Chapter Twenty-Three Ryder
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ryder
“Lainey, she said ...” I lost my train of thought with Seraphina’s curious eyes on me the moment I said my ex’s name.
She was as jealous of my ex as I was of hers. And I was jealous of all of them, not just her last one, because surely there’d been more than one ex who’d ever been lucky enough to date her.
One day you’ll walk away. Everyone always leaves. I shook my head, angry those words had infil’ed my head.
And now I was thinking back to the Iraq War. Quite the transition, but a pastor who used to visit base always told us how to tell the difference between evil and good thoughts: The devil gives you problems, and God gives you solutions.
“Ryder?” Reed calling my name jarred me from my head and away from the thoughts planted there by the devil—trying to ruin something with this woman before we even had a chance to start.
“You okay?” Seraphina remained on the other side of the breakfast bar, her laptop and phone in front of her, eyes on me.
We definitely needed more than my friends as barriers. We needed counters and furniture. All the fucking things. With how I was feeling, I still might mount and climb every obstacle to get to her. Then toss any remaining barriers, like my teammates, out the window.
“Bro?” Alex was before me now, clapping in front of my face. “We lost you, man.” He cupped the back of my neck, drawing me closer, trying to bring me back to the room. To the issue. To the mission. “You see a ghost or something?”
“Not funny.” I’d probably prefer that, though. An apparition was easier to explain than what was happening to me now.
“Well ...” Alex let go of me but didn’t move. “You look like you’ve snapped, crackled, and motherfucking popped.”
“Also not funny.” And he also needed to stop blocking my view of Seraphina.
“What’s going on? Why’s the mission being called off?” he asked, turning to the side so I could see everyone now.
I quickly sped through the facts before I lost my head again, sharing what Lainey had told me.
“What the hell does this all mean?” Alex asked while rounding the breakfast bar, returning to his seat.
“It means the CIA is probably gunning for the Sokolovs themselves, and as soon as they got wind of the task force, they made a call and had it killed,” Reed said, opening his laptop.
“They don’t play well with others, and they don’t want the task force getting in their way.
So they took them—and by association, us— out of the game. ”
“They must have a reason to do this to warrant the director of National Intelligence executing those orders.” I filled up a glass of cold water and guzzled it.
“You really trust Lainey will come through for us?” Reed asked.
“She wants to make amends.” I refilled my glass, deciding I was dehydrated, not crazy. Not obsessed.
Okay, that was bullshit, and I couldn’t lie to myself. I was hooked and ready to go all in with Seraphina.
“Yeah, well, after what she did, screw that,” Alex bit out.
“What’d she do?” Her gaze flew my way, and it took me a moment to rewind what Alex had said to understand why she was giving me some serious puppy-dog eyes.
I set my hands on the counter next to my glass. There was so much tension in my upper back that it was pushing up my spine and all the way to my temples.
“I have a few contacts at the Agency that owe me some favors.” Reed with the redirect, saving me from butchering my way through answering her.
If I told her Lainey was pregnant with Jeff’s baby, she’d think I still had feelings for her, and that wasn’t close to being true. I didn’t want her getting in her head again, believing I was in rebound territory.
“My only concern is if I make calls, that I might also make waves,” Reed went on. “We need someone who has connections that won’t draw attention to the fact we’re not leaving Mexico as ordered.”
Someone like Carter? Because now that we were being pulled off the mission, we’d no longer have help from Uncle Sam. No QRF to save our necks since we were here of our own accord.
The drawback of being a three-man team without US support meant we wouldn’t have enough bodies to go up against our enemies, and we were more than likely looking at a few enemies.
“It’s a good thing I have a plan to fall back on, then, right?” Seraphina’s words had me looking at her.
Back to wanting to be bait? Not that she’d ever relinquished that idea.
“Are you two going to fight again? If so, I’ll come back when you’re done. Giving me flashbacks of my parents going at it as a kid, and I—” Reed immediately dropped his words when we all turned his way.
“No fighting—and please stay.” Seraphina dialed in on Reed, and he gave her a small nod, then reset his focus to his screen as if he hadn’t just shared something about himself that none of us knew.
The man was Fort Knox about his past. “ángel should be calling soon, and maybe while we wait on, um, Lainey to reach back out with news, I could use that time to fill you in on what I’ve learned since working for Ezra. ”
Stalling on that bait plan of yours. Nicely played. She was right, though. The more I knew about Ezra and his operation, the better I could craft a plan that wouldn’t involve her winding up in the middle of danger. “Thank you.”
“You have the floor, ma’am.” Alex smiled at her, and she remained standing but opened her laptop. Once it was powered on, she swiveled it to the side so we could all see the screen.
She gave us an introduction to drug trafficking as if we weren’t aware, but I wasn’t about to stop her. She was talking animatedly with her hands, and I loved it. She could lecture me all day, every day about anything she wanted to, and I’d ace the fucking test with her as my instructor.
“So, you’re saying Ezra was able to slowly take over for the cartel because he’s a better dealmaker?
” Alex asked her once she was done with her speech.
“That he negotiated better deals with the suppliers for the chemical precursors they sold to produce fentanyl? He made them more competitive offers, and in doing so, he undercut the Moraleses.”
“Right. He could take out the Moraleses without having to lift an actual finger against them.” She turned the laptop around, typed something in, then showed us a map of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
“Ezra’s main goal has always been to interrupt the current drug trade and take over, cutting Mexico out altogether.
Basically, remove anyone he saw as a middleman to a billion-dollar business. ”
“How so?” I asked her.
“Instead of using the trade routes the cartels had a monopoly on, Ezra—or whoever he works for—devised a way to bring the chemicals into the US directly and bypass Mexico.” She clicked on the city of Wilmington, North Carolina.
“Smaller ports have much less scrutiny and police than the big ones. So Ezra tested his theory, and it worked.”
“What do you mean?” I followed up again.
“Ezra has smaller fishing boats meet up with the larger ships that are owned by the suppliers before they reach the ports. They transfer everything from the ships to the small boats. No one stops a fisherman docking at the pier and checks what they’re carrying.
Ezra is able to move twice the product this way and remains totally undetected and independent of the cartel’s trafficking routes.
All without a single bust. Now he has the monopoly on trade. ”
Maybe it’s fate I ran into Hudson Ashford in DC the other day?
Given the new project he was working on, it was possible he could help us out.
“If Ezra’s established a safe way to move drugs here without having to go through Mexico, then my guess is, he’s moving more than just drugs. Or at least plans to.”
“He did have a guy connected to a terrorist cell at his party Saturday,” Reed reminded me, “which was why we were there in the first place. He could be getting into the arms business next.”
“And that might be why the CIA is involved and is taking over. Director Johnson would prioritize terrorism and possible WMDs getting on US soil over drugs.” That made sense, but that also meant the CIA would be interested in talking to Seraphina.
And if they called us off the mission, it was because they wanted to intercept her themselves.
“China’s clearly a main supplier,” Reed said. “But are we assuming Russia might also be connected to this, given Ezra’s wife’s been making trips to Moscow?”
“The Russians could be behind this, and the Sokolovs are the middleman making it happen,” Seraphina continued with his line of thought.
“Nina’s the one with the established relationship in Russia.
” She clicked open a file and slid her laptop over to Reed.
“Everything I have on her and her brother, Andrej, is there. It’s mostly theories, though, as well as why I think her brother was killed. ”
“We need to divide and conquer. Split up the research,” I said as her phone began vibrating from a text. “I thought he was supposed to call.”
“It’s an unknown number, but it’s him,” she confirmed, opening the text to read it out loud. “ I’ll help you, but it can’t be here. ” She read the next message from him: “ Head to San José. When you arrive, text me, and we’ll discuss next steps. ”
“San José?” I dragged my hand down my throat at yet another curveball.
“Ezra must’ve made contact with the Moraleses; then ángel told his family he had someone who wanted to meet them, and they obviously knew about me because of Ezra. And either Ezra or the cartel connected me to Martín, and they’re drawing me outside of Mexico so he can’t help.”
“And the fact they picked Costa Rica of all places?” I shook my head, thankful all over again I’d bumped into this woman that night in Miami and she wasn’t here alone.
“Right,” she whispered. “It can’t be a coincidence I’m being asked to go to the place where Ezra’s brother-in-law was hiding out before he was murdered, after my family was ...” She swallowed. “... killed.”