Page 42 of Beyond the Badge: Crew

The Peach Pit, a gentleman’s club. Money laundering and drug sales of methamphetamine and marijuana.

Lucky’s Car Wash. Money laundering.

Pizza Town. Money laundering and drug sales of methamphetamine and marijuana.

She kept scrolling. It was more of the same.

When she hit the bottom of the list, she quickly scrolled back up a half inch to a business that caught her eye.

The Hawg Wild Saloon. It had been mentioned the other day, but she hadn’t thought much about it.

Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, she sat back and stared at the screen, letting her gray matter formulate a plan.

How could she utilize that business for undercover work?

Of course, the obvious would be that she could go in and buy drugs. However, a possible hiccup with that might be them having to warm up to her first before selling to her. Just to make sure she wasn’t five-o. Unfortunately, that honeymoon period could take time.

She wanted to prove her capabilities quickly with Crew so she wasn’t stuck with tedious and boring assignments.

Shecouldgo and hang out at Hawg Wild while not on the feds’ clock and let her face become familiar to the Demons. Or to whoever was working the bar and selling.

Ifthey were even dealing from that location. That hadn’t been clear in the notes.

As she skimmed them, it stated it was solely a biker bar. That meant the general public most likely gave it a wide berth. So, some unknown Latina sitting in a corner by herself might catch some attention. And not the attention she wanted.

Or… She could go undercover there in another capacity.

During college, she had worked at a sports bar part-time during the semester and full-time during summer breaks. She had been mostly a server but occasionally filled in behind the bar when it was busy, or if they were short-handed. She learned to pour a draft beer properly. She knew how to carry a tray full of drinks and food without spilling any. She was good with customers. Even drunk ones.

The idea could work.

But convincing Crew to allow her to go undercover as a Hawg Wild employee might be more difficult than convincing the Demons to hire her.

Shecouldhit the task force leader with a one-two punch. First, pretend she wanted to go undercover as a drug addict so she could go into Hawg Wild to do buys. When he balked at that, she could then suggest she go under as an employee.

And if, for some reason, he agreed from the start that she could do buys, then that was what she’d do.

She’d still get what she wanted. Which was action, of course.

It would also give her a purpose and make her an asset to the task force. If she was successful, it would look good on her employment record.

A win-win for everyone.

As she shut the computer down, a smile spread across her face.

ChapterEight

She hidher car on the next block and wandered up to the back gate at The Plant. She wasn’t scheduled to work today, so it was the perfect time to try out the skills she learned after spending hours upon hours on YouTube watching special effects makeup tutorials.

Luckily, making up her face to look gaunt, full of sores, along with dark circles under her eyes hadn’t been too difficult after a few tries. As long as he didn’t look too closely.

She made sure to arrive at the back gate super early. Once there, she squatted down and leaned back against the fence to wait for the task force leader to arrive.

Dressed in ripped, filthy jeans and a stained hoodie, she also wore an old baseball cap she dragged through the dirt and tucked her hair underneath before pulling the sweatshirt’s hood over top of it to hide her face as much as possible.

She set a beat-up backpack on the ground next to her and staged an empty forty-ounce bottle of Busch beer nearby on the curb.

All she was missing was a stolen grocery cart overflowing with clothes and household items. She wanted to appear like a homeless drug addict but she drew the line on actually committing a crime to do so.

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