“Ten-four, good buddy,” I crack as I roll through the stop sign and hang a right.
“Your other right, Lev,” Bram grits out as I make a highly ill-advised U-turn in the middle of the street.
“Got it!”
This operation has been sideways from the get-go. Some Dallas muckety-muck hired Charlie to find his adult son, who’d—according to him—had gone off on another bender.
For these high-end bounty jobs, Charlie insists on being paid up front, with the stipulation that he will not drag the target back to domestic violence or any other illegal or dangerous situation. If Charlie finds out the client lied, the fee is forfeit.
I once jokingly asked Charlie if anyone’s ever come after him for taking their cash and not completing the job.
“Not if they know what’s good for them.”
Ah, well.
Charlie had easily tracked the son to Llano, of all places, and since it was so close, he wanted me to go along.
When we’d intercepted the son at a local bed and breakfast, his first words were, “I’m not going back to Dallas.”
The guy had been in the mood to talk, so Charlie gestured for me to take over. He’d shown us his ninety-day chip and explained that when he got sober, he realized his father was involved in a lot of shady shit. Bribery, extortion, tax evasion, multiple coverups.
When he discovered his dad sold the housekeeper who’d practically raised him to a known trafficker, he’d tracked them down to this restaurant in Llano.
Charlie had called Nacho and Erik for backup, and Bram insisted on coming because “The two people I love the most will be in danger.”
Bram’s way more sentimental than people give him credit for. Though, at the moment, he’s beyond annoyed at both of us.
What the son did was both a little brave and a little stupid, something our team knows a lot about. He hadn’t realized his fatheristhe trafficker and this restaurant is one of his many fronts for his operations.
To be fair, we hadn’t either until the restaurant manager tried to pull a gun. He didn’t get very far.
“Highway!” Nacho calls from the back, and I cut off a few cars—their light had only just turned green, it’s fine—to get to the on-ramp.
“Made it to the highway,” I say over the comms.
“Barely,” Bram grumps.
Erik’s chuckle over the line is interspersed with more gunfire. “Wimberley took care of local PD, but keep it to the speed limit on the road, yeah?”
“You got it,” I say, setting cruise control for five over.
Nacho asks, “You think we’ll still make Sunday dinner?”
“We might not make it, but y’all should definitely go,” Charlie answers good-naturedly.
Stifling a laugh, I find my brother’s reflection in the rearview mirror, and his jaw isclenched.
Like a dog with a bone, he turns to his beloved. “You said there were two reasons.”
“Huh?”
“You said there were two reasons you were speaking Spanish. What’s the second one?”
Thumbing a gesture at our guests, Nacho explains, “They don’t speak Spanish.”
Bram scratches his head. “What?”
“They’re from Brazil. They speak Portuguese and Tupian, not Spanish.”
