Page 98 of Alonzo

He’s in on it.

Alonzo is part of Diablo’s slave smuggling network. Hell, for all I know Diablo is here to get me too. Lonnie is a known liar, after all. How hard would it be for him to convince me that he’s on my side? That he loves me?

Not hard.

Girls like me, we drink up that affection like it’s cool, clear water and we’ve been wandering the desert for a hundred years.

Girls like me. Who have nothing. Who were never loved by anyone.

We’re vulnerable to liars like Alonzo Dumas. Men who know the power they possess and how to wield it. No guns or knives required. Emotions are their weapon of choice.

After a while I realize that all the voices have ceased. I wasn’t paying attention to the smuggling conversation happening in the other room, so I didn’t realize they might’ve left.

I get up from the shower, crack the locker room door open, and peek out.

The lights are off. A good sign that they left and won’t be back any time soon.

I need to warn Belinda and Vann and we need to leave town right now. I don’t know where we can go.

Somewhere.

Anywhere.

I dart through the marina, sticking close to corners and generally looking like a paranoid freak to anyone who might be watching. When I get to the edge of the marina and can see the street filled with Friday morning traffic, I run.

It’s only a couple blocks back to Dumas Street, but I run hard. I consider going into Lonnie’s house and packing up what precious few things I have, but nix the idea and head straight for Belinda and Van’s rental cottage.

I knock. Hard. Several times.

But when no one answers I just open the door and slide in.

I almost piss my pants. Because standing in the middle of the room, holding Vann by the shirt collar like he’s about to kick his ass, is Johnny Boston. There’s a creepy little girl glaring at me from the kitchen, and another tatted-up man—just like Johnny, and Alonzo, and Diablo—in the middle of the room, holding Belinda by the arm.

And the icing on top of the mob-men cake? Jesse Boston is sitting in the arm of the couch with his arms crossed and a smug I-saw-you-coming-a-mile-away look on his face.

Johnny smiles at me and lets Vann go, giving him a hard push to create distance between them. “Well. Look who just saved us the trouble of hunting her down?” His grin falls into a flat line of stoic certainty. “Have a seat, Phoebe. We’re gonna have a little chat about your future.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - ALONZO

“Good to see you again, Lonz.” Diablo claps me on the back. “Last time we were together we were still getting ink.”

I laugh a little. “Yeah, well. I’m just about out of skin. And so are you.” He’s got some nice tattoos. That’s how we met. Quint’s cousin was a skin artist up in Miami. Quint was never into the tats himself, but he took me up there for my eighteenth birthday and that’s where I met Diablo for the very first time.

Funny how that worked out. Because when I got home that night of my eighteenth birthday, that’s when my father sat me down and told me the truth about who we were and what we really did. One street over Quint was getting the same talk from his father. Because our families have been smuggling people for two generations and now it was our turn to take over.

Diablo didn’t grow up on Key West. He grew up in an underserved Miami neighborhood. That’s where most of our cargo used to get dropped off back in the early days. We didn’t own Dumas Street back then. Emma was just getting her Bright Berry Beach Cosmetics company off the ground and hadn’t started sending money home yet, so there was no Dumas Deep Sea Fishing, no Dumas Sailing Tours and no Dumas Water Adventures. We had nothing back then. Hell, we were barely making ends meet with the dive shop.

Diablo looks at my arms. Checking out my tats, maybe. He might be looking at them, but that’s definitely not what he’s thinking about. “So Rosalie is back?”

I nod.

“And fucking Phoebe Covington is here?”

It’s so weird to hear her real name. This whole fucking thing is weird. None of this should be happening right now. Back when we were eighteen, Diablo was also a part of our little smuggling operation. He was in charge of receiving in Miami. Quint and I did the pickup, shuttled the cargo into a private marina just north of Diablo’s neighborhood, and he took it from there.

But eight years ago we ran into a snag at the tail end of normal operations. That’s where Rosalie comes in. Because she saw a whole lot of shit she shouldn’t have. Diablo’s hood was in the middle of a gang war so we talked Rosalie’s mom into letting us stash our cargo in her motel for a night. That turned into four days, someone reported us, all hell broke loose, and we almost went to prison for human trafficking.

But the FBI walked in at the final hour and saved our asses. Sent Diablo to the West Coast to run the operation on that end. And they gave us money to build the businesses. Emma’s company was taking off then. She had lots of cash and she was sending every month so we could fix up the dive shop and try to revive it. And when this FBI money came in, that was a real turning point.