Tomatoes? I lurched to my feet, grunting in pain. Edden was a breath ahead of me.

“It’s inside them!” Francis babbled. “The drugs are inside. He hides the drugs in tomatoes so the custom dogs can’t smell them.” White-faced behind his stubble, he pushed his sleeves up again. “They’re in there. Look!”

“Tomatoes?” Edden said, disgust crossing him. “He ships them out in tomatoes?”

Perfect red tomatoes with green stems stared back at me from their cardboard packing tray. Impressed, my lips parted. Trent must have wedged the vials into the developing fruit, and by the time it was ripe, the drug was safely hidden inside a faultless fruit no human would touch.

“Get over there, Nick,” Jenks demanded, but Nick didn’t move, his long face ashen. At the sink, two officers who had opened the boxes were violently scrubbing their hands.

Looking like he was going to be sick, Edden stretched to pick a tomato up, examining the red fruit. There was not a blemish or cut on the perfect skin. “I suppose we probably ought to open one up,” he said reluctantly, setting it on the table and wiping his hand on his pants.

“I’ll do it,” I volunteered when no one spoke up, and someone slid a tarnished table knife across the table at me. I picked it up with my left hand, then remembering my other hand was in a sling, I looked for some help. Not one FIB officer would meet my gaze. Not one was willing to touch the fruit. Frowning, I set the knife aside. “Oh well,” I breathed, raising my hand and bringing it down on top of the fruit.

It hit with a sodden splat. Red goo splattered over Edden’s white shirt. His face went as gray as his mustache. There was a cry of disgust from the watching FIB officers. Someone gagged. Heart pounding, I took the tomato in one hand and squeezed. Pulp and seeds squirted from between my fingers. My breath caught as a cylinder the size of my pinky pressed against my palm. I dropped the mass of pulp and shook my hand. Shouts of dismay rose as the red flesh splattered against the table. It was only a tomato, but one would think I was pulping a decaying heart by the noise the big, strong FIB officers were making.

“Here it is!” I said triumphantly, picking out an institutional-looking vial gooped in tomato slime and holding it aloft. I’d never seen biodrugs before. I had thought there’d be more.

“Well, I’ll be,” Edden said softly, taking the ampule in a napkin. The satisfaction of discovery had overwhelmed his abhorrence.

A wisp of fear tightened Francis’s eyes as his gaze darted from me to the boxes. “Rachel?” he whimpered. “You’ll get me protection from Mr. Kalamack, right?”

Anger stiffened my back. He had betrayed me and everything I believed in—for money. I turned to him, the gray edging my sight as leaned over the table and I put myself in his face. “I saw you at Kalamack’s,” I said, and his lips went bloodless. Grabbing the front of his shirt, I left a red smear across the colorful fabric. “You’re a black runner, and you’re gonna burn.” I pushed him back into his chair and sat down, my heart pounding from the effort—satisfied.