“Give me the money.”
“No!”
“Then tell me something that isn’t in the news. Something that you saw that would tell me that you were actually there. Because right now, all it really seems like is that you picked upThe Daily Times.”
The man let out a frustrated sigh and waved at him with his walking stick.
“Okay, you wanna know somethin’ that wasn’t in the news? I’ll tell ya. That girl who was there …”
Ray put his hands on his hips. “Yes? What about her?”
“Well, no one knows this, but she took a picture.”
That had Ray blinking. “A picture? Of what?”
“The scene. She was here with this big ol’ camera, and it went off right as they were beating that guy. Saw the whole thing. I told ya I did.”
The man patted his pocket once more. “I get to keep this now.”
Son of a bitch.
Ray took his hands off his hips and ran them through his hair.
When he’d been to her place, he’d noticed several cameras sitting around. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time, mostly because who cared? She was into photography.
Ray strode over and grabbed the man by the arm, shaking him a little.
“Where’s the camera? The picture? Did you see what happened to it?”
“I don’t know. She ran off with the damn thing.”
Shit. She must still have it then.
Letting go of the man, Ray turned on his heel and headed out of the slaughterhouse. He needed to find that camera … find thatphoto… before it fell into the wrong hands. As long as Augusta had possession of that kind of material, she would be implicated.
There would be no questions about it.
Her story would be legit, and it would mean that the war brewing would no longer be avoidable and that the Fontana’s were the ones up to no good on Moretti turf. They needed to be dealt with as quickly and swiftly as possible.
“Hey! Where ya going?” the man called after him, following.
He hollered over his shoulder, “You already got your money.”
“That was good intel.”
Ray shook his head again. “Consider giving it a rest.”
With that, he partially shifted to scare the guy. Behind him, the man let out a strangled gasp. His walking stick hit the cement floor with a loud clatter.
Ray hurried back to Augusta. He needed to speak with her immediately about this camera and the supposed photo she took … making sure that this man hadn’t been blowing smoke up his ass for the past half hour.
Ray could feel his heart race. If it was indeed true that the Fontanas had started all of this by murdering Jimmy, then it would mean innocent people were going to die. Not just this back and forth that they’d been having for what felt like forever.
There was a storm brewing, and Ray could feel the eye of it slowly starting to head south.
Chapter8
Augusta