“So you’re asking me to rat on Tivoli Loria?”

“Come on. This is just between us, and Dr. Burke probably wants to ask you some questions too. It’s not like I’m asking you to testify before a grand jury here.”

Romeo smiled and said, “You’re misunderstanding me. If I would have known this was about Ty Loria, I wouldn’t have been busting your balls. I hate that rotten pompinara and his whole family. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Chapter 47

Lamar Franklin hated feeling stupid. Although, he supposed nobody liked feeling stupid. But for him, it went deeper. His gran-mama had taken him in when his mother went to prison for dealing. And gran-mama never missed an opportunity to slap him across the back of the head and tell him that he was a worthless burden without a brain in his head.

When he was seven, he had asked for a puppy. Gran-mama had laughed and said, “Boy, you too stupid to take care of a goldfish.” Then she walked out to the driveway, picked up a rock, and brought it back to him.

“There, a pet rock is more your speed, but your dumb ass will prolly find a way to kill that too,” she said with a chuckle.

She had treated him like dirt his whole life, but when he was in Afghanistan and received the news of her death, he had cried a river and would have given anything to be insulted by her one more time. Funny the way grief and family worked.

He could hear gran-mama’s voice in his head now, and with the way things were shaking out, he was afraid she’d be waiting at the pearly gates, ready to tell him all about where he had gone wrong and slap him on the back of the head. The thought of that was oddly comforting.

Gran-mama had been right all along. He was an idiot, and now he knew he’d pay the ultimate price for that ignorance. He tried to stand at his post, maintain watch, be a good soldier. But gran-mama’s voice wasn’t the only one in his head.

He heard the FBI agent’s voice: “He’s using you, kid. You’re expendable to him, and you know it.”

Then he heard the Indian woman’s voice: “They’re playing you for a fool.”

Maybe they were right? Maybe he was being used?

Franklin looked toward the vault room door. Mr. K and the Doc had been in there for a long time, and the Indian woman was correct. He had no idea what was going on or what the real plan was. But it was about time that changed.

Idiot or not, patsy or not, either way, Franklin was going to find out what they were after and how in the hell they were going to escape from a building surrounded with every cop in the county.

His mind made up, he gave himself a little pep talk and then headed for the vault room door. Each of his footfalls sounded like a thumping subwoofer in the absolute quiet of the room. Or maybe that thumping was his heart. Either way, he had been trained to ignore fear and focus on his objective, and right now, that objective was finding answers. That was the only thought he allowed to enter his mind. He needed to know, no matter how frightened he was of Mr. K.