“You wanted me to do something illegal,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I will tell you what you are going to do. You are going to tell the FBI you no longer wish to cooperate. That it was a misunderstanding. You will get rid of them and do exactly what I tell you. If you do not, you know that pretty little blond boy you are so fond of? Disobey my orders again and one of the older boys in detention will use him as aputa. Do you understand what I am telling you?”
Carly’s face went as pale as glass.
“Do you hear me,señorita?”
“I-I hear you.”
“What about you,SeñorCain? I know you are there. You are a wealthy man. You understand the price of doing business, no?”
He wanted to tell the bastard if he didn’t leave Carly and the boy alone, he was going to pay a far bigger price than he could begin to imagine. Instead, he said, “I understand.”
“Get rid of the FBI. I will give you some time to make that happen. Then you may expect to hear from me. Oh, and one more thing,señorita.You are Joe Drake’s granddaughter. Next time you are the one who will be driving the truck.” The line went dead and Linc softly cursed.
Even if the police had been able to trace the call, he didn’t think they would have had enough time to get a location. Probably a disposable phone anyway. The guy was no fool.
Worry darkened Carly’s eyes to a deep crystalline blue. “None of us are safe,” she said softly. “Not Zach, not me, not you. What are we going to do?”
Anger filtered through him. He latched on to it, used it to clear his head as he had taught himself, used it to focus on the problem he needed to solve.
“We’re going to do what El Jefe wants us to do. We’re going to stop cooperating with the FBI. Without us the feds have nothing. They haven’t even been able to find a connection between El Jefe and Miguel Hernandez’s murder. The FBI doesn’t expend resources on dead ends and that’s what this is about to become.”
“So that’s it? We just do whatever that bastard wants?”
“No. We let him think that’s what we’re going to do. The FBI has rules to follow, procedures.” Determination rolled through him, honing into a single, solitary purpose. “I don’t have to follow anybody’s rules but my own.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Even with as little sleep as she’d had, Carly went to work the next day. Frank Marino accompanied her to the yard, while Linc choppered into Dallas. They both had things to do if they were going to deal with El Jefe.
When Linc returned from the city, he picked her up and drove her to Greenville to see Zach, stopping along the way to buy some children’s books from a local bookstore. Zach’s face lit up so brightly when she and Linc walked into the visitor’s room, it broke her heart.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
Zach shrugged his thin shoulders. “Okay, I guess.” He looked up at Linc, who sat down across the table. “When I get scared, I remember what you said, how if you know it’s gonna get better, you can get through it. I just gotta make it a little while longer.”
“That’s exactly right,” Linc said. “I’m proud of you, Zach.”
Carly ran a hand over the boy’s pale hair. “Your grandmother wants to see you.” She wasn’t sure what Zach would say. She was still trying to deal with the news the boy had someone else in his life. Though she was happy for him, she wasn’t exactly sure what it meant for her.
Zach’s interest sharpened. “She does?”
Carly nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”
Zach toyed with the book on top of the stack,The Strange Case of Origami Yoda,recommended as a great book for kids. “I haven’t seen her in a long time. I figured she forgot about me.”
“She said your dad refused to let her visit you. She didn’t know you were being mistreated until child services called.”
He opened the book cover and thumbed through the pages. “Sometimes when things got real bad I thought about finding her. But I was worried what might happen. Grandma Weller’s a real nice lady and I didn’t want my dad to hurt her.”
Carly’s heart squeezed. She wished the police would find Ray Archer and get him off the street.
“What about your grandmother’s husband?” Linc asked. “You like Tom, too?”
“I remember he bought me a model airplane for Christmas. He was gonna help me put it together, but then my mom died and everything sort of got mixed up.”
“They’d like to see you,” Carly said. “If it’s okay with you.”
