was talking, but it was hard to be in two conversations at one time. Something was wrong… the way she ran off like that.

Turk and I scanned through weeks of video surveillance, stopping only when there was activity. And then it happened. “Rewind it.”

Erin sucked in a breath behind me. “Is that…?”

The two men on the screen were unmistakable.

And one of them was already dead.

The other was wanted for his murder.





OVER THE NEXT few weeks, Erin and I started falling into a comfortable rhythm. Whenever possible, I was in her bed or she was in mine, except the Friday night before Ramirez’s wedding.

Erin wanted nothing to do with intruding on my poker night, which was a shocker. Nikki always gave me a hard time, saying that she didn’t do shit like that so I shouldn’t either. Erin made her own plans with her friends, keeping her life instead of stopping it. I had invited her along, figuring she’d hang with Cherise, but she didn’t seemed phased with doing her own thing—even though she strongly advised I “put my ass in bed and rest” since I’d been fighting a bit of a cold all week while spending extra hours looking over all the evidence from the Martins and Wyndmoor dealership robberies. I’d let her baby me for a few days but I was really feeling much better.

Come to think of it, all that care she gave me, I felt great.

All of this was swirling in my mind while sitting in God’s house mid Saturday afternoon. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I spent most of the time sitting in that church pew imagining Erin standing up there in white. I’d considered marriage before but there was always that big chunk of doubt that made me realize something just wasn’t right with the relationship to take it that far.