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Later, as he fell asleep with his body tucked close to mine and his arm growing heavy around my waist, I accepted my fate.
I loved this man. Loved him so much my heart hurt. I’d given him my heart the day we first met, when he guided me out of the woods without letting go of my hand.
But just as I drifted off to sleep, a dark sense of foreboding settled over me. The other shoe was bound to drop soon. No one got everything they wanted. Good things, especially things as perfect as this, never lasted.
ChapterThirty-Two
PEYTON
“You’re going to be okay,”I said as I rested a hand over the beleaguered, frightened woman in front of me. Tallulah Lowenstein’s eyes glistened with unshed tears as she watched her son play with Hot Wheels on the floor next to us.
I’d finished explaining how we were going to remove her from the Redemption cabin to the new safe house. Guilt weighed heavily on my shoulders. My stupid decisions were causing Tallulah more hardship than she’d already endured. She was shaking like a leaf and kept taking measured breaths to calm herself, and the stark fear emanating from her ripped me apart.
Tallulah got up and busied herself in the kitchen, making a cup of tea. Her eyes strayed back to the little boy makingvroomsounds, and her small smile was full of hope.
If she hadn’t had her son to push her to leave, would she have been brave enough to reach out for help? I made myself some tea, whatever was in the cabinet, and leaned against the island next to her.
“There is something you need to know.” Tallulah swallowed, her fingers going white around the mug in her hands. “My husband isn’t a good man. Not just because of what he did to me. There’s so much more than that.”
She pushed off the counter and paced the tiny kitchen. I didn’t know what more I could do to let her know she was safe. I wasn’t good at consoling people. The right words never came fast enough, and what Tallulah needed was comfort and reassurance. I should have asked Jessen to tag along. “Yes, I know that. We know that.”
“No. No. You don’t get it.” She stopped in front of me, her eyes frantic. “He was born into money, but he always thought of himself as some kind of mob boss. He started laundering dirty money through his real estate holdings, and when that wasn’t enough, he got in deeper. He holds their drugs in his vacant buildings.”
Drugs and money laundering? None of that popped up in any of the research I’d dug into. We didn’t even have surveillance photos with anyone connected to organized crime. Was this another thing I’d missed?
“I met the guy who connected him with the cartel, Luis Cabrera. He works for Lyle, in distribution.” A man’s face flashed in my head, a vague memory from the intel we’d gathered on him before we rescued Tallulah. I grabbed my laptop and fired it up, and a few seconds later I was staring at Luis Cabrera’s profile. Age thirty, had started at Lowenstein Holdings six years ago and quickly moved up the chain of command. My initial search had nothing connecting him to drugs, but he hadn’t seemed important enough to dig deeper.
I flipped the screen around, and she nodded. “That’s him. He came to the house a few times after Junior was born, when Lyle was spending more time at home. I heard them talking about drugs and a house near Mobile.” Her shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry I’m not able to give you more information.”
“Thank you. What you gave me is all the direction I need.” I laid a hand on her forearm, giving it a gentle squeeze that I hoped she found comforting. “What you’re doing is brave. It’s scary, going against him, but we’re here to help and protect you. You have a hardened group of motorcycle-riding, hell-raising club brothers who are honored to help you.” Tallulah gave me a tiny nod. “It takes resilience and guts to do what you did. To find the courage to leave and then do it. Do you know how many women never get the chance to find their courage?” Women in domestic violence situations rarely made it out. It was either death or jail when they finally had enough and snapped. “You did the right thing. We won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” It was a promise I’d die to keep. Everyone on the team would, without hesitation.
Her body shook, and I pulled her into my arms, rubbing soothing circles on her back as silent tears dripped onto my shoulder. After a while, she pulled back, wiped the tears off her face and gave me a watery smile.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” She got up and headed to the bathroom.
I was at the door when she got back into the main room. “You know your instructions?” Her affirmation was so soft I barely heard it. “Good. I’m going to research what you told me.” I opened the door and headed to the clubhouse.
The brothers had set me up to work in Chapel. It was better I stayed close to Tallulah, helping with her sense of security and easy to find in case she remembered more information. But not so close she would think I was hovering. I sent out the alert and waited as my team joined the call. Once everyone was on screen, I relayed the new information Tallulah had given me.
“How did we miss this?” Tyler asked, frustration in her tone as she rubbed her temples. Tyler abhorred screwups and incompetence.
“Because we investigated their lives, we tracked his movements, but we couldn’t bug everything. There were no large cash deposits in his accounts. No photos of Lowenstein with anyone suspect.” I’d been scratching my head over the same question. We all did research on him and not one of us found connections. Luis Cabrera was a common enough name that three different ones had popped on Mexico’s most-wanted list, and since he didn’t seem like a key player, I hadn’t given him any additional attention.
“Shit happens, ladies. You know that,” Betty said. “Let’s move on to the bigger picture and focus. I want everyone to reach out to their contacts. Figure out if he has the pull Tallulah says he does within the cartel. Find which cartel it is. Feed everything back to Peyton. Is she ready to get out of the safehouse and move to the new location?”
“She’s scared but ready as she can be.”
“Good. We go ahead as planned and pivot where we need to. This isn’t the first time we’ve had new information come to light. Send us a picture of this Luis guy,” she said, then left the call.
“How is she doing, really?” Jessen asked.
“She’s terrified.” I shrugged. “She knows that he’s not going to stop looking for her.”
“At least she told us.” A scowl marred Tyler’s face. “She could have gone on silent the entire time, not telling us that the asshole had connections to some crazy cartel people.”
That was true. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time someone we rescued withheld vital information. Sometimes they weren’t even aware we should know. We could tap phone lines, track movements, but it still left us blind in spots. There was only so much research we could do without tipping them off that we were looking into them.
“Let’s get to work,” I said and ended the call.
