But you’re not DEA anymore, and this is Marie the woman who worked tirelessly to save lives with minimal help, equipment, and supplies.
Perhaps he’d been too harsh in thinking that she had been involved in her attempted kidnapping.
He blew out a breath and rested his elbows on the conference table, leaning forward so that he was a little bit closer to Marie. “I’m sorry. What I did wasn’t necessary in these circumstances.”
As apologies went, it wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst either. Isaac was also aware of every one of his colleagues watching the exchange. He’d be interrogated by them after.
Marie nodded, and Yolanda lost some of her ‘mother’ glare she’d directed at him. “You were an ass,but I accept your apology.” She paused, and he waited, because he knew she was going to say something else. “This time.”
He chuckled, he couldn’t help it. “I deserve that.”
“Yes you do,” she said primly.
Isaac wanted to reach across the table and kiss her. The urge to feel her lips against his for longer than a second was strong, especially as she took what he did and handed it back to him.
“Right, well now that’s sorted, how about we look at the footage again to see if we can find anything that might give us a hint as to who these men are?” Ox said before he looked directly at Isaac. “Any reason to think this could be your past catching up with you?”
The thought hadn’t crossed Isaac’s mind, and now that Ox had mentioned it, he couldn’t seem to let it go. There was no way anyone from the Ramirez Cartel would connect him with Marie, except Alfredo Vargas had seen them together in San Carlion. Still, it didn’t mean that he was the target of Marie’s attempted abduction, but he couldn’t discount it either.
“No, the Ramirez Cartel, or Martinez Cartel as it’s known now, are too busy still working their shit out to care about Javier Cortez. Besides, they all think he's dead. However, Alfredo Vargas might think differently.”
Marie gasped at the mention of thedrug lord’s name. The color drained from her face, all the confirmation he needed that she recalled who he was.
“Who is he?” Fox asked before Marie could say anything.
“Alfredo Vargas, one of the biggest drug lords in Guatemala. Formerly based out of La Ceibita. Now located in–” Cass lifted her head from the computer and looked directly at Isaac. No doubt the penny was dropping with her.
“San Carlion,” he finished for her.
“That’s where you were working,” Yolanda exclaimed. She was being hit with shock after shock, and Isaac wished it didn’t have to be that way.
“Yes. I … umm,” Marie shifted in her chair. “I guess you could call it a situation with him. He wanted me to save his son who’d been shot, but there was nothing I could do. He got to me too late.”
“Did he see you?” Ox directed his query to Isaac.
“He did.” There was no point in denying it, it wouldn’t achieve anything.
Ox cursed quietly while Deal leaned forward. “Did he recognize you? Did you have any dealings with him while you were Javier Cortez?”
As the questions were asked, Isaac’s attention didn’t stray from Marie. With every word his colleagues spoke, her brow furrowed as if she wastrying to string all the pieces of the puzzle together and figure it all out.
What he wanted to do was take Marie away from all of this, but he couldn’t. The reason his past was coming up was because of what happened to her a short while ago. “I don’t believe he knew who I was. I had different colored hair and contacts in. It was also dark.” Isaac didn’t mention the way Alfredo looked at him as if hedidknow him.
“All I needed was a chance to study you fully to recognize you. It may have been dark, but Alfredo was watching everything going on around him,” Marie interjected. “There’s every chance he was able to put two and two together and come up with four.”
“Then why were you the subject of an attempted kidnapping and not him?” Hound asked.
“How should I know,” Marie threw up her arms. “You tell me. You guys are the security experts. Perhaps it wasn’t a kidnapping attempt. Maybe they wanted to rob me.”
Isaac had enough of the distance between them, he pushed his chair back and strode around the table. Once he reached her side, he pulled her into his arms and held her tight like he had in the field when she’d let all the emotions she’d bottled up, out. “I’ve got you,” he whispered against her ear, the vanilla scent of her hair teasing his nostrils.
He didn’t give a fuck that everyone in the room was watching them. All that mattered was giving Marie the assurance she needed.
Could she be right that they were just trying to rob her? He’d like to give her that, but his gut was screaming that it wasn’t a robbery. That it was something far more sinister and that Alfredo Vargas was behind it.
The question was why? Why would Alfredo want her? All she’d done was try her best to save his son who was unsavable.
He couldn’t forget Alfredo’s threat, though. Nor, the way he’d looked at Marie as he scooped up his dead child.
