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“We’ll flip ’em.”
I admired his ballsy confidence. “I certainly hope so. However, the man they worked for is now dead. They may not have had a connection beyond him.”
“Right, but there’s something about spending the rest of their lives in prison that usually compels criminals to remember things they previously swore not to know.”
“Right. So there will be a translator with you. I would prefer to observe this round of interrogation.”
“Roger that,” said Atticus.
I escorted both men into the building and up to the sixth floor.
“Where do you want us?” Wren asked, walking toward me from the direction of her father’s office with Wilder.
“Initially, I’d like you to observe Blackjack and Atticus with Josif Jacov. Then have the two of you talk to Lazar.”
Wilder put his arm around Wren’s shoulders. “We’ve never interrogated anyone together before. This will be fun.”
Wren rolled her eyes.
“Blackjack requested to view Cayman and Puck’s interrogation when they were brought in.”
“Good idea.”
Rather than be seated, I stood in the back and watched both recordings. The longer I did, the more my gut was telling me these men weren’t just truck drivers.
16
ARES
“Manual Varilla,” said Kodiak, sliding into the seat beside me once we were on the plane. “Looks like he’s being handed to us on a silver platter.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” I muttered, resting my head against the seat and closing my eyes. I didn’t want to talk about Varilla. This couldn’t become personal. He was one of thousands of contemptible, vile human beings who made a living selling other humans. I didn’t want to take him down more or less than any of the others.
It was a mantra I’d repeated to myself every time I imagined slamming my fist into his face or, better yet, pulling out my gun and shooting him point-blank. The fucker wasn’t smart enough to be the leader of this crime ring, and we needed to find out who was.
Like drug cartels, human traffickers’ operating structure was based more on social position than so-called rank. At best, he was the equivalent of a Mafia capo—someone who led a team of “soldiers.” Whether he was at the bottom, top, or in the middle didn’t change how much I hated thecabrónand wanted to see him taken down.
Reminding myself again that letting any mission get personal meant more room for error and, in my job, that would get me killed, I pushed my thoughts in the opposite direction. To Nem. To our kiss. To the way her body felt when mine rested against it.
I’d told her not to speak because I didn’t want her to say what we both knew—weshouldn’t. Even if she had, it wouldn’t have stopped me. If she’d said no, it would’ve been a different story.
I remembered every single thing about the kiss. Her soft lips, her hard nipples pressing against my chest, and how she’d spread her legs just enough that when I leaned in, my cock was exactly where I wanted it to be. Well, maybe not exactly, but close.
I could still hear her laughter when I’d danced her around the kitchen as clearly as if she were sitting beside me. I could also hear her quick intake of breath when I put my arm around her for the first time.
I opened one eye, just enough to confirm Kodiak had changed seats, before settling in to get some shut-eye.
Flight time to the airport in Los Mochis was eleven hours. It would take us another two hours to get to the port in Yavaros from there. Fortunately, I’d never had any trouble sleeping when I needed to. Years of international work travel had given me plenty of practice. With thoughts of mynemesisswirling in my head, I let myself drift off to dreamland.
Once we’d landedand were on our way to Yavaros, I received two phone calls. The first was from Doc, letting me know he’d arranged for a temporary command center to be set up in one of the warehouses near the docks. He also said two guys from K19 were already there, waiting for us.
The other thing he told me was that we’d have extra bodies available for whatever help we needed, from a vigilante group known as Los Caballeros. I’d heard of the organization, and while most civilian groups like it were more trouble than they were worth, Doc assured me this one could be useful.
I chuckled when he added, “Let them go on believing no one knows they exist.”
The second call was from Razor Sharp, another of the K19 founding partners. He and Doc went way back. The man was a damned human computer. Once he learned something, he could pull it up like a search engine. “Gunner and I arrived about an hour ago,” he began. “Earlier, we were able to scramble the port’s computer systems, thus crippling their ability to either ship or receive. That’ll buy us enough time to get a twenty on the container we believe holds trafficking victims, then raid it.”
When Doc said two guys were waiting for us in Yavaros, I never dreamed it would be Razor and Gunner, another of the founding partners.
