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“We took a look around the back of the building. The white pickup truck he stole from Navarro is here.”
Kenna recorded a response back. “Do you see him anywhere? Or any lights on?” She sent the message.
A second later her phone chimed, playing immediately since she had the app open already. “Nothing. Keep your eyes open.”
She followed Ramon to the end of the hallway. Down a set of stairs with a couple of sections that had collapsed on one side. Thankfully, most of it was intact enough for them to descend. “You really think we should be going down here first, instead of walking through all the surface level parts? We could actually do a room-by-room search in a way that’s effective.”
Ramon shook his head. “That would be a waste of time.”
“Because you know something I don’t know?” Kenna stood waiting while he pulled open the door. “How do I know you’re not just taking me down here so you can put a bullet in my head?”
Ramon slid a gun from its holster on his hip, turned the pistol, and handed it to her. “You keep hold of this. Maybe one day when we’re eighty, you’ll actually trust me.”
“I doubt it. More likely we’ll be playing Ping-Pong at a retirement home in Florida, and you’ll cheat so you can win, and I’ll put poison in your pudding in retaliation.”
He barked a laugh. “That’s how you relieve tension? I have to say, it works pretty well.”
“It’s a gift.” Kenna followed him through the door. “So what are we doing down here?”
They walked by a row of small rooms. Kenna didn’t hang around long enough to contemplate what happened in each one of those. It was a different building than the one she and Jax had been held in, but not so far from the captivity they had experienced.
“There’s supposed to be a tunnel from one of the back rooms, that some of the guys knew about—but not all of them. Like a couple of the military guys had a way in and out that the others weren’t aware of.” He led her down the hall to the end. “Maybe it was in the original plans, and Kart knows about it. But I don’t think Benjamin and Anthony at least knew it was here.”
Whether they did or not, both of them were dead now.
Navarro’s men hadn’t managed to kill Kart. The fact they let him live was the reason Navarro might lose his nephew.
She knew Navarro expected them to execute the American when they found Javier.
Another way Kenna had begun to creep closer and closer to who these people were, as though their corrupted morality had begun to infect her.
“Here we go.” He opened the door wide to reveal a small musty-smelling office with wood wainscoting, maps taped up on the walls, and a few filing cabinets. A huge safe stood in the corner, the door hanging open. At least one shelf had been emptied.
“He must have come in here to get something from this.” She made her way over, rummaging through the envelopes and files on the two top shelves, beneath which were a row of guns. Several were missing given the indents in the foam that indicated something heavy had rested there.
Kart had stocked up, and now he was heavily armed. Or Navarro’s men had discovered this room and taken the American’s weapons.
Kenna wanted to gather the rest of the contents of the safe just in case it could be useful later. It could give them information about the entire operation Kart had been running down here, the names of his associates all over the place, and exactly how extensive they needed to be in order to dismantle the entire thing. Maybe Stairns could come and grab it before they left.
She texted him so Ramon wouldn’t hear her telling her colleague they were going to be sure to destroy the entire operation.
After which they would send the feds on some international cooperative task force after Navarro.
“There’s more than one reason to be in here.” Ramon crouched in the corner by the wall. She saw a flash of pain on his face, but it was gone in a second. He pushed against the lower half of the wall with both hands, and the door clicked, then opened.
From waist height down was a tunnel made of cement like an old sewer pipe. And that’s exactly what it smelled of.
Kenna wrinkled her nose. “You hear anybody in there?” She would rather have regrouped and figured out what all this information in here meant for where Kart might have gone.
Ramon stayed silent for a second, then shook his head. “I don’t hear anyone.”
“Then we have less reason to believe that he would’ve gone that way than that he might be somewhere in the rubble of the compound above us, and if we don’t make a move and go find him? We could end up losing Javier.”
And that was the last thing she wanted to happen—being responsible for the death of a child. Not even the nephew of a man who should for all intents and purposes be her sworn enemy. Or at least someone she never made deals with. Whether or not Stairns had.
Right now she was going to do everything she could to find his child. “We can’t take the risk that we don’t find him.”
“If we don’t, then Navarro will kill us all.”
