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“Because that’s what we’ve been looking for.” She stretched her hand, pointing to the back of the vehicle, her body fully turned to me. “This is our breakthrough.” Her voice was urgent, but I still couldn’t understand.
“We’re looking for horses?”
“Yes! But we’ve been looking for the wrong kind.” She shook her head in agitation. “We’ve been going at it from the wrong angle. We were so sure they were talking about heroin, we failed to check the obvious route. ‘Horse’ wasn’t slang for anything. Cruz was talking about actual horses.”
“Who?”
“The Train,” she exclaimed, with urgency.
“That still doesn’t make any sense. Why horses? Why here? What are they carrying? And why are you so sure there’s something wrong?”
She was excited, evidently way ahead of me in the whole conclusion. “Think about it. It’s insane this guy would come all the way down from Texas,Texas, to what? Breed? Train?Here? They’re getting out of a place with everything they need to look for specialized stuff in the middle of this nowhere.”
“So why the horses?”
“They’re just a front. We do have farms around that could use them. We also have stud farms.Bryan Keyes’sstud farms, a money launderer. As inThe Package. Who would refute that and be suspicious?”
“You, apparently,” I muttered.
“Besides,” she ignored me—again, “shipping horses for that kind of activity isn’t a cheap ordeal, and the animals should be hand-picked. They wouldn’t send someone who knows nothing about the animals and risk losing a lot of money. That guy,” she pointed to the truck again, “isn’t driving for the horses. He’s driving for the real shipment.”
“I don’t know, Mia. This all seems a little far fetched.” I could understand her reasoning, but I wasn’t convinced.
“Come on, Benny. The intel we had indicated the drugs were coming this week. The guy is crossing up the country to do what he’d find back home with more access and quality. No one would suspect anything was going on with that kind of transportation. Hell, it could even explain Santiago and Keyes meeting and why we have a member of a Mexican cartel roaming around.”
The horse guy did seem shifty. But going from that to tell he was dealing with illegal shipments could be a little extreme.
“Please, Benny. Trust me,” Mia pleaded, taking full advantage of her big brown eyes. Even if it wasn’t for them, I did trust her. I’d trusted her with my life. I’d trusted her with my past. I’d trusted her with my survival. She always came through.
“Even if I did want to stop it,” I started cautiously, “we can’t. We can’t legally pull him over. Maybe we should call the cops.”
She thought for a while, contemplating what I said. “This guy crossed several states. It’s a federal case.” Smiling again, she added, “The DEA has jurisdiction over it, and we happen to know a few names from there.” She pulled out her phone from the front pocket of her hoodie. “Can you contact that guy you know? I’ll try Aaron as well.”
She was already dialing before I could say anything. From the panel of my car, I tried calling Ethan, only to be met with his recording voice sounding inside the car and instructing me to leave a message.
Mia was still pressing the phone to her ear, waiting. “Wow. Who’s that hunk speaking? Is that your Ethan guy?” She seemed impressed. “I wasn’t sure if he was a real person or someone you invented.”
“Why would I make him up?”
“I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulder, dialing again. “But if he looks like he sounds, maybe you could prove to me in person that he’s real.” I didn’t have time to respond, for she was already ignoring me and mumbling, “Come on, Aaron. Pick up-pick up-pick up. Thank God, Aaron, hey. It’s Mia...Bryant. I’ll put you on speaker.” She held her phone with its face up between us. “Benny is with me.”
“Walker.”
“Scott.”
Being done with our greeting already, Mia intervened. “You’re both doing fine, great, you’ll arrange a date for a beer. We need to pull up a truck.” Silence. “Aaron?”
“I’m still here. I was just wondering why you’d need to stop a vehicle.”
“And silence was your way of figuring it out? Next time, just ask.” She huffed impatiently. “I think we found our shipment.” She proceeded to tell him her impressions and what we knew—a whole lot of nothing—about the guy driving in front of us. “As you can see, we’re talking about a readily mobile vehicle, and we have probable cause. Just come down here and say the word.” She was extra sparkly in her pitch.
“I might need more than that, Mia.”
“You have my word...”
“Mia—”
“With sugar on top.”
