Page 55 of Business vs. Pleasure

They ended the call after that, and they both sat back and stared at each other over their abandoned meals.

“Well, fuck,” August said.

Ricardo nodded. Well, fuck, indeed.

August reached for his drink. “Is it too much to hope Darrow has zero sense of opsec and leaves a trail of digital bread crumbs right to wherever he’s trying to lay low?”

“Probably.” Plenty of other marks were exactly that stupid. The Dunning-Kruger effect really showed itself when rich assholes thought they’d outsmarted anyone who might try to find them or get past their security. The cockier and more certain they were, the more likely they’d done something astronomically stupid like use the default login credentials for their security system or get scary-looking guard dogs who could be bribed with bacon.

Darrow… probably covered all his bases. He’d eluded two previous hits. He’d booby-trapped his room. He’d even managed to James-Bond his way out of the elevator where NightRaven had tried to keep him on ice. He was inconveniently paranoid, which was probably how he’d stayed alive for as long as he had in his line of work.

Which…

“Maybe we’re coming at this from the wrong angle.”

August raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”

“He already knows to watch his ass.” Ricardo drummed his nails on the table. “But do you think he’d be suspicious of someone offering to do business with him?”

The eyebrow climbed even higher. “You… You want to use one of his clients to lure him out? Or… Oh God. You want to pose as one of his clients, don’t you?”

Ricardo grinned. “I haven’t broken out my cartel persona in a while.” He half-shrugged. “Could be fun.”

“Could be—” August blinked. “This guy deals weapons to warlords, is being tailed by someone who wants to kill him and us, and you think it’ll be fun to play dress-up as Cartel Ricardo to flush him out?”

“You have any better ideas?”

“No, but I didn’t realize you were enjoying this so much.”

Ricardo inclined his head. “And you’re not?”

The corner of August’s mouth twitched.

Ricardo chuckled. “That’s what I thought.”

Coming at Herman Darrow from the client side of things was even easier than Ricardo had imagined. While the man may have kept his security tighter than a drum, waving money in his face worked as well as offering bacon to most guard dogs—he instantly forgot about the threat and started salivating.

Through a couple of liaisons, Ricardo—or, well, Arturo Muñoz—made contact with Darrow. They didn’t speak directly, but Arturo made his intentions clear, and the response came mucho rapido. Before long, they were arranging to meet so that Arturo could procure weapons on behalf of a growing paramilitary group setting up shop in the Darién Gap, the dense strip of barely passable and extremely dangerous jungle dividing Panama from Colombia. They would meet later this week in Panama City to discuss the specifics. The otherwise security-conscious jackass told Arturo he’d be flying in from Miami on Tuesday, though he didn’t specify the time.

The dipshit flew on a private jet. He was smart enough not to take a jet he owned, but not smart enough to fly under an alias that hadn’t already been connected to his real identity half a dozen times over. By the time his jet took off, August—also flying on a generic private plane—was an hour ahead of him. Ricardo, having left the day before, was already waiting for both of them in Panama.

Still no sign of NightRaven, though, and Ricardo didn’t like that. He had to have caught the scent by now and at least be aware that Darrow was on his way to Central America. Was he already in town? Was he flying commercial? Was there yet another private jet stomping its carbon footprint into the atmosphere as part of this shitshow? It was anyone’s guess.

And that part was also August’s problem. Ricardo didn’t like it—he didn’t like it at all—but the only way they were going to end this was if one of them focused on Darrow while the other locked on to NightRaven. That meant August being out of his sight and engaging with someone hostile. It meant Ricardo going in without backup; that was something he’d done for most of his career as a lone wolf assassin, but that was a lifetime ago. He wasn’t used to being without August watching his back.

Sitting in an idling car outside of Tocumen International Airport, he tried not to twitch or fidget. His neck prickled with the certainty that someone might come up behind him. Every car that approached was potentially NightRaven or some other random hostile. He couldn’t relax. He fucking hated this.

August, be careful. Please.

His phone pinged.

Heidi

Darrow’s plane just landed.

Ricardo acknowledged that with a thumbs up. He’d have waited outside customs, but Darrow was undoubtedly taking advantage of the VIP customs bypass, so he wouldn’t exit customs with all the normal people. It would take him about half an hour to get through, during which time he’d sit in a VIP lounge and feel important, and then he’d leave through the main exit. So Ricardo sat out here in a rental car in the cell phone lot, the air conditioning blasting to ward off the tropical heat, and waited for Darrow to ping his other phone.

Not long after Heidi’s text, another message came through.