“You’re not the big tipper in town, so don’t expect anything to be hot. They all seem to know who we are and what we’re about, so expect cold coffee to go along with your cold eggs.” She opened her laptop as Joe studied the pictures, and she found an email from the contact they’d made with the DEA. “Do you remember David McCulla?”

“DEA guy, right?” He stacked the pictures and put them back in the file. “This is going to put Casey out of business for at least a couple of months. When she finds out who’s behind it, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“McCulla is with DEA, and his team is following a problem with Jasper Luke. There was a drive-by at his club, and two of his men got killed.” She clicked through the file and glanced at the one Joe had just closed. “Do you think the two are related? They’re friends, after all.”

“What does McCulla think?” Joe accepted the laptop and read through what was sent. “The only difference is there was no one hit with Casey’s problem. If this was a way to get her to engage, it was a bad idea. That’s a given, but Jasper lost a couple of guys. He’s not known for sitting shit like this out. It’s the only thing he and Casey have in common.”

“Like I said, they’re friends.” She smiled at the waitress when she delivered breakfast and laughed softly when it wasn’t returned. “All this is going to do is start a war.” Her phone buzzed but they couldn’t take a call from Annabel in the open. “Want to go to the bathroom with me?”

Joe laughed and waved her out of the booth. “I can’t wait.”

“Hello, ma’am,” she said as they walked toward the back. “Please hold on a minute.”

“Take your time. Believe me, this call is going to be the best part of my day,” Annabel said.

They locked themselves in the ladies’ room and set up the laptop for a video conference. “We got the reports from what happened last night. The DEA also sent us pictures of Luke’s issues,” she said as Joe nodded. “Any new information?”

“The word on the street is Casey’s power is waning, and she’s vulnerable. That someone hit her when she left town and was able to get away with it because she didn’t have enough muscle to prevent it has us wondering if that’s true.” Annabel shuffled the papers in her hand and glanced up when she seemed to find the one she was looking for. “I have another team on the ground here looking into this, and they’ve only gotten to a couple of informants.”

“Do you know of anything else in the works when it comes to the Casey family? From our side, I mean.”