“What are you going to do?” I asked, even as I fished my cell phone out of my pocket.
“I’m calling Sparks and telling him to get his ass over here if he wants in on this investigation, and then I’m going to call Vinnie and Carlos and see what they have on these guys. I also want to know if Eduardo Salazar is just another alias.”
I pretty much had my cell phone glued to my ear for the next ten minutes. Not only would Supervisory Special Agent Crenshaw be coming by the house, but he was emailing Lyn a bunch of information so he could get started on investigating.
I also made another phone call to my father and asked him to grab Mom, pick the kids up early from school, and come to the house. If Juarez was really after us—as I suspected he was—I wanted my family here where I knew they would be safe.
Sal would never let anything happen to us.
As I started to hang up, I realized there was one more phone call I needed to make…well, a text message really. TJ might be on the West Coast, but he was still my kid, and that meant he needed a heads-up just in case.
I sent a simple message stating that things had gotten kind of messy with a guy we had put in prison and he needed to be extra careful. I made sure he knew I was at the estate with his father and the house was on lockdown.
He needed to know I was safe, or he’d flip.
Once I put my phone away, I walked over to the storyboard, made a sticky note with the name Fernandez on it, and then proceeded to use yarn to connect to all the aliases that I thought Juarez might be using.
When I stepped back and took a look at it, I almost threw up. “Sal.”
When he didn’t answer me, I glanced over my shoulder. I started to call out his name again until I saw him staring at the storyboard, his face as pale as I’d ever seen it. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing, right?”
Sal slowly nodded.
Eben Juarez, Anton Gambino, Viggo Marcus, and possibly Eduardo Salazar were all the same man, and his name was most likely Fernandez.
“How did no one see this?” I asked as I looked back to the storyboard. Once all the yarn had been connected, the result was right there in front of our faces. “How did no one put this together until now?”
And how was Juarez doing it? He was like a master at disguising himself as someone else or taking on a different guise. He slipped from one persona to the next as easy as a greased pig in hot butter.
“I think this is related to the DEA case, Lany.”
I swallowed tightly as I nodded. “I think you’re right.”
If Juarez was Viggo, then he was behind the money laundering. If he was Anton, he was behind the drug running. If he was Salazar, who knows what he was behind? And then there was Juarez himself, who was behind trafficking in humans.
This was not a nice guy.
“I already called my father and told him to pick up the kids and bring them home,” I told Sal. “I want Brant to send a team to go get them. I want them protected.”
I didn’t for a minute think Juarez wouldn’t go after my family to get to me. The man had no scruples. His version of right from wrong involved how much money he was getting from whatever he was selling.
Sal didn’t question me. He just walked over to the study door and yelled for Brant. When the man appeared in the doorway a moment later, Sal said, “Get a unit of guards to go get Lany’s mother and father and then go pick up the kids. Bring everyone here.”
“Of course, sir.” Brant turned without a word and walked away.
Sal looked toward Marcus and Dmitri. “You two don’t leave Lany’s side. He’s got a target on his back the size of New York City. You might want to gear up and make sure you have extra ammunition.”
“I should probably do the same.” I gestured to my bodyguards to follow me and walked out of the study. I headed directly for the armory. I needed to gear up and get armed. I also needed to get gear and a gun for Lyn. I doubted he had brought anything with him.
Maybe he needed to bring CJ here.
Once I reached the infirmary, I grabbed what I needed, geared up, and then made sure I had enough ammo for the gun in my shoulder holster, and, no, they were not rubber bullets. While I didn’t like the idea of killing anyone, I wanted to make damn sure I stopped them in their tracks.
I carried extra of everything back to the study and handed it over to Lyn and Sal. They were more familiar with it all than I was anyway. It wasn’t often that Sal allowed me to gear up or be armed. I was kind of amazed—and worried at the same time—that he wasn’t throwing a fuss this time.
“Do you need extra ammo, Sal?”
“No, caro, I’m good.”
