Gathering Dark by Candice Fox (best life changing books txt) 📕

“We need a game plan,” I said.

“I got one,” she said, continuing ahead. “Your turn to follow my lead.”

The man behind the counter was small and lean, wearing a khaki uniform with little winged badges on the lapels. He was cleaning a glass display case full of aeronautical objects—antique-looking goggles and old maps, a leather helmet with long, dry straps and buckles—that served as a counter. Sneak strode up to the display case and put her forearms right where he’d just finished wiping.

“Sir, I’m Detective Tanya Morello and this is my partner, Detective Frances Levine. We’re here to ask you a few questions.”

I kicked Sneak in the ankle but she didn’t look at me. The man behind the counter took in her greasy T-shirt, which seemed to be from a tattoo shop called “Death Punch” in Las Vegas. He looked out the window at the Gangstermobile, and then at me with my mom jeans and bruised face.

“You guys are cops?”

“We’ve just come from an undercover job,” Sneak said.

“What job?”

“Fentanyl shipments coming across the border. We have reason to believe a gang from south of here is using small private airports east of Los Angeles to bring dangerous drugs into the country from Mexico. You watch Dateline?”

“I do.” The man straightened. “I saw the episode last week about fentanyl. Crazy stuff. Have you two got any identification?”

“Identification?” Sneak shook her head, baffled. “You think we’d risk carrying identification around these creeps? My partner and I have just spent three days holed up with a crew of psychopathic drug smugglers in Long Beach, in an attempt to get information on their leader. These guys are lunatics. We saw a guy get his hand chopped off with a chain saw.”

“Jeez.” He swallowed. “And they’re in this area now?”

“This is an epidemic we have on our hands here, man,” Sneak said. She started taking leaflets from a stand at the end of the counter and making a stack of them. She tucked the stack into her handbag. “A national crisis. Millions of lives are at stake. You think you’ve asked enough time-wasting questions yet?”

“Okay, okay.” The man put his hands up. “Sorry. I don’t know how I can help you. There’s nothing like that coming through here. We’re a family business. We log every landing, and we take ID, and we have ground surveillance twenty-four seven. I have the manifest right here.” He leaned behind the counter and hefted a book onto the glass that was so big I was worried the display case would give way.

“Mr.…?” I said.

“Danny Rieu,” he said. He looked at me as though asking for help. “It’s French Canadian.”

The man’s glance awakened me. I thought about interrupting Sneak’s lies before they went too far. Then I realized how much was at stake, and how well Sneak’s plan was working from the attention Danny was giving her.

“Mr. Rieu, we’re looking for any information you have on a particular couple that might have been inquiring about parachuting in the past few weeks,” I said. “We think they might be mixed up in all this.”

I showed him a picture of Dayly on my phone that I’d taken from one of her social media profiles. Rieu hardly glanced at it.

“I saw the report on CNN about the airfield outside Odessa,” he said to Sneak, his eyes big, earnest, eager. “The ground controller who was letting guys through with night flights full of fentanyl. Eleven years, he got.” He wrung his hands. “Eleven years. Just for turning a blind eye. He wasn’t even the one who—”

“Danny.” Sneak tapped the counter. “Try to focus. We’ve got to find these people before they skip town and head for Panama.”

“Right.” Rieu went to the computer by the windows and started clicking. “I’ve got all the footage here for the past six months. I’ll put it on a USB drive for you. I’m really tight on security. That’s how I know there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing I’ve overlooked. Nothing criminal. I don’t remember your girl specifically but a lot of couples inquire about parachuting. It’s the quintessential twenty-first birthday gift. A wholesome, thrilling adventure at a reasonable price.”

He gestured to a poster behind the counter by a window looking out onto the field. The couple from the pamphlets, faces smashed with wind, howling with joy. The slogan beneath that read Wholesome, thrilling adventures at reasonable prices!

Sneak and I stood back from the counter while Rieu clicked and dragged files onto a thumb drive.

“This is not what I had in mind,” I told Sneak quietly. “Getting caught impersonating police officers would be about as bad for us as sticking a gun in the guy’s mouth.”

“I thought you were anti-guns.”

“I am.”

“So it’s the police officer route, then.” Sneak shrugged.

“Sneak,” I rubbed my brow. “Why didn’t you just tell him the truth?”

“Because this is faster and more fun. Just relax.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve done this a million times before. I learned from the best. I knew this guy who used to play a cop for truckers hauling goods out of the Port of San Diego. He’d pull the trucks over and threaten to write them up for some bullshit infringement, let them buy him off with whatever was in the back.”

“Sneak, we don’t have time for this.”

“He’d get all sorts of goodies,” she said. “Cameras. Fur coats. Golf clubs. It was a great gag. But eventually it went bad, as all good grifts do. A trucker he’d pulled over gave him some DVD players as a payoff, and one of the boxes was full of chameleons. They’re smaller than you think, chameleons. Expensive on the black market. There were about a hundred of them in the box and they’d traveled all the way from Africa so I guess they were pretty excited about getting out. They crawled all over the inside of his car. The guy freaked out and drove into a tree. Car exploded in a giant fireball.