Page 47 of Our Tricks

Franco snorted. “You think I’m stupid enough to put my mark on a bomb that the FBI was going to get their hands on? Nah, I made that one totally different so they couldn’t connect it back to me.”

“Wait, the bomb you sent to our room with that poor waiter I had to shoot? What did he ever do to deserve the fate of being blown up?” I inquired.

“Bastard ran like a scared little bitch when Tommaso stormed in and took over the offices that morning. He was supposed to be my eyes and ears even though I knew Marco had his own plant in place,” Franco rambled.

Cognac looked at the man like he had two heads then met my gaze. “Is this man for real, loba? Why does he just keep talking? Soon he’s going to tell us his bank account and Social Security numbers.”

“Hey, I’m not gonna stop the idiot,” I said with a shrug. “Right now, he’s making my job really easy. Wes, heads up,” I called, tossing over the phone and wallet. “Marco called him and told him to bring his mother back home to Mexico.”

“This gives a continent to start looking at… that’s something,” Wes muttered as he messed with the phone. “You have to be kidding. What the fuck, man? Why don’t you have a lock on your phone? What kind of criminal are you?”

Cam grabbed the back of Franco’s shirt and hauled him up then shoved him into the wall. “Can one of you grab the restraints our dead orderly has in his hands? I feel like the FBI is going to really enjoy having a long conversation with Franco. We’ll just call it my parting gift.”

Sprocket headed back to Nate and grabbed the restraints. As those two worked at getting Franco secure, I looked down the hall to where Mariana’s room was. “Cam, Sprocket, you good?”

“Go, little demon. I’ll make sure he doesn’t get away while the others go with you,” Void offered.

“Subtle,” I commented but didn’t argue as I waved the others to follow me. “What took you guys so long to get here? I thought the moment an active shooter was announced, you’d be on my ass in a second.”

“Trust me, we would have, but it seems that Franco had extra help in this plan,” Picasso shared. “There were about six others with him, and they were in different wings of the facility, making it so the security team locked everything down until it was contained.”

“Damn, there’s no way that Franco came up with that idea on his own. Someone must have been feeding him the information. Maybe Alvaro will be able to tell us since he snuck his way in here too,” I said as we came to a stop in front of her door.

Looking in, I saw Mariana and Alvaro sitting on her bed with her arms around him. This time I could tell it was happy tears streaming down her face. She really did love her boys. Well, at least that one.

“I say we give them a little time,” Wes suggested. “Let’s call the FBI and get some people down here to deal with Franco and his buddies.”

“No one say a word about Alvaro. He was here with us to see his mother,” I ordered, looking my guys in the eye. “We need him, and the only thing he truly cares about is her.”

Eagle shrugged. “Works for me.”

“We’ll have to get out of here to make this call. The whole place jams cell service unless we can find a landline to use,” Wes reminded. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a keycard,” he added, showing off said card.

Checking in with Cam as we headed for the front desk, he and Sprocket had made quick work out of tying Franco up. They dragged him with us as we went in search of a phone. For a facility run by all the various agencies, there wasn’t much staff to be found. Then I realized why—it was part of their procedure to get everyone out of their rooms and into the cafeteria. It seems there was a loading dock back there they could evacuate out of quickly. Now they had the task of getting all these people in various stages of recovery and mental health back to their rooms and calmed down.

“I vote we leave them to their work and just find a phone to use,” Cognac said. “The front desk is down this hall.”

Cam handed off Franco to Void, taking all the fight out of him, which I understood. Void was one scary motherfucker. I heard the sound of papers rustling and moved down the short hall behind the front desk and found Dr. Lowe frantically looking for something.

“You okay?” I asked.

Her body froze at the sound of my voice, and her head shot up to look at me. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Who exactly were you expecting?” I questioned. “Doc, has this facility been compromised in some way we don’t know about?”

“What do you mean? The shooters have been dealt with, the patients are fine. Thank God. What more could we hope for? Yes, I’ll have to report this, but with some adjustments to security, I think we’ll be just fine,” Dr. Lowe told me as she rubbed her hands on her slacks as if trying to soothe herself.

“Riigghhtt,” I said, drawing out the word. “You want to try that again and make it just a shred more believable? If it didn’t work on me as someone who doesn’t know you, I doubt it will work on a board of directors from all the law enforcement agencies.”

That got me a glare that didn’t seem characteristic of her at all. “What do you know? You’re just their criminal pet they keep around to hunt down more people like you.”

My brows shot up to my hairline. “Ah…”

She flipped her terminal around to show me her screen with my picture and various information typed under it. “I know who you are, Dax Blackmore, or should I call you Two Tricks?”

“Were you under the impression I was hiding who I was?” I asked, completely confused by this whole interaction.

“Do you know how many of my patients were sent undercover to infiltrate your empire? I’ve had fifteen over the past five years,” she stated like I was supposed to know what to do with that information.