No one needed that.
“For what?” Jorge replied over his shoulder.
“Me being here—what do I get to see next?”
Jorge turned, giving Chris a smile as he did so. “The tunnels, I think. There’s a good chance part of your father’s run will go through the tunnels, especially if ports of entry are too hot, or we can’t take it across an unwatched part of the border for whatever reason. The easiest way for me to show you the tunnels is to take you to one we don’t use a lot but was also one of the first ones my father ever had built.”
Huh.
“And when are we doing that?”
“A few days, likely,” Jorge replied, shrugging.
“Not sooner?”
“You forget that you are here on my time.” Jorge turned back to the fighting men, the bonfire glowing bright with flickering flames a few feet away from their position. “Which means, I also have work to do, and so I will deal with you and what your father wants when I have time to do it, Christopher.”
“I prefer Chris.”
“I don’t care.”
Yeah, he was aware.
Clearly.
He left the conversation alone if only because he didn’t think it would get him anywhere to keep needling Jorge about it. He lost any chance at civility with the man the first night they met when Jorge felt Chris had overstepped his bounds with his wife, anyway, and he doubted it would get better now.
Not that he gave a fuck.
He wasn’t here to make friends with Jorge.
Chris was getting antsy even though this job could take a while to complete. He hadn’t expected to be in Mexico for any more than two weeks, maybe three, at the most. Already, he had been here for two, and he didn’t see an end in sight. He didn’t have a way to get Valeria the hell out of here, but might those tunnels help his plan along?
Who knew?
His bigger problem was what would happen if the ruse ran its course, he had to leave, and he still didn’t have a way out for Valeria? What the fuck was he going to do?
“I think you’ll like the tunnels,” Jorge said absently.
Chris looked Valeria’s way again. Now, she wasn’t looking at him. That was okay, he only needed to see her. If she was okay that’s what he wanted to know. The rest, he would deal with as he could, or should.
What else could he do?
“I look forward to it,” Chris replied.
• • •
The bay window of the small living room in the house Chris was using on the Lòpez ranch during his stay allowed him a good view of the rest of the houses on the property, and all the walkways connecting them. It was a nice, practical design, if someone admired that sort of thing, but mostly, he felt the need to imprint it to memory.
If something happened, he would need to know all the things about this place. Should something cause chaos, and it was his only chance to get Valeria and Maria out, then he wanted to walk it with his fucking eyes closed.
No questions asked.
That was why, every single morning, he took an hour-long jog around the property. He went out, took pathways, and sometimes didn’t, and then came back to his house again. To the guards, or the family, it looked like nothing was amiss. He was focusing on his fitness, and little else.
That was fine.
It’s what he wanted them to think.
The ring of a cell phone took Chris’s attention away from the window, and the scenery outside. He didn’t bother to check the caller ID when he reached for the phone on the coffee table behind him, simply picked it up and answered it, thinking it would be his father, or twin.
Although, Corrado had been careful not to call since Chris was here. So was his brother’s way—always erring on the side of caution, rather than unpredictability. It was something he appreciated about his twin.
“Chris here,” he murmured into the phone, going back to the window.
The voice on the other end of the call was not who he expected, and it put him on edge. “Chris, it’s Andino.”
“Why?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why are you calling me?”
Andino chuckled. “For an update to give to my wife, who asks about her missing friend nonstop, that’s why. Good enough answer for you, or no?”
Well ...
Chris sighed. “You shouldn’t be calling me, it’s risky. You have no idea what I am doing here at any given time, and I usually have someone nearby. What if they saw the name on the phone, or heard me say your name? The Lòpez family are aware Valeria was with your new wife before they grabbed her again, and you want to play that kind of game?”
“I don’t want to, no, but your father didn’t have news. He thought a call to you—”
“Don’t do this again.”
Andino cleared his throat. “All right, noted. What can you tell me if you’re able I mean? Do you have a plan to get the woman and her child out of there?”
“It’s complicated.”
“How so?”
“She’s incredibly isolated away from the public,” Chris said, “for fucking starters. Their compound in the middle of nowhere—yeah, that’s where he keeps her. And when she may leave, he has a small army to keep her in line. She’s not treated well here, but she keeps up a good façade. As of now, she knows why I am here, but I don’t think she trusts me yet, which is a problem.”
“Hmm.”
“What was that noise for?”
“Sounds like you should figure out a way to make her trust you, doesn’t it?”
“Thanks for the memo. Let me jot it down.”
Andino grunted. “You and your twin ... you are both a lot alike, yes?”
“We are twins. Identical in many ways.”
In fact, he and his twin were different, too. The most obvious being the way they lived their lives, things they enjoyed, and what they wanted for their future. On the surface, to people who didn’t know them well—like Andino—the twins seemed more similar than opposite. All people saw first were the things that made Chris and Corrado the same, but they missed the more important bits.
The shit that made them unique.
“And what does my twin have to do with this?” Chris asked.
“I find him as equally bothersome as you.”
“Sounds like an issue you should handle, no?”
Andino made another one of those annoyed noises. “Back to Valeria, and her daughter, if you wouldn’t mind. I suspect you don’t have all day to chat.”
Right.
“The situation here is not as easy as I hoped it would be, and I don’t have a clear path forward yet. When I do, however, you will be one of the first ones I tell. Also, have you considered what comes after?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Jorge Lòpez came after her once when she ran, Andino,” Chris intoned, wanting the man to hear every single word, “and chances are, when we get her out of here this time, he will hunt her down again. For as horribly as he seems to treat her, he’s obsessed with keeping her at all costs. What then, huh?”
“We’ll make sure he can’t come after her.”
“How?”
Because his focus was getting Valeria and Maria out. Nothing more, and nothing less. If he added the hit of a cartel leader onto this job, then they would have a hell of a lot more problems than they could handle.