Semua Bab Hot and Dangerous: Bab 11 - Bab 20

"You think it means that Dean's involved? I'm not buying it. Not yet.""Be sensible. Someone had to know where to send that guy after you."Gus gripped the cell even harder, forcing some semblance of calm. He glanced over to Anya, curled up on the bed in the cheap-ass motel room, hugging her knees, eyes wide, face as pale as the sheets on the bed. For her sake he had to keep it together. She was already frightened enough. He'd promised to keep her safe and damn it, that's what he was going to do."You'd better send a cleanup crew to the house," he said now."Already taken care of," Jimmy told him. "I'm not saying a word about it to anyone here, either. Not until we know for sure what's going on.""Branson obviously has a much larger organization than we figured, and has a lot of people in his pocket."Jimmy snorted. "No shit. There's a lot of money there. Gus. Money changes people. Makes them greedy. Makes them forget what they should and shouldn't be doing.""You got that right

I must be crazy to even think of this.Gus rolled his plan back and forth in his mind, trying to think of any other alternative. He hadn't spoken to his brother in ten years, and the last time had been far from friendly. Even now he couldn't believe they'd gotten into an actual fight right after their father's funeral. At the time he'd had so much rage built up inside him, anger at his father for divorcing his mother, anger at Rafe for stealing Gus' woman. Anger at the world. Now it all seemed too trivial, especially since Anya had come into his life. He couldn't even remember what he'd seen in Linda Grogan or why he'd distanced himself from what was left of his family.But he was short on choices and he needed a safe place for Anya and people he could really trust. He could only hope Rafe didn't carry grudges. He ate breakfast only because he knew he needed the strength, the same reason he urged Anya to eat. When he'd put it off as long as he could and ducked into the men's room, di

"If it's there, Jimmy will find it. And I know it's there." He tilted her head back. "My snitches at least know Virgil's still in San Antonio. Someone's hiding him and probably helping him relocate and get his 'business' up and running again.""Your brother and sister-in-law are wonderful to let us come here." She frowned up at him. "She's the one you were in love with, right?"He brushed his lips against hers. "What I felt for Linda wasn't love. It was youthful lust." He gently licked the outside of her lips. "What I feel for you is love. In case you didn't know that.""You love me?" Tears formed at the corners of her eyes."You bet. I should have told you long before this." He used his thumbs to brush away the tears. "When we get out of this, we're going to make some definite plans.""Don't you mean if?""No, I said when and that's what I mean. Now. Linda suggested you might want to down and rest and I told her I'd see that you did. So let's not make a liar out of me."He lift

Once he was sure Anya was sleeping, Gus showered and pulled his clothes back on, then headed downstairs. Linda and Rafe were still busy with their own activities, so he poured himself a fresh mug of coffee and sat down to think about who else he could call. No one could call him, since he was using throwaway phones and disposing of them after a few hours, just in case.It both sickened and saddened him to think that his boss, for whom he'd always had the greatest respect, might be in bed with Virgil Branson in his dirty business. If that was true, he'd certainly fooled a lot of people. But mentally running through the list of agents in the San Antonio field office, there didn't seem to be a lot of other options. He knew it had to be someone in a position to have access to all the information and to the location of witnesses but shit! Dean Barton?Of course, it would explain a lot of things.The rest of the snitches that he called wouldn't say a word to him. Most of them sounded more fr

It was one o'clock in the morning before everything had been wrapped up. Jimmy was taken away by two agents who'd helicoptered in from the San Antonio office.The car with Jimmy's friends was long gone but Dean Barton, who'd flown in with the agents, assured everyone when they swept up the pieces of Virgil's organization they'd no doubt catch him in the net. At last he stood on the back porch shaking hands with Gus."I can't tell you how sorry I am you had to go through this," he said, not for the first time. "I should have been smart enough to see what was happening. Or to put someone else on the case when we couldn't find where all Virgil Branson's support was coming from.""Spilt milk," Gus told his boss. "No one could have seen it.""We got into all his personal files and discovered a bunch of properties he owns, around here as well as in other states. I'm running a coordinated effort to hit them all at once I'm sure we'll find Virgil in one of them and that will be the end of hi