Page 81 of Fixed Asset

Mason had never been to a strip club? On one hand, the guy was extremely good looking. He wouldn’t need to buy a lap dance to see some action. But I knew plenty of good-looking men and women who’d visited strip clubs.

“You’ve never been to a gentlemen’s club?” Ryan asked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Mason arrogantly waving a hand from his face down his body.

“Do I look like I need to visit a gentlemen’s club?” Mason voiced my thought.

I left them to the squabble I’d inadvertently started and tuned them out.

Carlos Quintero was your typical gangster—wannabe warlord, clawing his way up the criminal ladder. He’d expanded his cousin’s prostitution ring and now controlled more than double the bars and hot spots than Rafael had. He might’ve cut out the high-interest-loan portion of the old regime, but he’d expanded the gambling.

“Why hasn’t the cartel just gobbled up Carlos’s territory?” I again asked out loud but to no one in particular.

Pete again was the one to answer, or in this case, question. “What do you mean?”

“For that matter, why did they allow Rafael to operate? Juárez is a cartel stronghold. Big players. And here’s this small-time gangbanger.”

“They take their cut,” Pete told me.

“Think about it like this,” Aiden started. “The cartel is McDonald’s—it’s easier to franchise. They get to take their cut without the hassle of ownership.”

That analogy only sort of worked. But I caught his meaning.

“The cartel lets him rent space and do his business, and they collect a percentage of his earnings?”

“Yup.”

“So, if Carlos has this beautiful Russian woman—who, as Mason pointed out, would get top dollar—would he share the news of his good fortune with the cartel, or would he move her out of Juárez, sell her privately, and keep all the money for himself?”

“Fucking shit,” Pete growled.

“He’d move her before the cartel caught wind he had her,” Mason said. “Either to keep the money or to stop the cartel from coming and getting her so they could sell her to one of their contacts. We’re looking in the wrong spot.”

Well, damn.

I heard chairs scraping against the floor and paper rustling as the men moved from their positions to join me back in the living room. Not that the dining room and sitting area off to the side weren’t one big room, it was just that the furniture—and there was a lot of it—delineated the spaces.

The men immediately started brainstorming.

Aiden began. “He wouldn’t bring her into the US.”

Ryan then took over. “He’d take her out of Chihuahua, and the cartel has ties to Michoacán. Those two states are out.”

“The Sinaloa Cartel would eat him alive,” Jack put in. “That state’s out.”

How many states did Mexico have? Thirty-one? Thirty-two? At this rate, we’d be here all night.

“Tom’s source in Juárez said there was a Russian going up for auction. If that intel is out, there’s a good chance the cartel already knows,” I said, contradicting my own theory.

“Not if Tom’s source is inside Carlos’s organization,” Pete answered. “Cat, you call him and ask who his source is and if he has any idea where Carlos would take her.”

I fought back a salute as I stood to get my phone out of my backpack. I really needed to find the time to go back to Arizona and pack. “I know the timing sucks, but I only have two days’ worth of clothes with me. I left my suitcase back in the hotel in Honduras—”

“I asked—”

I interrupted Jack right back. “If I had anything important in my room. The answer is still no. I had clothes, nothing else. But we’re gonna have to stop at a mall or something on the way home.”

“I got a tee you can have, Kitty,” Mason goaded Jack.