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)
My uncle Francis came to mind. He was a cop, and he said he couldn’t go to the vending machine at the station without filing a form. Elliott and Javier liked to complain about government agencies too. I mean, we did see our fair share of security cases that came straight from the government. Every little thing had to be filed and applied for and requested and submitted and approved. So in what universe would Adrien’s superiors sanction a hit on Luca Blanco in two weeks that included cooperation from the Colombian government?
He met my gaze and tilted his head. “What?”
“What exactly are you planning?” I had to ask. “You say we have four or five more days on this boat, and then Carillo gets here. Let’s pretend you have a quick sit-down, he authorizes you to broker a peace deal with Luca’s men, then you deliver Carillo to whatever port he’s entering Europe through, and you’re off to Colombia right after. That gives you what, three days to take down a man with thousands of affiliates across the world? Does he even go to the bathroom without someone guarding the door? Where’s your task force meeting up? Have they been on standby for four years? Is all the paperwork filed? Do we have agents waiting for the extradition call? Pilots ready to go wheels up in twenty? What?”
He stared right back at me, unwavering and collected. “Are you done?”
I shrugged and leaned back. I couldn’t fucking wait to hear his response. He couldn’t bullshit his way through everything.
“You seem to be under the impression that we can’t act fast because we’re a government agency,” he stated. “What the hell do you think the Marines are? We do, in fact, have a task force at the ready. They were reinstated at the same time I was, when Carillo escaped from prison. And yes, Crew, I have a ride ready to go wheels up the moment I’m back on the mainland—courtesy of your beloved Marine Corps, actually. We’re prepared for a full-scale attack if I can just get Carillo to fucking agree to let me go.”
…courtesy of your beloved Marine Corps, actually.
My brain went into race mode at those words, ’cause he’d just let something important slip. The US Marines’ European operations were based in Germany, which was landlocked on all sides except the north. Germany was out. It was too far away, regardless. But Spain? The joint base at Rota was the perfect location. Primarily run by the Navy, but all US military branches except the Coast Guard had teams stationed there.
If Adrien was planning on getting to Rota, chances were he’d convinced Carillo to enter the continent not too far away. Which placed us somewhere off the coast of southern Spain. Technically, we could be in the Atlantic rather than the Med, depending on if we’d sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar.
I may not know the capital of Greece or what it was like in England, but I fucking knew where I could find a Marine installation.
Also, Mav had been at Rota and bragged about the beautiful women.
Lucky prick.
“Cat got your tongue, kid?”
I flicked Adrien a glance and kept my expression composed.
He shouldn’t be so damn cocky. Life on the water wasn’t particularly safe in terms of going undetected. If he stayed off the radar, local coast guards would eventually fine the fuck out of him, and if he was on the radar, it wouldn’t take Squeezy too long to locate us, no matter what flag he sailed under or what category he’d placed the vessel in. Who knew what the Feds could get away with.
Actually, he could probably bat away the coast guards with a wave of a permit…
Whatever. Squeezy was good, and if I could just reach out to Ryan, she’d be able to track us down much sooner.
“Yeah. I guess it did.” I smiled.
My answer wasn’t a bit reassuring to him. He went straight to suspicious.
Let the cat-and-mouse game continue.
I still didn’t believe Adrien about this mission of his. Something wasn’t adding up. They may have preparedness plans in place and all the right people waiting for their cue, but…I didn’t know. My gut told me he was keeping something very significant from me.
While he continued his lengthy breakfast, I had work to do.
He’d said he was going to milk the last of his job perks by taking it easy all day. I guessed he had a point. It wasn’t every day someone undercover could sit around on a multimillion-dollar yacht and just twiddle their thumbs. Or so I assumed.
As I wandered around the yacht, I tried to remember as much as possible and put a bunch of puzzle pieces together, and I kept coming back to the trafficked children he’d bought out of slavery. Maybe the FBI had protocol for such things, but the transactions had been real, and the money had come from Adrien’s illegal activities under Rafael Delgado. Undercover or not, he’d done his job for the cartel, which had paid him a lot of money.