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CHAPTER 40

WHITE LIGHT FLASHED IN the pitch black and began fluttering After aoff, the ht

Vida Gomez woke in the back upstairs bedroom of the safe house on South Alta Vista Boulevard in La Brea She sat up and unplugged the charger from the encrypted cartel cell phone as she lifted it frohtstand

For a fraction of a second, she stared at the green Accept and red Reject buttons on the smartphone’s screen The ht, finally accepting the call with a callused thumb

She didn’t say hello In fact, she didn’t speak once She just sat in the dark, auto the new orders she was being given

A half hour later, they were rolling backward down the suburban safe house’s cobblestone driveway in the tea edition Like Vida, theshorts and T-shirts and sneakers Instead of sporting their usual Kevlar vests and long guns, they were armed with small conceal-carry pistols, Glock 26 and Taurus PT 24/7 subcompacts in 9 mm The orders were explicit that they keep a low profile

Avoiding the freeways, they headed south and then west along side streets, Venice Boulevard to Lincoln to Washington Boulevard Vida, behind the wheel, had to consult the onboard GPS only minimally in order to find the way She’d been utterly lost in the confusing city the first week she had been here, but now she was getting the hang of it

With the lack of traffic, they arrived at Marina del Rey in under thirty minutes Vida had never been to the up-scale seaside area before The pastel-colored high-rises and palm trees reminded her of a trip to Miami she had taken as a child

They left the van in a parking lot and went out along one of the docks It was an enor at least a thousand vessels The forty-two-foot sportfishing boat they were looking for was the third one down on the left of Dock 29 In the predawn murk, Vida could just hts

Thethe bait bins on the deck was scruffy and blond and had a beer belly and enormous, scarred hands

“Help you?” he said, dropping his bucket to the deck with a hollow bong

“Are you Captain Scanlon? Thomas Scanlon?”

“I a blond man said

“We’re the Raphael party,” Vida said

Captain Scanlon looked at Vida, then at the six hard-faced killers behind her