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Hunter sighed raggedly. It was one of the few times Trees had heard the man be anything less than rock solid. “You’re tying my hands and condemning my sister to a torturous death. I haven’t slept in days. My dad… He’s falling apart. He won’t eat. He won’t rest. The colonel isn’t a young man anymore, and I’m goddamn worried about him. Deke is at the end of his rope, and the kids are crying themselves to sleep… I don’t know how much longer this family can hold it together, especially since Deke got word last night that if we don’t produce Valeria this week, my sister dies. We’re desperate. We won’t let anything happen to Laila. Hell, we’ll never let Montilla even touch her. Please. Right now, we just want to talk to her.”
Trees sighed. Edgington was in a shitty position. His whole family was, and the time to save Kimber was ticking down. It was his own protective instincts that had him snarling and fighting his bosses. The way they’d been snarling and fighting with him.
That wasn’t getting the job done.
“Maybe you ought to try working with me, instead of going behind my back. Maybe collectively, we could come up with a better plan, one that doesn’t require you to put Laila in danger.”
Hunter paused. “Maybe you’re right.”
Damn straight, but Trees wouldn’t give Hunter more shit now. It was counterproductive. But there would be a reckoning later, he was sure. “Go home and get some sleep. I’ll interrogate Laila about what she knows. You do the same with Valeria. We’ll circle back in a few hours and see what we’ve come up with.”
“To be honest, you don’t know what we know. Dad, Logan, Joaquin, Deke, and I have all been working on this for”— he choked—“God, it’s been the longest fucking week of my life.”
Forever in terms of keeping a hostage. He could only speculate that Geraldo hadn’t killed Kimber yet because, if he did, he’d never see Valeria or her son again.
“So clue me in. But you don’t know what I’m capable of, either.”
Through the line, Trees heard Hunter start his car engine and pull away. “Fair enough. And I’m sorry we thought you were our mole. We should have just come to you.”
“Yep. We could have worked together sooner.”
“Once I’m home, I’ll send you a zip file of everything we’ve collected so far. Unfortunately, it’s not much. Some drug lords lead a really flashy life—parties, bars, whores, jet-setting. Geraldo Montilla…not so much.”
“Still, he’s got a weakness, a tell, a bad habit—something. We’ll find it and exploit it.”
“Yeah,” Hunter sighed tiredly. “I’ll call you in a few hours.”
The line went dead.
Trees set Laila’s phone aside. “You get all that?”
“I think so.”
“If I uncuff you, will you stay put?”
“What will you do if I am able to think of anything helpful?”
“We’ll plan around it, find some way to trap him so we end up sparing his life in exchange for Kimber. But we’ll do it in some way that doesn’t put you, your sister, or your nephew in danger. Can you agree to that?”
Laila looked reluctant to give up. She wanted to help her family and ensure their safety right now. He understood her urge to be actively involved. But he gave her a minute to think his proposal through.
“Yes.”
He heaved a sigh of relief. “Good. Do you want to go back to bed for a while or—”
“No. I-I do not know how you and I will find that monster’s weakness, but I want to start now.”
Trees figured she’d say that. “All right. Tell me the first time you remember hearing about the man. The first time you met him. Any detail you can recall. Even the smallest, seemingly insignificant piece of information might be helpful.”
She did. The memories of a fourteen-year-old girl about a man three times her age weren’t particularly sharp. Or maybe that was because it had been nearly seven years ago. His facial hair, his style of dress, his entourage… Not really helpful. But they kept talking as Trees read through the files Hunter sent.
His boss was right; they didn’t have much to work with. So he kept asking Laila questions—through sunrise, through breakfast, through the slow crawl of the sun up the kitchen window until somewhere in the afternoon when the sun began its descent through the living room window on the opposite side of the house. Together, they made a late lunch, touched base with her sister to talk through other memories. They netted almost nothing.
It was hard to find a clue when no one was even sure what the fuck they were looking for. But Trees didn’t give up, despite feeling wiped out. Neither did Laila.
Finally, after a shower and some hot popcorn around ten that night, he tapped away on his keyboard, scouring search engines far more powerful than Google and coming up with a lot of scary chatter about Montilla’s past violence, when Laila sighed. “The last time I remember Geraldo coming to visit Emilo was shortly after your team rescued my sister. He railed at his son for being so stupid and careless, then he asked me questions. But I knew nothing. Even I had been shocked to wake up the morning after Valeria’s disappearance to find her gone. He barraged me with questions for hours, until he got frustrated and left. The last time I was with him, I looked out the window as he drove away in his flashy classic sports car. I remember thinking that I hoped never to see him again.”
