Page 96 of The Lucky Heart (Jamison Valley 3)
I looked to Silas as I stood from the couch. “Let’s take my car to the hospital.”
“No!” Sabrina grabbed my arm. “No hospital.”
“Why?”
“No one can know that I’m here.”
“But you’re hurt. What if—”
“No hospital, Felicity.” Her tone was as unwavering as her stare.
“How about this,” Silas said before I could keep arguing. “Let us call someone to help you. I’ve got a friend that used to be a nurse. She could come here and get you checked out.”
Sabrina thought about it for a moment but shook her head. “I’m in a lot of trouble. I’ve already taken a big risk by coming here. Anyone that knows I’m here could be in danger.”
“Let us be the judge of that. How about you tell us what is going on and then we’ll go from there. Okay?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Okay.”
Silas squeezed my hand, nodding for me to sit. Perched on the edge of my seat, I held my breath, waiting for my best friend’s explanation.
Sabrina took a deep breath. “I’ve been working on a story to expose a prominent family in Seattle with ties to the Russian mafia.”
“Shit,” Silas cl
ipped at the same time I stood and yelled, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I knew you would react this way. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“Of course this is how I would react! You don’t mess around with the mob, Sabrina. Everyone knows that! We used to watch The Sopranos together, for Christ’s sake.”
“Calm down, babe,” Silas said. “Let’s get the rest of the story before your head explodes.”
“Fine.” I frowned but plopped back down on the couch. It was a good thing he had an iron grip on his temper because I was about to boil over.
“It all started when I met this guy,” she said. “We hooked up a couple of times last summer but then I got busy at work and never called him again. I didn’t know much about him other than his first name and number. Not that I needed more. We were just casual and I didn’t plan on seeing him again after the last time.”
She shifted a little on the couch as she struggled to find comfort. I was sure that having spent hours in the back of a Prius had done nothing but make her aches and pains worse.
“Fast forward a couple of months, and my boss pulls me into his office to talk about an organized-crime story. He’d been sent an anonymous file with evidence showing that guns were being smuggled into the country by the Russians. Not a surprise, but for once there was a chance to prove it. So I’m sitting in his office, thumbing through this file, when I land on a picture of this guy.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Anton Federov.”
“As in Federov Shipping?”
She nodded. “The Federovs are alleged to be one of the wealthiest mafia families on the West Coast but no one has ever been able to take them down.”
“So of course you felt the need to give it a shot,” I said dryly.
She shrugged. “I figured it was worth a try.”
Over the next half hour, Silas and I learned all the details about Sabrina’s investigation. She had been working tirelessly through the fall and winter and had managed to collect enough documentation and evidence to send the Federovs to prison for the rest of their lives.
“How big of a smuggling ring are we talking about here?” Silas asked.
“From what I can tell, almost every international cargo shipment has at least one illegal container. Hundreds of thousands of banned weapons have been coming into the country over the last ten years.”
