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“So you don’t know.” Ramon’s voice took on a smarmy tone—so fake and sleazy she could almost feel it. “Hopefully, you have a better handle on what Kart was doing.”
“What was Navarro into?”
Ramon chuckled. “You ever heard of lithium mines?”
“Like the battery?”
“It’s the fastest growing black-market industry south of the border. But if you’re gonna be shortsighted…like this revenge plan…too easy to make a mistake and get yourself noticed.” Ramon paused. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
“Hold up,” Elliot said. “I got in with them because they’re family. They made it good for me, and I kept the US operation off the radar of everyone in Colorado until Kenna Banbury came along.” His voice dripped with disdain. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t see a good business opportunity when it presents itself.”
Jax touched the back of her hand, then pointed. He lowered the lid of the laptop to lessen the glow, and she watched over where he’d indicated. Two men. Not locals, they were dressed more like the guys who had been with Kart at the harbor when that delivery had come in—now getting soaked by the rain. They knew it had been a sting operation. Some of their friends had gone with Kart and encountered the FBI.
Kart had abandoned them to their fate.
Were these a different group, or more of the same—with a chip on their shoulder over how tonight had gone down?
Jax had been right that they shouldn’t run into this building headlong, with no plan for how they would fight. She’d wrapped her arm, but the cut hurt. Ramon had been shot twice. He couldn’t defend himself. No one was going to ask Jax to do so when he had been unconscious for days. Internal injuries. Surgery. A concussion, though he hadn’t admitted it. She could see it at the edges of his expression—the slightly distant look in his eyes, and the little slur in some of his words.
They were all running on empty at this point.
But until Maizie was free, no one was giving up.
The two men both carried guns and walked around the building on alert, like a patrol.
Kenna said, “He has protection.”
That meant it would be harder to get Maizie out.
Jax squeezed her hand.
“I’m interested in a long-term partnership,” Ramon said through the phone. “I have all Navarro’s contacts. All his holdings. All his property and resources. If we combine what Kart built with that, we’ll control this part of Mexico…and what your family had established in the US.”
“So we work together.” Elliot paused. “But I’m not giving you what’s mine now.”
“A partnership. This isn’t about stealing. It’s about how big we can be with both of us pulling in the same direction versus fighting each other.” Ramon paused. “They did nothing but spend money and resources trying to get one up on the other. It was such a waste.”
“And you’re above such things. A fed who walked away from the Bureau for a bigger paycheck?”
Ramon chuckled. “The retirement plan is a whole lot better. Bigger risk. Bigger reward.”
“I can see that.”
“Once we get the feds and that woman you want revenge againstout of here, then we can talk about building something real. But if you’re gonna delay, I’ll have to start working. I can’t afford for some local to get big ideas and make a play for controlling stakes in what Navarro had.”
“So you need protection from my friends, is that it?”
“Hardly. But I’ll have things to deal with here,” Ramon said. “I won’t be free to follow whatever personal agenda I might have.”
“I can multitask. And if you knew what this woman did to my brothers, you’d be cheering me on.”
Kenna huffed out a breath.As if.Men who kept people locked up, used them as laborers, and treated them despicably didn’t get a free pass. She hadn’t lifted a hand to either of Elliot’s brothers. But she also hadn’t forcibly stopped it when their victims took the situation into their own hands.
It might look a whole lot more like street justice than Kenna’s specific brand of justice. But she’d tried to handle the situation and the actions of those people. In the end, she’d saved more than had lost their lives.
She could sleep at night.
How Elliot managed it, she had no idea.
