Okay, I give up. Where are you?

Peach grinned and wiggled her fingers at Annalie across the bar. Her new colleague picked her way through the tables, watched by most of the men, including Frank Macy. Annalie’s hair was loose again. She was dressed in black, but her golden legs were shapely below the fringe of her lycra shorts. Her biking shirt was a zipped sleeveless jersey. She wore fluorescent sneakers. She had a leather handbag, which she draped over the chair.

‘One of these days, I’ll spot you before you spot me,’ Annalie said. There was a burble of noise hanging over the bar, but Annalie kept her voice low. Only Peach could hear her.

‘If you do, I’m slipping,’ Peach said.

Steffi thrust her immense breasts between them. Annalie ordered a Corona with lime.

‘Wow, those things have to hurt,’ Annalie said as the waitress headed for the taps. She cast a dubious eye around the bar. ‘I didn’t figure you for a boob ’n’ lube kind of place. Big busts and tight short-shorts? Why are we here?’

‘Work, not play,’ Peach said.

Annalie noted the overturned magazine and the wire feeding into Peach’s ear. ‘So who are you after?’

Peach fingered the charm that dangled around Annalie’s neck and smiled as if she were commenting on it. ‘Table nearest the sand, two guys, two teenagers.’

Annalie cupped the charm in her palm. Her eyes swept the beach without her head turning toward the water. ‘The cute one or the nasty one?’

‘The cute one.’

‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Frank Macy,’ Peach said.

She explained what she’d found at the safe house and shared a folder on Macy for Annalie to study. While Annalie reviewed the research, Steffi brought a bottle of Corona, with a lime wedge stuffed in the neck, and a basket of spicy chicken wings. Annalie squeezed the lime inside and upended the bottle with her thumb over the top. She finished reading the snippet of the article about Macy shown in the photograph, and like Deacon, she didn’t look happy.

‘I know guys like him,’ Annalie said. ‘They float from suburban cocaine parties to downtown immigrant trafficking. A sweet face doesn’t mean a thing. I’ve known sweet faces to pour boiling water down the throats of their competitors. Don’t mess with him.’

‘I’m not messing. Just spying.’

‘What’s he saying?’ she asked, drinking from her bottle of Corona, slim fingers around its neck.

Peach listened.

‘Now that is a hot, hot woman,’ Macy told the table. He meant Annalie.

‘She’s old,’ one of the girls protested. ‘She must be thirty.’

‘Are you kidding? You can tell by the shape of her mouth. She’s born to give blow jobs.’

‘He likes your smile,’ Peach said.