“The cartel wants me, but whoever is ruling the cartel wants Waters. We think whoever has my father in his stranglehold is taking advantage of my history to get access to him. Years ago, he interrupted a shipment of women overseas. Cost the seller a lot of money. Thependejonever forgot, and until we took him down this past winter, he’d been plotting his revenge.
“Now, whoever that man’s boss is, he’s on the hunt for Waters. In order to get to this mystery man, my team leader put himself at the wolf’s door to draw out theestúpido. We’re hoping that if he gives himself up to the cartel, the leader will call off the Colonels to get the one thing he wants more than anything else. If the Colonels are forced to focus on capturing and holding him for their puppet master, then their focus is off you and me.”
“Fanso, he’ll die!” she whisper-yelled. Her stomach plummeted at being partially responsible for the death of another person, even one she didn’t know.
“It’s a risk he was willing to take. We need to get to whoever is behind the trafficking. Millions of women across the globe are at risk.”
On the screen, two cartel soldiers approached Waters and hustled him into a waiting vehicle.
“Contact is made. Facial recognition is working on our foot soldiers.”
“I can save you time,” she said. “The man on the left, as you look at the screen, is Jose Insúa, and the one on the right is Aurelio Núñez.”
There was a pause while all heads turned in her direction. The individual manning the cameras from Los Angeles coughed lightly. “Thank you. Confirming is always easier than searching. Happen to know who they answer to?”
“My brother, Ignacio,” Ildefanso said. “If he had to be captured by one of my brothers, he got the better of the two.”
“Better how?” the giant asked.
“He’ll be presented conscious and in one piece. They won’t start breaking bones until after that.”
A chorus of expletives was muttered quietly among the men.
“I’ll keep the first watch on the cameras,” the blond offered. “If all of us stand around nonstop, we’ll be overtired when it’s time to move out.”
The man who’d worked on her calf said, “Call me when they start working him over so I know what we’re dealing with when we get to him.” He took off for the basement, giving the door a good slam behind him.
The giant went to sit at the dining room table, pulled out his gun, and began to take it apart and clean it.
Medusa walked in from the garage and went straight to the sink to wash her hands. The odor of gasoline permeated lightly behind her.
Nemo quipped, “Ah, the subtle hints of diesel with an undertone of motor oil.”
“Shut up, fuckwitch,” she tossed back. “Anytime you want to deal with your own transportation, just say the word. I’ve got other places I could be.”
“Pfft. Where?”
“Protecting him.” She gestured with a nod to the television.
“Does Kubrick know you’ve got a crush on her man?”
“Why are you such an asshole?”
“Just comes naturally, I guess,” Nemo deadpanned. He put on a set of headphones as the television flipped over to a baking reality show, and he sat alone, watching whatever Waters was going through on the screen in front of him.
Ildefanso looked to Medusa. “Ignore them. They’re wound up.”
Walking up to them, she wiped her hands on a paper towel. “I should be his backup, not some group of Marines who don’t know him.”
“What is she talking about?” Daleyza asked.
Ildefanso answered, “We called in some help from a contact of TB’s.” He nodded over to the giant at the table, his gun in pieces in front of him. “Marine Raiders. They’ll follow him as best they can. Since they don’t know Waters, our boss thought they’d be less biased, less prone to jump in too soon.”
“I thought this Waters was your boss.”
He shook his head. “More of a supervisor. We have a bigger boss. Goes by the name of God.”
“God.” Seriously? Who did the man think he was?
