Free Whiplash River by Lou Berney Page A

and ditched the golf cart. About another mile on was where they’d parked the boat, in a little cove you couldn’t see from land or water. They drove the boat up the coast of the island to their hidey.
    Their hidey was a little cement-block fishing shack with a metal roof, miles from anybody else. Jorge had rented it for them. It wasn’t much to look at, but there was a bed and a shower and a little porch where Meg could sit in the breeze and paint her toenails.
    â€œDid you get him?” Terry finally had the nerve to ask. Meg hadn’t said more than two words on the trip to the hidey. Turn here, get in the boat, hurry up. Terry couldn’t tell if she was furious or just her normal ferocious self, quietly working things out in her head.
    â€œGo cover up the boat,” she said. “I got to call Jorge.” He went and covered up the boat. He could hear her on the cell phone talking to Jorge, but Terry couldn’t tell what she was saying. When she hung up, he walked back up to the shack.
    â€œJorge says that ain’t his real name,” Meg said. “He did some checking on it.”
    â€œAin’t whose real name?”
    â€œThe son of a bitch broke your nose.” The chef at the restaurant. They knew his name because Meg saw it last night on a sign at his pier. She’d called Jorge last night to say she was gonna kill the chef. Jorge said fine, kill who you want, just make sure you take care of the old dude, pronto. But now, Meg said after she talked to him on the phone, Jorge was saying hold on about killing the chef or the old dude.
    â€œJorge says that son-of-a-bitch chef ain’t no chef at all. He says he used to work for some badass people back in California. For some Russians or Armenians, whatever kind of Mafia it is they have out there in Los Angeles.”
    This news made Terry feel a lot better about his broken nose, that it was a Russian or Armenian Mafia badass broke it and not just your run-of-the-mill chef.
    â€œJorge says he thinks the son of a bitch broke your nose might be the old fucker’s protection. We got to lay low for a while. Lay low on the son of a bitch and the old fucker, both of them.”
    Terry might not know much, but he knew his darling redheaded girl inside and out.
    â€œBut we ain’t gonna do that,” he said. “Are we?”

Chapter 10
    S hake woke up in a room he didn’t recognize. Moonlight moved at a strange angle through the wooden slats on the windows. The air smelled like disinfectant.
    He remembered the restaurant exploding. On fire. His first thought, with a jerk that hurt every inch of his body, was Idaba.
    â€œGo back to sleep,” she said. She was sitting in a chair by his bed, making a necklace by sliding wooden beads, one by one, onto a wire. He was so relieved to see her that he didn’t mind how much it hurt to sit up.
    â€œYou weren’t inside,” he said.
    â€œDo I look like I was inside?” She snorted, no evidence of an expression on her big stone face. He noticed, though, that she’d put the necklace down in her lap and had laid a hand on his arm. “Geraldine brought her new baby round to the Fish and Hook. I went over there to see if he was ugly as the daddy.” Geraldine was one of the bartenders at the Fish and Hook, the bar next door to Shake’s restaurant.
    â€œArmando?” Shake said. “Roger?”
    Idaba shook her head. “They’re all fine. Nobody hurt but you. Now lay back down.”
    Shake lay back down. He figured out that he must be in the town clinic. He’d been here once before, a few months ago when he’d sliced off part of his index finger while chopping onions. It had been a different room from this one, but with the same yellow walls, the same smell of disinfectant.
    â€œDoctor says you gonna be all right,” Idaba said. “Just a concussion, and some ribs he thinks is cracked. Go back to sleep.”
    Shake