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“I don’t know who they are!” Luiz growled. “You want coke? I got coke. I don’t get mixed up in human trafficking. Motherfucker—you gonna ice me for selling blow?”
I clicked my tongue and tried to use my nonexistent fingernail to get out a piece of potato chip that was stuck between my teeth. I fucking hated that.
“It’s never just blow with you guys,” I said absently. I eyed my ring finger nail, then automatically dropped my gaze to the gold band.We’re gonna find you, baby. “If it was only drugs, we wouldn’t have a problem.”
I didn’t know how many Luizs River and I had come across during our years in the field. They all said the same thing. It was only coke. Just some drugs. What was the big deal?
“The fuck do you know about it?” he snapped. “You think you’re some macho soldier, huh? Comin’ here with your guns and your Kevlar, but you don’t know—”
“I know that for every Luiz Gomez, there’s a Teresa Alvarez getting hurt,” I replied casually. “I know how y’all operate. I know you take advantage of vulnerable people to push your shit. You hold a gun to a young boy’s head, and suddenly his mother is willing to hop on a plane with balls of coke shoved up her privates. You burn down a man’s house, and that’s when he agrees to transport a ton of cocaine on a boat built for a fishing trip with the grandkids. What’s the goin’ rate for coercing a woman to smuggle a kilo into another country? Better yet, she’spregnant. Y’all love the pregnant ladies, ’cause they’re less likely to get searched in customs. You sick fucks.” I shook my head and finally got the tiny piece of chip out from my teeth. “Don’t ever tell me it’s just blow. I’ve seen one too many drug mules die when the goods they carryinside themselvesburst.”
My ramble hadn’t held a single trace of a lie, and I hoped it inspired Luiz to change his strategy, ’cause the “you don’t know what you’re talking about” shtick wasn’t working on me.
“Who the fuck is Teresa Alvarez?” Luiz asked irritably.
“A nobody to you. Like all drug mules.” Just one of the many women my brother and I had encountered over the years. She’d been pregnant with her fourth child. Her eldest boy had had some kind of brain disorder. Her husband had been killed in a turf war. Easy money offered by the cartel—smuggle drugs over to Europe.
Unfortunately, one of theforty-fiveballs of coke in her system had broken, and she’d died of an overdose before she’d gotten to the hospital.
“I’ve got dozens of names, Luiz,” I said. “Nothing you say will make me think it’sjust blow.” I pulled up my knees a bit and wrapped my arms loosely around them. “You wanna move on to the next tactic now?”
He clenched his jaw. “Why would I talk? You’re gonna kill me. You’re all—you know, emotionally involved.”
Emotionally involved. I snorted softly. Good way of putting it.
“I got kids too, you know,” he said. “Two young boys and a baby girl. What about them?”
Christ, interesting approach.
“Whataboutthem?” I chuckled. “May they grow up healthy and far away from you.” I jerked my chin at him. “Keep tryin’. What else you got? I distinctly remember the beginning of an arrogant ‘Do you know who I am?’ speech at your house. Spoken only by people in a nice position. Let’s talk aboutthat. You can’t be someone important and not know shit.”
He averted his glare, suddenly not in the mood to talk at all.
* * *
I took another drag from the smoke.
The sky was turning orange and pink over the endless fields.
Still no reply from Emerson. He was probably asleep. I’d texted him about an hour ago, curious about their involvement.
I heard River rummaging around inside the barn, and I waited for him to appear. Once Luiz had pissed himself because I’d denied him use of a bathroom we didn’t have, I’d opted to stand outside.
I was gonna rethink our whole tent situation today. Each stall had an old drain, but even if we placed Luiz in one of them, the place was gonna reek soon. The heat didn’t help.
Back home, we had one of those tents you assembled in the bed of a truck, so maybe we could get another tent like that and sleep out here. ’Cause we weren’t moving. We had the solitude we required.
River trailed out in civilian clothes, boots unlaced, hair messy, faded jeans holey.
He’d gotten two hours of shut-eye. Better than nothing.
I returned the smokes to him.
He didn’t even react to the fact that I’d lit one up too.
“I ain’t sleepin’ in a toilet again,” he grumbled.
“Did he shit himself too?”
