“Tell me what you want,” Leo hissed through clenched teeth, his broken English slipping as his anger grew. “But this has to…” The rest of what I presumed to be a futile demand trailed off as a muffled voice laced with huskiness and an edge of insolence filtered through the line.
Son of a bitch.
I had enough on my plate without having to worry about some jerkoff in the Mexican Embassy hearing me spell out the details of someone’s murder.
I closed my eyes and cursed. “Is someone there?”
“Just my puta secretary who doesn’t know how to fucking knock,” he yelled, the two words punctuated by the sound of a slamming door. “As I was saying, this has to be it. The Harcourt name isn’t too popular around here and unsealing Adriana Carrera’s birth records for you turned too many eyes my way.”
I winced at hearing her name again. It had been months since I’d thought about her, and now she was the ghost who wouldn’t go away. An unwelcome pang of guilt settled deep in my stomach. The woman nearly assassinated my boss then walked out of a Houston safe house like a fucking queen. She made my life hell for months. A Muñoz creation whose mind ticked with only one emotion—hate.
Until I blew her life apart by revealing her entire existence had been a lie. Marisol Muñoz was Adriana Carrera, Val’s not-so-dead sister.
After she disappeared off the face of the earth, I assumed she was buried in a shallow grave somewhere. It was inevitable. She never would’ve stood for her family’s legacy to be dismantled, and they never would’ve accepted a Carrera.
I assumed wrong.
Dragging myself out of that lethal rabbit hole, I changed the subject. “Unfortunately, you don’t call the shots, Leo. However, I’ve had a bitch of a day, so I’ll make this brief. The Muñoz Cartel has restructured. I’ve already had a chat with a man named José Rojas. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.” I didn’t wait for a confirmation. I didn’t need one. “He’s given me some interesting new information on Adriana Carrera. I need you to do some recon on her last known whereabouts.”
“Why don’t you just blackmail it out of him?”
Smartass.
“He’s missing.”
“Shouldn’t you be trying to locate him?”
“No.”
That was all that needed to be said. Leo Pinellas was an arrogant bastard, but he wasn’t stupid. Reading between the lines wasn’t a hard skill to master. Especially when his fat ass would be next.
“I’ll see what I can find out.”
“You have twenty-four hours.”
Probably even less for me if Adriana was motivated enough.
“You’d better know what you’re doing, Brody. Every time you try to fuck over a cartel boss, a woman pays the price. First, your sister, then Carrera’s girl, then Carrera’s sister.”
My hand tore through my hair, ripping the strands at the root. “She wasn’t his girl!” I let out a dry laugh. “But he sure as hell made sure she didn’t have any other option.”
“That’s a little hypocritical, don’t you think?”
The coil that had wound tighter and tighter in my chest since returning from Chicago snapped. “Twenty-four hours, Pinellas.” Grinding my teeth, I jerked the phone away to disconnect the call, but at the last minute lifted it back to my ear. “Make that twenty-two just for being an asshole.”
“You used to protect the law, Brody. You were a good guy.” He paused, his breath uneven. “What happened to you?”
My fingers clenched around my phone, my earlier smugness brittle and hollow. “I opened my eyes.”
I didn’t wait for a response. Ending the call, I slammed my phone onto my desk, not giving a shit if I cracked the screen. This wasn’t supposed to turn into such a clusterfuck. Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised. Life had delivered one giant middle finger after another since I sank into cartel quicksand. No matter how hard I tried to claw my way out, it kept pulling me under, deeper and deeper each time. Eventually, I gave up the fight and sank to the bottom.
Now, here I sat, completely submerged, trying to fight more than one invisible enemy. How long would it be until I just stopped breathing?
“It won’t be today.” With fire in my chest, I spun around, ready to fire bar bitch just to make myself feel better when a glint of silver caught my eye.
Without thinking, I crouched next to the picture frame I’d tossed like a grenade and picked it up. My white-knuckled grip on it tightened. I’d be damned if I’d go down like this. Straightening my shoulders, I stood and placed the frame back on my desk.
Tugging my tie loose, I shrugged off my jacket and unbuttoned my soiled shirt, reaching for the spare I kept in the tiny closet in the corner of the office. As I rolled the sleeves of the freshly laundered shirt up to my elbows, I heard the back door slam and what sounded like a bulldozer tear through the kitchen.
I glanced at the clock and threw my head back with a groan. “For fuck’s sake, Kiki, this is the third time this week. Your shift started three hours ago. Do you not own a goddamn clock?”
Tearing out of my office, I punched the wall on my way out, more than ready to hand a certain brunette waitress her ass and then toss it out the door.
It was bar bitch’s lucky day.
Chapter Five
Adriana
How the mighty have fallen.
The phrase sat on the tip of my tongue as I rounded the building and opened the door to a pathetically empty Caliente Cantina. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me, and if I had more time, I might have relished in how things had come full circle. However, I didn’t come here to bask in others’ misfortune.
I came to rectify my own.
Although I did my best to blend in, my high heels clicked against the cheap floor, announcing my arrival like a grenade. Stopping mid-stride, I winced and waited for the collective gasp. Surprisingly, the handful of patrons scattered in the worn booths never bothered to look up, much less acknowledge me. Returning the favor, I ignored them, focusing all my attention toward the bar.
It didn’t take long to find him. Slumped in a stool at the farthest end, Brody Harcourt scowled into his beer, gripping the glass mug as if he were squeezing out its last breath. The move might have intimidated a normal woman, but I wasn’t most women.
Besides, I knew more about him in a glance than I suspected most of his “so-called” friends did in a lifetime. The simple key to reading someone was to study their body language. Yeah, he looked ready to kill someone, but his hands were his tell. The glass he held took a level of unsurmountable punishment clearly meant for someone else.
Of course, there was also the obvious alcohol he downed like water. Men tended to use liquid therapy as a crutch rather than dealing with their problems. I’d seen it all my life. Not that it was a bad temporary fix for a highly publicized fall from grace, but killing brain cells just stalled the climb back to the top.
And through all this analysis, here I stood in the middle of this god-awful piece of shit cantina like a flashing siren. Only, like the other customers, Brody found my existence irrelevant. Not that it mattered to me. I wasn’t here to have my ego stroked. There was only one thing I wanted, and I’d traveled too long and too far to hinge it on an obstinate male mood swing. Still, observation was a useful skill, so I continued appraising him from a distance.