“Hey gorgeous. Sorry to disturb you at work, I know your job is important and—”
Hawk mouthed the wordramblingat him and he shot him a glare and pointedly turned his back, listening to the sounds of Hawk leaving, and then tried again.
“Uh, it’s pretty important,” he finished lamely.
“No problem. What’s up?”
“I need to get hold of Diego. I don’t suppose you can give me his friend’s name and address, can you?”
There was a pause on the line. “What do you need to get hold of him for? Is something wrong?”
“No, no, nothing is wrong,” Nash said quickly. “The opposite, actually. You’re not going to believe this, but we’ve been working on bringing down this drug cartel for months now and after we kicked Diego out of your house, I got my friend Hawk to ask around about him.”
“Right…”
“I wanted to know how serious the cartel threat was and if Diego could have been lying about it or whatever. Well, it turns out, it’s the very same cartel we’ve been trying to take down, so I’m hoping Diego will be able to give us some information about them, in particular, where we can find their big boss man.”
“Okay, I mean, I can’t see Diego wanting to talk to you, but sure, I can give you his friend’s details. He’s probably there.”
“Yeah, I know it’s going to be tough, but at this point, we’ve got to follow every lead we can.”
Nash took down the man’s details then bid his mate goodbye. “See you later, beautiful,” he said.
He could practically hear the smile in her voice when she replied. “See you tonight.”
As soon as he got off the call with Aria, Nash went to inform the rest of the team that he had an address for Mario, Diego’s friend, and Flint wasted no time giving the order to gear up and get ready to move out.
Before they left, Nash pulled Flint to one side and told him about Aria’s arrangement with Diego. So much for never betraying her trust. But much as he hated to break his mate’s confidence, he couldn’t risk Diego saying something about it when they brought him in for questioning. And it wasn’t as if they could accuse Diego of lying about the deal. Twenty thousand dollars was a very precise amount of money. There would be a paper trail when Aria had paid for her mom’s medical bills.
Flint muttered a curse when Nash told him. “You’re becoming a pain in my ass,” he said. “Anything else I should know about while you’re in a sharing mood?”
When Nash winced, Flint closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. “This is something else I’m not going to like, isn’t it?”
“I might have punched Diego the other day and knocked him out,” Nash said.
Flint’s eyes widened in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“He was manhandling my mate,” Nash said with a shrug. “She yelped in pain. Any self-respecting shifter would have done the same thing.”
“Like I said. A pain in my ass. Now get the hell out of here before I bring you up on charges. Or is there anything else?”
“No, that’s it.”
“Knew I shouldn’t have come into work today,” Flint muttered as he strode off down the corridor to get kitted out.
Fifteen minutes later, the whole team moved out. It was probably overkill, but they didn’t know what they’d be facing when they got to Mario’s house, so it was better to err on the side of caution that get in a situation that two or three of them couldn’t deal with alone. This case had brought enough danger down on their team without recklessness adding to it.
Mario’s home wasn’t in the best neighborhood. The houses were run down, and many had their windows boarded up. Dogs barked at them from behind chain link fences as they made their way from their vehicles to get to the house.
When they arrived at Mario’s property, three of them went around the back of the house and three stayed at the front. They wouldn’t be breaking in this time—they had no evidence that Mario had ties to the cartel, even if it was likely. After all, where else would he have met Diego?
They split up, just in case Mario or Diego tried to make a run for it out the back door. If that happened, the suspicious behavior would be cause for an arrest, which would make their lives a whole lot easier. But whether he ran or not, one thing was for sure: they weren’t leaving here without him.
Nash knocked on Mario’s front door, and this time thought nothing of bringing his animal side to the surface so that he could use his special abilities. His bear had been content since it had met Aria. It was a relief not to be at war with himself. Now Nash didn’t have to worry about being a danger to the team. He tilted one ear to the wood of the door and listened.
There was no whispering inside the house or any panic at the knock, and sure enough, a few moments later, footsteps headed their way. When the door opened, Nash winced at the sight that greeted him. When he glanced at Flint, the team leader was pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.
Diego’s eye was black and swollen.
