Page 7 of Under Cover
“So the thing is, he’s got three runners—see them here?” Three young men appeared.Notprep school kids. One was white, and two were mixed race, but all of them had hungry, desperate, and street smart written all over them. There were worse ways to make money than being the kid who ran the money to the bookie, Garcia thought.
“Well, Newton started stacking the odds of the house, and the runners started losing money,” Gail went on.
“Tight asshole,” Gideon growled. He sounded dangerous. Garcia liked that—but not as much as the Midwest farm boy drinking from the puppy coffee cup.
“Well, he’s done allhisgambling on Wall Street,” Gail said. “And he’s mostly lost, so he was trying to make up his losses. Anyway, maybe Newton got tired of their bitching, because he offed the kid in the middle. Ryan Peters, aged nineteen.” The mouse arrow made a little circle around the youngest-looking, most vulnerable of the runners, who had brown eyes and pale brown skin. Garcia felt a little pang.He’dmade money as a runner one summer when he was trying to get his degree. The irony was not lost on him that he was paying for a degree in law enforcement by doing something illegal, but it had been honest money in its way.
“Just killed the kid?” Crosby asked.
“Shot him in the head while the others watched,” Gail confirmed. “Jesse Campos—the white kid—and Kurt Armbruster were both there. They saw Ryan go down and took off with Newton after them, but there’s a reason they’re called runners. Anyway, Jesse called the cops and told them where to find Ryan’s body, and then the two boys dropped off the grid. And Newton has been trying to collect from his clients since his runners are terrified and AWOL—and he’s been doing it with a forty-five.”
“Oh no,” Natalia murmured.
“Oh yes,” Gail said soberly. “This morning he hit the home of Julian Carpenter, his wife, Rita, and his two kids, Jason and Collin. Julian and Rita didn’t make it, but the boys hid in a giant toy chest in the youngest kid’s room, and they called the cops.” A film from a home security system popped up on the screen, and they could all see their doughy insurance agent with thinning hair barge into the front room of a very nice house in what looked like upstate.
“There’s no sound, but he’s in there for about half an hour,” Gail told them, and Garcia put two and two together and realized she and Crosby had been assembling a timeline to present, and they’d done it in the very small amount of time during which he’d been getting coffee and getting to know his people.
Gods, no wonder his former supervisor had told him he had to hit the ground running.
“So we need to do two things,” Clint Harding said, deep voice cutting into the uncomfortable silence that had formed as they’d been watching the footage of the house. People were being killed in there, Garcia knew, and the thought slugged him in the stomach.
“The first,” Harding continued, “is to figure out where our perp’s next target is going to be so we can intercept him and stop him from doing this again. The second is to get our runners and bring them in. They’re scared right now, and scared people get desperate.”
“Their info might help us anticipate the next target,” Crosby said, and Harding nodded.
“But so might the recovery of Newton’s laptop or electronics,” Harding added. “Natalia and I will go search Sewell’s place and the initial crime scene. Carlyle, Chadwick, you’re on at the Carpenter house. And talk to the two boys, see if you can get a destination from them. Make sure they land, okay? I know we’ve got child services there, but make sure they’ve got some protection in case Sewell goes after them. Garcia, Crosby, you two run down the runners. Gail can provide you with residences and last known locations, as well as known associates. Gail…?”
“I’m here in the office because I can’t walk,” she said, like they’d gone over this before.
“You’re here in the office because you can’t walk,” Harding confirmed. “But we need you to keep the information flowing because we need to know the first break, okay? Sewell is either completely unpredictable or following a pattern we can’t see yet. Let’s hope it’s the second because the first is a bad, bad thing. Everyone, grab your weapons and don’t get dead.”
“Right,” GideonChadwick said, standing up and nodding to Joey Carlyle. “Not getting dead is my favorite part.”
With that, they hit their gun lockers and began to suit up. As Garcia was snapping his small Beretta into its shoulder holster, he noted Crosby had a pancake holster with a .45, an ankle holster with a .22, two fixed-blade knives at his belt, and a .38 strapped to his side.
“Expecting an army?” he asked, a little wide-eyed.
Crosby looked apologetic. “I’m not that smart, and I’m not that quick,” he said. “And I’m a better shot with a rifle with a sniper’s scope. In my case the guns reallyarecompensating for something, and I don’t want you to end up dead because I wasn’t good enough.”
Garcia gaped at him, only remembering to follow him out when Crosby finished strapping down and turned toward the exit to the parking garage. As he trailed after his new coworker—and his new partner, apparently—he thought that he’d never had someone work so hard to keep him safe.
Kinds of Meatloaf
“FIRST STOP,”Calix Garcia said as Crosby powered the black SUV along the Jersey Turnpike. “James Campos, Jesse Campos’s older brother and Jesse’s last known address. He lives in Elizabeth, where that smell comes from.” All of that information had appeared, via text, on his phone, because apparently Harding hadn’t been shitting around when he told Gail she was a vital part of the operation.
Crosby grinned—and shuddered. Elizabeth, New Jersey, had the misfortune of having a giant landfill in the middle. Tourists said it smelled like something was burning year-round. Locals didn’t even notice it.
“Great—I-78 it is.” Crosby spent a few moments in silence, piloting the car toward the maze of New Jersey freeways, thinking of things he needed to know about Roger Campos, Jesse Campos, and Newton Sewell, when Garcia spoke up, but almost to himself.
“He shouldn’t have shot the runner.”
“Right?” Crosby asked, completely onboard. “Man, runners don’t have control over the operations, and they usually keep the pulse of their network. It was such a dumb, panicky, mean thing to do.”
“And they’re, like, neutral territory. Like the porters in that Shakespeare play. You don’t kill the other guy’s runners ’cause they’re not in the territory disputes. You certainly don’t kill your own. Seems to me that if this guy, Sewell, knew much about running his own gambling ring, he’d get that you don’t touch your runners.”
“He doesn’t,” Crosby said, enjoying the give and take. “He’s a Wall Street guy. He’s making money off the sports bettors in the lowest sectors. Not college. High school and prep schools at most. Not as much competition—he’s not stepping on anybody’s toes. He’s making his bit and sort of sneering at the people who pay him.”
He risked a glance at Garcia and spotted the skeptical eyebrow before he turned back to the road. “What?”
