Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
“What the fuck does a tornado do?” Reese asked. “I thought I knew every term.”
“It’s a cartel’s secretary,” Crew snorted. “No, but…like, he’ll arrange for top-secret drug meetings between high-ranking cartel members and relay messages all over the world. The amount of intel that fucker sits on…?” He let out a whistle as he finished cleaning my wound. Or both of them. The entry wound wasn’t bleeding at all anymore, thankfully.
“So someone’s gonna have to go after him,” Reese deduced.
“Problem is, the word on the street is Delgado’s been transferred to Europe,” Ortega said. “Blanco’s operations are exploding there.”
I pinched my lips together and eyed the board. Ortega and I had heard about that in passing—actually, it’d been over a damn lunch. We’d had lunch one day with a couple of his old buddies; that was how word got around, whether you worked in private security or on a police force. Everyone knew someone who knew someone. And over the years, you put together your own profile of what was going on. More than that, half the shit didn’t even register. But now, we had to give a fuck. Now, everything concerning Delgado was of importance. Which meant I could reflect on how fucking weird it was that a capo from our corner of the world was sending a man to Europe.
Europe wasn’t Carillo’s jurisdiction, so to speak.
“He’s gonna make a move on Vincente’s seat,” I stated. “Maybe he’ll even go higher. He’s got no business expanding their route unless the order comes from Colombia—motherfuck.” I growled as pain shot through my leg.
“Sorry, man, but you need stitches,” Crew said.
I couldn’t fucking feel the needle; that wasn’t the problem. It was the fact that he was pinching my wound shut with his fingers.
“How much field medicine did you study in the Marines?” I rasped.
“More than you did,” he told me.
“I wasn’t in the Marines!”
“Exactly.” He returned to his task, and I couldn’t even look at what he was doing. As long as shit was clean and he closed the wound—fuck, whatever. It’d just be another scar to add to the collection.
Goddamn jarheads.
“By the way, what happened to the guy you tracked down?” Ortega asked Reese.
“He drowned,” Reese replied. “Sad story. Someone strapped him to his bike and sent it over the edge.”
Good.
Ortega nodded once. “Motorcycles just aren’t safe.”
An hour or so later, everyone was up to speed, and we had a long list of shit to do. River and I had been treated by Nurse Ratched, and we’d semi-collapsed on two bottom bunks along the wall.
I had to keep my leg straight and off the floor. No walking on it for a moment. The end of River’s bunk, where he had his head, met mine, so I was close enough to hear every frustrated sigh and exhale.
I released a breath too and folded an arm under my head. The others were listing more clues and jotting down memories from tonight. Anything was of value. Faces we’d seen, voices we’d heard. How many shots, the timeline, how we had to smooth things over with the cops, alibis we might need to create.
It was the last thing we wanted to do, but if we couldn’t cover our tracks, we’d soon lose the rest of our path when the police caught up and demanded to take over.
“Who can we send to Europe?” River asked for only me to hear.
Good question.
Ortega was more motivated now to do what I’d asked of him earlier. He was going to stay in San Diego and LA to dig up names. We wanted to find gang members, possible rats, and affiliations. Someone to interrogate, maybe. But it would have to be someone higher-ranking than any of the motherfuckers who’d attacked us today. They were never told much.
Which ruled out River and Reese for Europe, because they were going to follow up on the Delgado lead—to see if he could be involved. For the motorcycle guy to sit on that kind of information wasn’t common. At most, they had a lieutenant to give up.
“Crew might be our only option,” I murmured.
River hummed.
“What’re you whispering over there?” Crew asked.
I pushed myself up on my elbows and glanced around the room. The only one not part of the conversation was Joel. He looked to be damn near his breaking point, and he just stood off to himself near the equipment storage.
I looked over at Crew. “What comes next. We can sync our cover stories, alibis, and periods once Squeezy has a secure line for us. Clock’s ticking—we gotta move on to who’s going where tomorrow.”
Everyone was in agreement.
As per Darius’s last text, we’d hear from his sister tomorrow morning. She’d helped us many times before. Hell, she’d saved our lives just a few years ago during an operation in Las Vegas. Wasn’t a damn device she couldn’t hack into. The dark corners of the internet knew her as Ghost. We knew her as Squeezy because when she had a nervous meltdown, her brothers would hug her really tightly until she calmed down.