Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
That had led to my asking what it’d been like to work undercover for so long while Jack had been with his grandfather. Torture, in short, Mercier had said. And the job had ended so abruptly when Carillo had been arrested and put through a very swift trial last year.
At first, Mercier had been furious. All his work had gone to waste—which wasn’t true, of course. They’d had enough evidence to put three other cartel-affiliated men behind bars, but I understood his frustration. You didn’t go undercover on and off for four years to bring down the middlemen who were so easily replaced.
In those years, Mercier had seen his son about half the time. Two weeks out of four.
I couldn’t imagine.
This past year had put things in a new perspective for him. He’d reprioritized and realized no case was worth obsessing over. There would always be a cartel boss to take down, but he only had one son.
Then he’d been reinstated when they’d learned Carillo had escaped from prison.
Reinstated into the field, that was. The case had obviously remained active and open, apparently with two focuses: find another way in for Rafael Delgado, and to get two other agents involved. Because Mercier was thinking about retiring. After patching up his relationship with Jack, Adrien wanted to take the back seat at work.
I’d asked if he had those other two agents waiting somewhere, but he’d said they weren’t ready yet. So he was going to do his absolute best to get closer to Luca Blanco and bring him down once and for all, and then walk away for good.
At least, that’d been the plan up until Ryan and I had kidnapped him.
Once the pasta was cookin’, I put on a pair of jeans. My boxer briefs had dried, and I didn’t like walking around completely unprotected. I pocketed my favorite folding knife, the keys to the handcuffs, and then returned to the living room to start a fire in the fireplace. Just a small one. The candlelight was useless, and the sun had gone down.
“Right now, I don’t feel any pain at all.” Adrien sighed contentedly and stared up at the ceiling.
Funny. I was feeling pain, because I only saw a dad who was itching to get back home.
I’d told him a little about my ink earlier—’cause I’d caught him looking. How each tat represented a family member, and I didn’t care it made me a mushy loser. My family meant the world to me, and that sort of shit simply got to me.
“Can’t we work something out here?” I blurted out.
He pushed himself up on his good arm, visibly confused.
“I keep thinking about your kid,” I admitted. “I wanna be able to trust you. I want you to be able to talk to Jack next time he calls.” The next weekly call would be in a few days or something. “Is there no way we can work together? Like, really join forces?”
He released a breath and scratched his chin. “I’d like to think that’s up to your team, Crew. I’ve made my offer. You can do whatever you want with Carillo after I’ve finished using him as my ticket to Colombia. And in exchange—if you agree to wait to pursue Carillo—I will give you every piece of intel I have that might narrow down your search for Blake, Marisa, and Shay.”
I put my hands loosely on my hips and thought about it. “How long do you think this would take? Can you at least tell me when Carillo’s expected to arrive in Europe? Is he arriving by boat? That’s our guess, anyway.”
Adrien sat up with a grunt and rubbed a hand over his mouth and jaw. “I can confirm that he’s arriving on a ship. He can’t go through an airport, and South America’s a hot zone for him. As for the dates—no. I would need your boss’s promise to stand down first.”
I guessed that was fair.
The way I saw it, Adrien’s offer was good. Carillo was going down one way or another, and if waiting a while would get us more clues about the location of Shay, Blake, and Marisa…? Surely, Elliott and the others would agree. No matter how much we wanted Carillo dead, that couldn’t possibly be more important than Elliott getting his niece back, than River and Reese getting Shay back, than Javier getting his wife back.
“How can you be sure that Carillo is your ticket anyway?” I asked. “Why would Luca agree to see a man ranked that low?”
Because in the grand scheme of things, Carillo was a nobody to upper management.
“Nothing is 100% certain,” he replied. “And for the record, I’m not aiming directly at Luca. But I do believe one of his closest associates—who’s in charge of their European operations—will agree to see me, because it would be beneficial to both parties. Carillo needs a coke supplier, and the Blancos have been steadily losing ground in Europe over the past five years.” He paused. “Carillo has a choice. Let me broker peace between him and Blanco, maybe even begin negotiations for working together, or nothing at all. In which case, Carillo will start his own organization and already have a major enemy.”