Chapter Ten
I stood up. “ I don’t give a shit about the history, or who Dante is to Loic. This is my fault. I’m going in no matter what the fuck her father decides, and I’m getting her out.” I palmed my cell. “I still have some numbers. I’ll find out where they’re taking her.”
“Stop,” Luna barked. “Sit your ass down.”
My nostrils flared, and I glared at him.
Luna glared back, but then he dropped his gaze and scrubbed a hand over his face. “All right, amigo, listen up.” He looked back at me. “There’s a right way to do this and a wrong way. We both know you going back in is gonna come with a host of problems.”
“I’m not going back in.” My ass had already made that mistake post ETS when I got out of the Marines and couldn’t fucking adjust to not having my rifle in my hand twenty-four seven.
I’d taken a job working security for a piece of shit money launderer for the cartel where anything went as long as you didn’t shoot the boss, his woman or his kid. Fucker didn’t give two shits about the women he fucked though. I’d seen more than my fare share of them disappear after he was done working them over with his sick brand of kink. Fucking asshole. If it weren’t for Luna and his employee Collins going after my old boss, I wouldn’t have gotten out clean, or probably alive. “I’ll get in, retrieve her, and get out.” Fuck anyone in my way.
“That won’t be a clean extraction.”
No fucking shit. “There’s not gonna be anything clean about this. You don’t fuck with these assholes unless you’re willing to do to them exactly what they’ll do to you.” He knew that.
Luna’s cell vibrated with a text. Glancing at it, he asked me a question. “How long you been up?”
“What does it matter?” The Marines trained us to deal with this kind of shit. Sleep deprivation was nothing. “You said it yourself. The sooner we move on this, the better our chances.”
Luna tossed his cell on his desk. “You got out once before.”
I didn’t say shit. I knew what he was getting at.
He studied me like that fucking shrink after my last deployment. “You gonna be able to walk away again?”
What the fuck? “You got something to fucking say, say it.” We were wasting time.
“What happens when they offer you more money than I’m paying you?”
Irrational anger piled on top of the rage I was already carrying about what the fuck they could be doing to the brunette right now as we sat on our asses not doing shit. “You took the same goddamn oath I did.”
Luna’s voice quieted. “We’re not in the Marines anymore, brother.”
I wasn’t his goddamn brother any more than I was brothers with my fucking asshole CO on my last deployment that got most of my unit killed. But those men who lost their lives? They were my brothers.
I didn’t say shit to Luna.
“You got your nephew and your sister to think about,” he reminded me.
My jaw ticked, and I regretted filling out his goddamn employee next-of-kin forms. “My personal life is personal.”
“What personal life?” he challenged.
My trigger finger twitched as I leaned forward. “You want to get the girl out? You send me in. You don’t have another option.”
Crossing his arms, Luna didn’t budge. “I got an office full of options. The difference is every one of my men out there knows they’re stronger as a team.”
I called his bluff. “Then send a team in.”
We stared each other down.
Luna caved first. “Where would Dante take her?”
My left fist unclenched. Not that I was going to listen to Luna if he’d told me to stand down. “He has a place here in town, another in Naples, and about half a dozen places in South America, but my bet’s on his island in the keys.”
“Jesucristo,” Luna swore. “He owns an island?”
“A thirty-fucking-acre fortress a mile out from Marathon, boat access only. It’s got a main house and a few cottages on the property, one dock. That’s where I’d take her, assuming he’s playing a long-term hostage-for-blackmail game and not just planning on killing her. What’d he ask her father to do?”
“Launder a cool billion, then he could get his daughter back.”
“Jesus Christ.” Shit must be backing up for them. “He’s not gonna stop there.”
“Agree. Best-case scenario, he finds someone else willing to do his dirty work before Loic finishes cleaning that amount of cash.”
“He won’t. It took my old boss years to build up the kind of network needed to keep the cartel happy.”
“So who was his second-in-command? He had to have someone breathing down his neck for that amount of action.”
“He killed all of his competition.” Or rather, we did it for him. “We all thought his woman was his second.”
Luna glared at me. “She didn’t know anything, and she was never his.”
Right. Until Collins stepped in. What the fuck ever. I pointed out the obvious. “Whatever Loic decides to do, the clock is ticking.”
Luna sighed. “What do you know about the island?”
I shrugged. “I’ve only been there once. It’s self-sustaining. Water purifiers, generators, solar power.”
“Caretakers? Staff?”
I nodded. “Husband and wife, older couple. She cooks and cleans. He maintains everything else. They live in one of the cottages.”
“Supplies?”
“Besides a fucking arsenal on the compound, the husband takes the wife once a week to Marathon for groceries and shit. Depending on who’s in residence, sometimes the security staff will go ashore to some of the bars for an evening.”
“How often is Dante there?”
“Not often. He moves around constantly with no predictability.”
Luna nodded. “So his enemies don’t find him.”
“Or he’s just a paranoid fuck.”
Luna scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “All right. If she’s there, what angle are you thinking?”
“After sundown, scuba approach. Get in, get out.”
“A mile offshore is a long way to swim her in, amigo. You’d be an open target.”
“I wouldn’t swim her back to shore, they’d be expecting that. I’d head toward open waters or one of the other keys.”
Luna nodded. “All right, Christensen has a boat in Largo we could use, or I’ve got a friend with a seaplane out of Key West.”
“Anyone you bring in automatically becomes a target, either as a recruit or a threat.”
“I know, and if I send in a team and anything goes south, I’m just asking for a war with the damn cartel.”
I hadn’t worked for Luna long, but I knew him. He wouldn’t ask that of any of his men. It didn’t matter that all of them would volunteer, he wouldn’t risk them, which was why I was sitting here having this fucking conversation with him. I was already a known entity. None of my old boss’s security team was alive, but there were people still out there who knew my name.
Luna didn’t have a choice if he wanted to keep the rest of his men out of this. “Get me a boat. I’ll go get her.”
“And if there’re casualties when you extract her, who do you think it’ll point back to?”
“I’m not high on the cartel’s watch list, and I’m sure as shit not the only enemy they have.” Fuck Loic’s wish and Luna’s warning. I wasn’t going to leave any assholes alive who could point back at me. “I can protect myself.” I’d been doing it for years. I didn’t survive being a paid gun for hire this long just because I was fucking lucky. I knew what I was doing.
Luna stared out the window. “What about a second option?”
“What are you gonna do? Knock on his door and ask nicely? We don’t even know if she’s on the island.” If that’s where they were taking her, she’d still be en route.
Luna’s office phone rang and he picked it up. “What do you have for me?” He frowned. “No security cameras behind the building?... Copy. Keep trying.” He hung up and looked at me. “The second driver was found dead with a single gunshot wound to the head behind the strip mall he pulled into a few minutes after picking her up from the club. He made one call on his cell to a burner before he was shot. Traffic cameras show an older Explorer pulling behind the strip mall before her Town Car pulled in. Then the Explorer left a couple minutes later. Tyler tracked the SUV using traffic cams but lost it near the marina.”
“Have someone check the cameras at the marina. I bet they’re taking her to the island.”
“Already on it.” Luna’s cell vibrated, and he glanced at it. “This is Loic.” He hit the speaker button to answer. “Luna.”
“Mr. Luna, its Bernard Loic. The police just found my driver Marius shot once in the head in an alley downtown.”
Luna looked at me. “The driver Chuck who picked your daughter up at the club was also just found dead from a single gunshot wound to the head.”
Her old man inhaled sharply.
“You’re out of time, Mr. Loic,” Luna warned. “Make a decision.”
“Find my daughter,” the old man growled.
“Per our discussion earlier regarding the nature of the risk to my men, double my standard rate will apply.”
“I don’t care what it costs,” Loic clipped.
“Understood.” Luna sat at his desk and began typing on his laptop. “Check your email for the contract. We’ll be in touch.” He hung up and leveled me with a look. “You’re going in.”