“He can’t use his brain,” I interrupted.
“Well, we don’t discriminate at Rice. I’m sure with the right environment, he can overcome any test anxiety—”
“No, I mean he can’t use his brain because it’s spread all over his kitchen floor. Now what’s on the fucking flash drive?”
Bright paled, typing faster than I’d ever seen. “Like I said, I’ve decrypted this one, but there’s another one that’ll take a little more time. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”
“Just show me.” I sighed. I’d had about enough of this guy for one day.
“So, I’m just going to turn it... You can see for... It’s just that... Here.” Blowing out a nervous breath, he turned the laptop toward me, and I immediately saw for myself what had turned a college professor into a complete moron.
He maximized the window, which was reason enough to shoot him right there. However, it was the sound effects that made me want to empty my gun in the side of his head.
“Is this video real?”
“Yes. I’ve checked it for any kind of tampering. I’m no cinematographer, but I’d bet my career that this is the real deal.”
“Would you bet your life on it?” I opened my jacket just enough. He knew what was behind it.
“Mateo, come on. Don’t joke about things like that.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” I seethed, turning the laptop around and shoving it in his face. “I need to know if you’re sure this is one hundred percent real. No guesses, and no, ‘I’m pretty sure.’ I need your word.”
Bright’s already pale face turned chalk white. “Y-yes, I’m sure.”
“Fuck!” I dropped my head back and closed my eyes.
A goddamn sex tape. The last thing I expected to find on that flash drive was a home movie starring one of our own. Diaz had an insurance policy, all right. I didn’t give a shit about exposing the bitch riding one of our men but having evidence like this floating around was damning for the cartel. If it fell into the wrong hands, we’d have a shitload of eyes on us.
Bright pressed his face against the screen, recognition filling his eyes as he adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “Oh, shit! Is this the—?”
“We’re done here.” Slamming the laptop closed, I jerked the flash drive out and shoved it in my pocket.
“Hey, you didn’t properly eject that.”
I pulled my jacket all the way back, exposing my gun. “Looks ejected as fuck to me. Get out.”
Tucking his laptop under his arm, Bright quickly jumped out of the SUV, turning around before slamming the door. “What if I can’t decrypt the other file?”
“Then I suppose there’ll be an opening for an IT professor at Rice University.”
He slammed the door without another word and took off in a full-on sprint toward the campus.
Pussy.
I’d driven ten minutes down Main Street when I punched my fist against the dashboard in frustration, my phone glaring at me from the console. As much as I didn’t want to make the call, friendship was a line that only took you so far in our world.
Finally picking it up, I dialed and braced myself. Once he answered, I decided to go with the “rip the Band-Aid off” approach. No use prolonging the inevitable.
“Did you know Emilio was fucking the mayor?”
Val was silent for a moment. “Is this some kind of joke? Because it isn’t funny.”
No shit.
“Bright decrypted one of the files. It’s a sex tape of Emilio and Lilith Donovan.”
“Brody’s mother? Dios mío. Couldn’t Diaz download porn like the rest of us?”
“Val! This is serious.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He yelled so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “I’m sitting here in Mexico while my fucking Houston cartel is being corrupted by pussy.”
“I’ll handle it.” I cringed a little in repeating my own words back to him.
“You’ve been ‘handling it’ for days now, and shit keeps hitting the fan.” Letting out a string of curses, I heard glass clink and the unmistakable sound of liquid pouring. “Luis was in with this Hector guy, right?”
“Yes,” I answered calmly. “That’s what led me to Hector’s apartment. None of this makes sense, Val. What kind of shit was Delgado up to, and why are Emilio and his dick mixed up in it?”
Val grunted as he sipped his drink. “You said Leighton saw a faceless man in Luis’s apartment, which tells me he wasn’t working alone. But what does this have to do with Leighton, and why would a useless fuck like Hector hide this information?”
“Maybe Luis and Hector were working together?”
“Do you think that was a coincidence, Mateo? Do you think they just happened to pick the sister of one of our highest-ranking lieutenants?”
“Brody sent him to San Marcos,” I reminded him, the thought agitating me even more.
“Yes, but Brody didn’t ask him to bed her.”
A car honked its horn, the owner flipping me off as I weaved into his lane. I didn’t want to think about Leighton and Luis together. Just hearing him say it out loud made me want to find Brody and punch him in the face.
“Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong,” he mused, oblivious to my jealousy. “What if Luis and Hector weren’t working together to hurt Leighton? What if they were working together to save her?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Has pussy rotted your brain? Look at the facts, Mateo. Hector is dead. By your own theory, the only person who would have anything to gain by his silence is already decomposing in a fifty-five-gallon drum. Someone didn’t want him to talk, and as you pointed out by his method of execution, they’re not familia.”
He was right. “You think someone else was after Leighton, and Luis enlisted Hector’s help in protecting her?”
“It’s a theory. One that could mean your girlfriend panicked and killed the messenger.”
My brain went into overdrive, trying to make connections between everything that had happened in the past few days and coming up with a shitload of questions with no answers. However, there was one path I itched to take. “Do you want me to confront Emilio?”
“Not yet.” When I growled my dissatisfaction, Val sharpened his tone. “How many times have I told you not to show your hand too early? Play strategically, Mateo. For now, I suggest you find whoever tried to make a hole in one with Diaz’s brain. That’s where you’ll find your connection.”
“Fine.”
“You have three days left,” he added before hanging up.
I drove around Houston, considering my options for the time I had left.
Leighton was already involved with the DEA. I could ask her to take everything to them and hope they made sense of it, but that would betray my own cartel, and I took an oath to Val. No matter what, I wouldn’t betray him. The only other option was to involve Brody by bringing him up to speed with everything I’d found, but that posed two major problems. I promised Leighton I wouldn’t involve her brother any more than he already was, and there wasn’t any easy way to tell a friend his mother was having an affair with his boss.