Crime Must Pay the Penalty #11

The notorious waterfront criminal Cork Carron has spent three years eluding the police with perfectly timed warehouse thefts, but his luck shifts when a Port Authority clerk named Philippa Darrow tracks him down and offers to feed him tips on incoming cargo in exchange for a cut of the take. When Darrow dangles word of a two-million-dollar diamond shipment arriving under heavy police guard, Carron sees an opportunity too rich to pass up—and sets in motion a daring heist that forces him to make a terrible choice on the open water.

Ralph Lee craves notoriety above all else—and after ten years in prison, the small-time crook returns to the underworld with a vengeance, building a gang through intimidation, violence, and carefully orchestrated crimes designed to grab headlines. When Sergeant Cabell, the cop who put him away years ago, begins closing in on Lee's operation, the desperate gangster doubles down on his ruthless tactics, even as his own mob starts to crumble under the weight of his obsession with making a name for himself.

Private detective John Flynn accepts a lucrative but mysterious bodyguard job from a woman named Stone Torney on Boston's Independence Day, only to find himself caught between two rival mobs—the Marco mob and the Gorgan gang—as violence erupts across the city's North End. When Flynn realizes Torney's true allegiances, he'll need to outthink a deadly web of double-crosses and hired killers before the night is through.

Gus Norris is a shotgun-wielding crook with a fatal flaw—his mouth never stops running, spilling secrets about jobs, gang members, and operations to anyone who'll listen. When his constant bragging about a kidnapping scheme leads to the gang's capture, Norris discovers that his unstoppable gift of gab has made him a liability to his own criminal associates. His tongue, which he's always relied on to talk his way through trouble, finally catches up with him.