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He’d kidnapped a woman off the streets. Where was the praise? The congratulations on getting rid of the loose end—like he’d promised Mr. Rook he’d do.
“You took it too far. It’s clear you’re going rogue.”
“I’m a man of my word. I tie up loose ends, and she was one. I didn’t want her roaming the streets.”
Javier shook his head. “You are not in charge, though. You knew you were to leave her alone, yet you ignored them. Mr. Rook doesn’t like people who don’t listen. Who question his instructions. He has bigger plans at play. Plans that are more important than your wishes. No one questions what they are. Our job is to do what we are told. And you aren’t doing that.”
How Pedro wanted to slam his fist into Javier’s face and feel the bones crunch from the force of the punch. If he was second in command, he could’ve convinced Mr. Rook that getting rid of Astrid was the best thing to do. Not to mention, he always did what Mr. Rook wanted—except this time, but he had his reasons for going against them. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“You are so arrogant and delusional. Anything associating Mr. Rook to the death of a celebrity chef would be disastrous. The authorities already know that someone from the cartel was killed and that a cartel member had chased her. Both of those things were done by you. Mr. Rook doesn’t want them sniffing around him, especially not now.”
“They can’t pin it on me. I’m very good at my job.” Pedro puffed his chest out. He didn’t believe what Javier was saying about Mr. Rook and whoever was looking into the cartel. They had that happen all the time, and all it took was a little bit of money for it to be dropped.
“You’re a fool. A liability. A pain in Mr. Rook’s ass. Time to die.” Javier raised his gun, and fired off two shots before Pedro could react.
Pedro staggered back, pain ripping through his body. He looked down at his chest, blood staining his shirt from the two bullet holes. The ground rose up to meet him as a dark gray mist closed in until he was surrounded by blackness, his breath leaving his body on one last gasp.
Chapter Thirty
Growler paced the conference room. He wanted to get out of there. Wanted to get moving so that he could find Astrid. It was coming up to almost thirty-six hours since Astrid had gone missing, and he’d done jack all.
Irish and Angel had landed and had come straight to the office. Tiredness clawed at Growler’s soul, trying to lure him into the sweet oblivion of sleep, but he fought. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any decent sleep—probably the night before they’d gone wheels up when he’d held Astrid securely in his arms and her body had been curled around his—that was his last decent sleep.
“Here.”
Growler looked up to find Irish standing before him with a cup of coffee in his hand. The last thing he wanted was another cup. He’d been living off the stuff from the moment he and Ox had walked into the office.
He took it anyway. “Thanks, man.”
Growler swallowed some of the scalding liquid down, waiting for the burst of caffeine to hit his blood.
“Cass will find her,” Irish murmured beside him.
“I hope so, but the window of finding her is closing. You know that as well as I do, the first forty-eight hours are critical in the recovery of a missing person.”
Irish nodded. “Yeah, but the cops don’t have Cass. Or her skills. We’ve got the footage from the train carpark. We know it was the asshole who chased and shot at you. That’s all Cass needs to find him.”
“Yeah, and we thought the cartel didn’t want Astrid anymore and look how wrong we were.”
“They don’t want her,” Cass called out while still tapping away at the keyboard. “The cartel aren’t impressed with Pedro Gonzalez taking her.”
“What? You have a name? Why didn’t you say something earlier?” he ground the words out, trying to contain his temper.
Cass looked at him over the top of her glasses, spearing him with a less than impressed look. “Because I just found out.”
Growler closed the distance between where he was standing and where Cass was working, noting that everyone else had gathered around the screens.
“What you got, Cass?” asked Ox.
“Let me show you.” She tapped a few buttons, and the big screen behind her lit up.
Growler grabbed a chair and so did the rest of the guys. The screen was split into four squares. One had a rolling chat stream. How Cass found anything from following that was amazing.
Another screen had footage from a camera paused. The image was grainy, and he couldn’t make anything out. The next was a screenshot of the chat. And the final one was a map with a blue dot on it. Everything in him wanted that blue dot to be where Astrid was located.
“As you can see from here…” She directed a pointer to the screenshot. “The cartel has put out another message saying Astrid Conway is no longer a person of interest to them. Their focus is on something bigger. Something they’ve been searching a long time for.”
“Any idea what that is?” Growler asked, his natural curiosity at the unsaid words in that message kicking in.
