Black Brick – Chapter Eight

Dan Decker Books

This week’s episode features Chapter Eight of Black Brick. Here is an excerpt from the show:

THE CITY PASSED BY as I looked out the train window and tried to relax. The morning news coming out of San Diego said the explosion at the Kurt home was a gas leak, but I knew better. Four people had died. In addition to Jason and his sister, their parents had been home as well.

Vargo would have a lot to answer for once I could prove he was behind it.

I yawned and tried to clear my mind. The train was slowing down, and I could make out the stop ahead when I leaned in closer to the glass. It had been a low key day, but I was afraid that wouldn’t last for long. The morning had been spent in a biology class.

After that, Shannon and I had met up with Cherry and Tom, and we began to make plans to apprehend Lauren Griffith. It turned out that Beltran had already known of her connection to Janessa and wanted to exploit the division in her loyalty.

I’d been a little surprised when we’d followed Lauren onto the train. When she and her bodyguard had taken the seats at the back, Shannon and I had opted for seats just behind the doors at the center of the train car. Cherry and Tom were several rows behind us.

We believed that Griffith sometimes acted as a courier for Vargo by moving information and items that were too sensitive to be trusted to the normal ways of communication and transportation. At some point in the day, she was going to make a pickup. After that, we were supposed to bring her into Black Brick.

I was surprised at the boldness of our orders but couldn’t help but wonder if Beltran had leverage on her or Janessa. We didn’t bring somebody in unless we had evidence that they were involved in something serious. As far as I knew, we didn’t have anything like that on either of them.

It made me curious about what Griffith was picking up. If the pickup was supposed to happen on the train, we wouldn’t notice from our vantage point. But we didn’t have any other option.

“If it looks like she’s heading back to work after this,” I said, “we’ll have to move in.”