Southern Comfort - Fern Michaels [105]
Kate left the stilt house, allowing Jelly a few minutes to find out Jacobson and Levinson’s location now that they were back on US soil. And as she vowed, the sorry excuses for humanity were going to be on the receiving end of her temper. And that wasn’t always a nice thing.
Three hours later, after a hasty boat ride to Key West via Tick’s cigarette boat, Kate docked at the marina, found Tobias waiting just as Tick said he would be. From there, a local private investigator, another friend of Jelly’s, drove her to a small concrete-block office building located on the military naval station next to Key West International Airport, where they picked up Roy and Josh.
Jacobson didn’t waste time once he saw Kate. “You’re going to get thirty seconds and not one second more. I mean it, Rush. If anyone finds out what we’re doing, they’ll have all our asses. You think you can do this and stick to these rules?”
Kate nodded. “Let’s stop wasting time, I want to get back to Tick’s before Rosita gets wind that I’m doing something I shouldn’t be. She’s had enough to deal with in her short life.”
“Follow me,” Jacobson said.
Kate followed her former colleague down a narrow hall to a small room at the end. A military guard jostled a set of keys, found the one to unlock the door. He pushed the door aside, revealing what looked like a concrete-block cell of no more than eight by ten. A woman, maybe in her late thirties, with long black hair that almost touched the back of her knees, sat huddled on a metal-frame bed, minus the luxury of the two-inch-thick standard prison mattress.
Kate knew there was no time for words. Without further ado, she glared at the woman, who returned an equally hateful stare, then turned away as though Kate were nothing more than scum.
Kate took three steps across the small cell and stopped in front of the woman who called herself Aunt Constance. Before she could stop herself, Kate grabbed the woman’s hair and twisted it until the woman couldn’t move and had no choice other than to stare up at her.
With her free hand, Kate smashed her fist into Constance’s nose. She heard the cartilage pop, then blood spewed from her nose. The woman’s face twisted into a mask of rage, hands thrashing about wildly as she tried to return Kate’s punch, but Kate had the advantage and smacked her across the face. Heart racing, she was so pissed at this . . . bitch, she wanted to do so much more but knew this was way more than Jacobson had promised. She dropped her hand by her side, wiped the blood on her jeans, then turned to leave, but before she could stop herself, Kate couldn’t resist adding, “That was for Rosita and all the other girls whose lives you ruined. May you rot in hell.” Trembling, she opened the steel door, where Jacobson waited. Kate saw the look on his face when he saw her.
“I’m going to forget I ever saw that,” he commented when he saw the blood on her hand.
But good old Jacobson. He was smiling as he spoke.
While Sandy and Pete, who had returned from Miami while Kate was in Key West, were getting some needed rest, Jelly picked up the explanation he had been giving Kate before she went out for her “discussion” with Aunt Constance.
“Apparently this Mateo’s brother, Jorge, was the mastermind behind the human-trafficking scheme. About a year ago, the brother drowned as he was bringing another group of immigrants to Miami. This shut the operation down for a while. Remember that stakeout Tyler wanted to send you on during the hurricane?” Jelly asked.
“How could I forget?”
“Mateo says that’s when his brother drowned. And that was when all the intel we were getting ceased. Somehow, according to Mateo, Jorge obtained ownership of the house until the original owner served his time. In return, when Jorge died, ownership went to Mateo. And upon Mateo’s death, or as is the case now, his future imprisonment, the ownership reverts to the original owner, who’s currently serving a life sentence at Starke.”
“Confusing, but it makes sense,” Kate said. “So you really believe Lawrence