Whiplash River Read Online Free

with that flash grenade of a smile.
    â€œGood to know,” she said, and Shake felt the back of his neck flush with heat.
    Â 
    WALKING BACK TO THE WHARF, Shake saw a thirty-six-foot Esprit cruiser slide by on its way to the Cut, between San Pedro and the north end of Ambergris. It had flames painted on the side and a couple of big Rasta bruisers lounging on deck. Baby Jesus’s boat, the one he used to run product up to the Yucatán.
    Shake didn’t let the sight of the boat bring him down. He was still thinking about the woman back on the deck at Pijua’s, that smile of hers. Evelyn. Whatever happened from here on out, Shake decided, his day had already turned out better than he’d hoped.

Chapter 3
    S pecial Agent Evelyn Holly had been at the table for twenty minutes, nursing a diet Mountain Dew and keeping an eye on the shithead inside. She knew that she couldn’t lurk around the restaurant much longer without ordering food, but she was on her own dime this trip, not Uncle Sam’s, and everything on the menu seemed to cost twice what it should have.
    She ducked behind the menu when the shithead walked past. But then he turned around and came right up to her table. Charles “Shake” Bouchon, smiling right at her. Evelyn almost burst out laughing. He’d already made her, less than half an hour after she’d begun tailing him? But she stayed cool and realized that the shithead was just hitting on her. That almost made her burst out laughing too.
    Well, no time like the present. She’d been planning to approach him in a day or two anyway, strike up a conversation.
    â€œI’m not selling,” he said.
    â€œAwesome,” she said. “ ’Cause I’m not buying.”
    She hoped that might catch him on the wrong foot and it did. But Bouchon didn’t get flustered like most guys would have. He didn’t flee or try to force a clever comeback. Instead he just stood there, amused, and seemed to appreciate that she’d caught him on the wrong foot.
    The waitress appeared. Evelyn bit the bullet and ordered one of the pricey entrées. And then realized, as she handed over the menu, what a knucklehead she was. Everything seemed to cost twice what it should have because the prices were listed in Belizean dollars. There were two Belizean dollars to every U.S. dollar.
    â€œMy name’s Shake,” Bouchon said. “I know you were just dying to know that, be honest.”
    Be honest, he was kind of a nice-looking guy for a shithead. Evelyn hadn’t guessed it from the California Department of Corrections mug shot that she’d studied on the plane down from L.A. Grim stuff, that. Here in person, though, she saw that he had good sharp angles, chin and cheeks and brow. But the angles not too sharp, softened just so by the wry smile, the warm eyes, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He had a touch of an accent that sounded like it had a little Brooklyn in it, but Evelyn knew it must be New Orleans, where his sheet said he’d been born and raised.
    When he asked about the book she was reading and then told her about the restaurant he owned, Evelyn thought: Wow, could this be any easier? She’d arrived in Belize without much of a plan. Take a few days and just get to know the shithead a little, let him think he was getting to know her. Develop a bond. And then, when Bouchon let his guard down, wham! Evelyn would put the screws to him.
    Evelyn loved that saying: putting the screws to someone. She loved doing it.
    But at this point, Bouchon definitely had his guard up. Evelyn didn’t let the wry smile and the warm eyes fool her. You didn’t stay alive as long as he had, in the kind of company he’d kept, without staying on your toes. He’d only done two relatively light stretches in prison, which in his line of work was evidence that he was one careful shithead.
    She reached for the ketchup. He laughed because he thought she was