Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order) by R.J. Jagger

type of snake he was dealing with.
    Inside were several things.
    Two fat white envelopes, wrapped with rubber bands, were stuffed with money. Wilde counted one, which came to five Gs. The other was of similar bulk, making ten total. He wrapped them back up exactly as he found them.
    Also inside were three folders, each stuffed with papers written in Spanish, some typewritten and some longhand. Wilde could do a lot of things but reading Spanish wasn’t one of them. They might as well be Martian.
    He flipped through, nonetheless.
    Tucked in back of the last folder he found a sealed envelope marked Confidential.
    He opened in.
    Inside were a number of photographs. Several were of him, taken without his knowledge, including one looking out his office window. Others depicted Sudden Dance’s hotel room, where Wilde found the suitcase of money tucked under the bed; the well, where he found Alley London’s body; the Bokoray; and others, all relating to Sudden Dance’s murder.
    There were also two typed pieces of paper, written in English.
    Wilde lit a smoke.
    Then he read the papers.
     
    Just as he finished, Alabama walked in with a bag of donuts, which she tossed on the desk and then hopped up next to.
    Her tanned legs dangled.
    The top two buttons of her blouse were undone.
    Cleavage peeked out at Wilde.
    “You got rid of me last night so you could do nasty things to your little Indian friend,” she said. “That wasn’t nice.”
    “I wanted you safe.”
    “Safe would have been with you,” she said. “I hope she was worth all the effort.”
    “That wasn’t my plan.”
    “Sure, of course not. Just answer one question for me and do it honestly.”
    He pulled a donut out and took a bite.
    “What is it?”
    “Does she make a lot of noise?”
    He shook his head.
    “Those aren’t the kind of things I talk about.”
    “Yeah, well I do, if you care to know.”
    “Do what? Talk about them?”
    “No, make a lot of noise.”
    “Alabama, I need you to focus. We have a problem, a big problem.”
    “The guy from last night who got away?”
    “No, something worse.”
     
    He filled her in on the new assignment from the fancy-schmancy lawyer, Jack Strike, and tapped on the briefcase. “What he’s having me do is deliver a long report by Nicholas Dent, who’s been following me around even more than I knew. Dent makes a pretty compelling case that I murdered Sudden Dance, and London Alley too for that matter.”
    “Well, you have to admit, the shoe fits.”
    Wilde set a book of matches on fire.
    “Most of Dent’s report is pretty straightforward and he reaches a lot of the same conclusions that I would if I was the one looking in from the outside,” he said. “There’s one thing that bothers me, though. His report says that the witness, that waitress from the Down Towner—”
    “—Jackie Fountain—”
    “Right, Jackie Fountain—Dent’s report says that she said she saw me stab the woman in the alley. That’s different than the notes we found when we broke into his office. There, she told him she saw someone who was wearing a suit and a hat and could have been me but she couldn’t say for sure that it was.”
    “So he’s embellished it a bit.”
    Wilde nodded.
    “Not a bit, a lot. The question is, why?”
    Alabama swung her legs.
    Her skirt was high.
    “Are you actually going to go all the way to El Paso and deliver this stupid briefcase?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then I’m going with you.”
    He shook his head.
    “Too dangerous,” he said. “The more I think about this briefcase, the more I think the lawyer who hired me this morning, Jack Strike, I think he killed Alley London. I don’t know why yet but my gut tells me he’s the one. Then he hired Dent to embellish the facts to put the blame on me.”
    Alabama made a face.
    “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If he was trying to put the blame on you he wouldn’t stuff it in a briefcase where no one would ever see it.”
    Wilde