Chapter Twenty-Six
L ivid, I got out of my truck.
I was about to slam the door when her voice broke.
“ Garrett ,” she cried.
I glared at her, which was more than she deserved.
“Barrone,” she whispered. “Brooke Barrone….” Her eyes welled. “That’s my last name. That’s…” She swallowed. “That’s your son’s last name.”
My nostrils flared.
“Please,” she begged. “All I’m asking is for you to—”
I slammed the door shut and strode toward the Escalade.
Fuck her.
Fuck her lies.
Fuck what she wanted.
Goddamn trouble was what she was. Fucking, fuck-my-shit-all-to-hell trouble.
I got in the passenger seat and slammed that door. “Drive,” I barked at Sawyer.
He pulled out of the parking lot and hit the streets. It took him all of two fucking seconds to open his mouth. “You need Luna.”
“Goddamn it, I know, okay? I fucking know .”
Sawyer made the call through the SUV’s Bluetooth.
Luna answered on the first ring. “Sawyer, what’s going on?”
“We’re both here,” I answered. “I got her name.”
“Hold up.” I heard a door open and close then the scrape of his chair across the floor in the command room at the office. “Okay, what do we got?”
“Brooke Barrone,” I spit out.
“One R or two?” Luna asked.
“No fucking idea.”
Sawyer silently drove toward the office.
Luna typed for a few seconds. “Two. B-A-R-R-O-N-E. Twenty-seven. No employment history. Last known address…” Luna paused while he typed.
“I don’t need her last known address. I got her current one. She’s shacked up with Nathan Xavier Lewis.”
Silence. Then. “What did you just say?” Luna asked, incredulous.
“She’s living with X,” Sawyer answered.
“ Madre de dios ,” Luna muttered. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No,” I ground out.
“ Jesu-fucking-cristo . Lewis is the most notorious money launderer in the States, hell, this fucking hemisphere. The Feds have been after him for years, but no one can make anything stick. He’s like fucking Teflon. And rumor has it he single-handedly kept the cartel afloat after their head, Maldonado, was cut out of the picture. Not only is he untouchable, he’s protected .”
“Not my problem.”
“Not your problem?” Luna practically yelled. “He’s the biggest problem you’ll ever fucking have .”
“I’m not engaging with him.” Now.
“ Not engaging with him? ” Luna repeated like a fucking parrot. “Did he see you? Did you confront him? Did you follow her to his place?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Jesus fucking Christ, Collins, if he saw you, you might as well have put a fucking target on your chest.”
“He saw me.” So fucking what? I didn’t give a shit. The kid was mine. He knew it. I let him know I knew it.
“He saw both of us,” Sawyer added. “He also has six armed guards. All are civilian, no training, except one. One is ex-military. Sending you a screen shot now of him.”
Luna let out a string of curse words in Spanish. “You of all people should fucking know better, Sawyer.”
“He doesn’t know who I am,” Sawyer countered calmly. “I was downrange when my father was dealing with him.”
“ Jesucristo ,” Luna muttered again. “I don’t even know what to say. Lewis is beyond my scope. He’s connected, protected and has a decade’s worth of connections I couldn’t begin to touch.”
“We may have an in,” Sawyer reminded him.
“What? Because one guard served?” Luna was incredulous. “That doesn’t mean shit. He could be a trigger-happy deranged fuck selling himself to the highest bidder.”
“It’s an opening,” Sawyer countered calmly. “He didn’t look thrilled to be there.”
Luna snorted. “Fucking great, a cartel launderer with a pissed-off guard and Collins wants to jump in neck deep and take this guy’s kid.”
“It’s not his kid,” I ground out.
Luna grunted. “Does Lewis know that?”
“I don’t fucking care.” Fuck Lewis.
“And the chica, does she care ?” Luna asked, sarcastically.
I didn’t bother fucking answering.
“Mierda,” Luna cussed. “Is she even there voluntarily?”
I didn’t know if she was or not. “Like I said, not my problem, but my kid’s there.”
“Fuck.” Luna drew the word out, but his tone had turned to resignation. “You sure you want to do this? There’s not gonna be any guarantees, and it’ll get ugly as fuck before it gets manageable. That’ll be the only thing you’ll be able to count on.”
“I don’t want my kid raised in the same house as a fucking cartel money launderer.” So yeah, I was fucking in. Whatever I had to do.
“Fine. You want to do this, we do this.” Luna paused. “But we do this right. We get something on him before we go in, no exceptions. You copy?”
“Copy,” I reluctantly agreed.
Luna exhaled. “I have to ask—you got conformation the kid is yours?”
“She said he was, but I need a paternity test.” In my head, there was no doubt. The second I saw him, I fucking knew. Just like I knew my own face when I looked in the mirror, the kid was mine. But like Luna said, I needed to do this the right way. If I had to fight her in court, I wanted my shit in order.
“All right.” Luna inhaled. “First things first, we’ll get that set up. I know a doc you can use. Call her and tell her—”
“I can’t call her.”
Luna typed some more. “I’ll get her number for you.”
“That’s not the issue.”
Luna paused, then his tone dialed down a notch. “Amigo. If she’s the madre of your kid, you’re gonna have to learn to communicate with her.”
“That’s not the issue.” I stared out the window at the fucking madness of midday traffic. Everything looked one way this morning when I woke up. Now shit looked different. A hell of a lot different.
“Then what is the issue?” Luna asked.
“She said Lewis would kill her if I called.” For the first time since I laid eyes on her, I was beginning to wonder if anything I thought I knew about her was real. “She wouldn’t give me her number.”
Luna whistled low. “All right, all right.” He paused for half a beat. “Let me ask you this. You done with her? For real? You over this chica?”
No, I wasn’t fucking over her. I was goddamn irate. “What’s your point?”
“The way I see it, you have two choices,” Luna replied.
“Which are?” I asked, but I already knew what he was going to say.
“We extract the kid or we extract them both.”
And that was why I was so fucking pissed off. Beyond her having my kid and not bothering to say one fucking word when she knew, she knew , where I lived. She fucking didn’t trust me. She’d never trusted me. I’d offered that woman everything. Everything a Marine has while he’s downrange, I fucking laid it out for her. My place, my trust, my goddamn hope. I fucking gave it to her.
But she didn’t give a single fuck about any of it.
I saw the footage of her with Lewis in the hallway outside my condo. I fucking relived it every goddamn day for a year before I learned to put that shit out of my head. It was one thing to have a woman fuck you over. It was another to see it.
And I fucking saw it.
I also saw her walk back into my place, get my keys and walk back out.
Not once in those few seconds did she pause.
She didn’t look toward the living room, she didn’t look toward the bedroom, she didn’t call out for help, she didn’t make a run for it or try to get my attention. She didn’t do shit. Except steal from me.
Now she had my kid, was shacked up with America’s most wanted, and I was supposed to make a fucking decision about her safety? Her future?
“Collins,” Luna prompted as Sawyer turned onto the street that Luna and Associates was on.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be someone’s hero. “Yeah, I’m here.” I wanted to be someone’s priority, goddamn it. Three years ago, I’d wanted to be her priority.
“Your hesitation speaks volumes, mi amigo,” Luna said compassionately.
Sawyer pulled into a parking spot in the underground parking at Luna and Associates and threw the SUV into park. “We’re here.”
“Come on up,” Luna ordered. “We’ll make a plan to get them both out.”