Maybe the situation wasn’t as bad as he’d initially thought. DEA meant drugs.

Rivers started to walk away, but Jake called after her, “What the hell’s going on here?”

Her lips bent into a humorless smile as she lifted her Kevlar helmet off her strawberry-blond hair. “This is what you call a drug raid.”

Mae gasped, clasping both sides of her face with sausagelike fingers. “Oh, my goodness! Drugs! Here?” From the look on her face, she’d rather have believed that Eleanor Roosevelt was a prostitute. “That’s not possible! You tell her, Jake! That’s just not possible!”

He smiled uncomfortably. Mae had lived here in Phoenix since 1920, and despite her overall dyspeptic attitude, she still saw green grass under the sooty streets and happy families among the homeless bums on the corner.

“You think I’m involved in drugs?” Jake asked, bewildered.

“Are you? I think a lot of people who work for you are.” Rivers picked up the warrant and riffled through the pages. “I’ve got a Martinez, a Willis, a MacGonegal, and a Hummer. You know them?”

He nodded. His whole goddamn paint department. He should have guessed. “Selling or using?”

“Both.”

Shit. The paint crew was the one part of his team he’d regarded as a sore point. There wasn’t a man among them he hadn’t threatened to fire in the past five months. You name the offense: short attention spans, sloppy work, irregular hours. Classic druggie behavior. How could he have missed it?

Mae still didn’t get it. “Well, why is Jake under arrest?”