Page 10 of Four Cards Exposed

Ever since she and Jessy had been kidnapped and almost killed, Susan had felt like something was wrong in her life. Every night, she went to sleep and woke up gasping from air—the nightmare so real she could still smell the stale air inside the trunk. The dreams left her so exhausted, it was like she was moving through life on auto-pilot, and she hated it, because auto-pilot was so not her.

Everything’s wrong.

It’s like nothing matters anymore.

Maybe if she could help bring the cartel down, she would go back to feeling like herself.

“Are you sure?” Lorraine asked, looking up from her coffee.

Susan steeled her expression. She knew Lorraine was good at reading people, and if she could read just how much trouble Susan was having coping with her own life, she’d rescind the offer for sure.

“Don’t act like you want me to change my mind, Lorraine,” Susan said glibly.

Lorraine barked out a laugh. “Fair enough. That’s not what I want.”

“I do have conditions, though.”

Lorraine’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of conditions?”

“My boss will need to know what I’m doing. I’m not going to lie to Natalie.”

“Fair enough. I can speak with her. Get you on some kind of rotation with us. Anything else?”

“This one’s not so much a condition as a question. Do I get a crash course in undercover policing or something?”

Lorraine’s expression turned uncomfortable. “We don’t have time for that. If you do this, Susan, you need to go in there and turn into a wallflower. You’ll hang out with Guerrero and his crew, observe, and agree with everything they say. Never single yourself out, for any reason.”

“How long will I be there?”

“Not long. There’s another agent undercover already who’s successfully infiltrated a group we believe to be working with the cartel, but he hasn’t been able to get anywhere near Mendoza.”

Susan thought about that for a second. “How will I recognize this other agent? Is there some kind of password?”

Lorraine paused for a long instant.

“Stop doubting yourself and me, Lorraine. I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I didn’t think I could do it.”

Finally, Lorraine nodded. “You know the other agent already. It’s James.”

James.

That explains a lot.

James had been there at the fire, where she and Jessy had almost died. He’d helped her rescue Darryl and had been the one to drive her to the hospital. Since then, he’d taken to calling her every week or so, just to see how she was doing. Thirty, forty-second conversations that she’d come to look forward to. Then, three months ago, he’d stopped calling. She figured he’d realized he had better things to do.

Unreasonable anger filled her for an instant.

He could have told me he was leaving.

Then I wouldn’t have stressed about it.

She forced herself to take a deep breath. She and James weren’t dating. He didn’t even like her, and she could never like such an uptight, obsessively neat man, regardless of how handsome he was.

The fact that James was the undercover agent also put Lorraine’s interest in the case in perspective, though. Susan had sensed from the start that this case was somehow personal to her. Now she understood why—Lorraine was worried about her partner.

“Does he know you’re talking to me?”

Lorraine shook her head slowly. “No. He checks in once a week, and I haven’t had a chance to speak with him since we met. He knows about Guerrero, but doesn’t even know his release date from prison has been moved forward.”