Chapter Twenty
Outside Dark Spirits
Monday Night
San Juan
Honestly, Gene was feeling twitchy, but he wasn’t one hundred percent sure as to why. Maybe it was being at this place, or maybe it was just his gut warning him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Something was off.
Answering his phone, he really hoped that Greyson had found something because they were running in circles, and he could tell.
Whoever was behind this clusterfuck was starting to make little mistakes.
They’d found his hidey-hole, and it was only a matter of time before they found him. All he had to hope was the killer had no freaking clue that his killing space had been made.
If he and Ethan had to sit their asses there for hours, in hopes he brought another victim there, so be it.
A Fed had to do what a Fed had to do.
PERIOD.
“Yo, Grey, tell me you have something because we’re getting the runaround.”
The man on the phone laughed.
“Oh, I have something. Is it what you want? I don’t know. I researched all of your suspects, and then widened the search when none of them owned a boat. I’ve come up with two people who do.”
Gene hoped he could work with this.
Then again, if he was dumping bodies in the ocean, and killing someone, he’d never use his own shit.
He’d steal something.
“Okay, hit me with it. Who?”
Greyson gave him the names.
“Rodrigo Cruz owns one, and so does Agent Lucas Mayfield. He lives on one docked in the bay.”
Gene stood there.
Silently.
“You there?” Greyson asked.
Yeah, he was there, but it didn’t fit. That was the problem. Oh, the mob man did, but his boat wasn’t docked here.
“I’m okay, but I already heard from Rodrigo that his boat is just off of Italy in the Mediterranean, and it’s a yacht—not a boat. As for the Fed, if you were going to kill people, and use a boat to dump them, would you use your own?”
Greyson considered it.
“No,” he said. “That would be stupid. That’s bringing the evidence right to me. I’d steal one, or I’d ‘borrow’ one without anyone knowing.”
Exactly.
“I feel like this might be a setup and the runaround even more. Like the killer knows the mob man owns a boat and is pointing us at him.”
Shit.
That was a very good point.
“This is well-strategized,” Gene admitted. “This person knows how long chloroform lasts in the body, and how to set up a scene. Dumping the bodies killed evidence, and we didn’t have much trace on the last victim. We’re being boned,” he admitted.
Oh, Greyson didn’t like this.
That screamed cop to him.
“Did we get anything back from the techs?” Greyson asked. “On the car?”
Gene wished.
Again, that didn’t work out for them.
“We had that body pop up, and the team didn’t get to do the car right away. They had to go to Jarod’s house first. So they might be processing now. I don’t like this.”
Yeah, Greyson didn’t either.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked.
Gene was to the point.
“Call the ME and see if you can put the pressure on him to make the techs work faster. All we need is one hair and I’ve got this SOB.”
Greyson could do that.
“Just be careful. I’ll call you back, and I’ll see what I can do.”
He appreciated that.
“Thanks, Grey,” he stated.
Hanging up the phone, he was about to tuck it into his pants when he heard something behind him. Thinking it was Ethan, he turned.
Only, it wasn’t Ethan.
Not.
Even.
Close.
It was a very familiar face, and it was the piece of driftwood that he got an up-close-and-personal meeting with too.
When it hit him in the head.
And Gene fell backward, falling off of the concrete steps behind the restaurant and to the ground.
He was out cold.
“Good. Now, I need to see what you know, and then, I’m getting the fuck out of here. It’s time to relocate. You should have just minded your business, and not dug into this, Agent. I’m sorry, man. I just can’t let you live.”
His operations here were shutting down.
ASAP.
* * * Blackhawk & Cantrell * * *
Inside Dark Spirits
Twenty Minutes Later
Looking at his watch for the tenth time, Ethan couldn’t understand what was keeping Gene. All he had to do was call Greyson, and then, he should have been back.
But he wasn’t.
Did Greyson find something huge?
That was the only explanation.
So, like any good partner, he needed to follow and see what is going on.
“I’ll be right back, Corbin,” Blackhawk said. “Stay here and wait for us.”
The other man was having a good time. He was halfway through his rum drink, and feeling good.
Damn good.
“Sure thing, EJ,” he said, smiling at his boyfriend as he was thinking about their wedding and how to plan it.
As Ethan headed out, he walked right past the table of mob men, and a few of them had gone for the night.
He hoped Gene didn’t do anything crazy.
Was his partner talking to them?
Without backup?
That didn’t sound like a good plan, and Ethan knew Gene wasn’t one to be careless. That just wasn’t how he rolled.
As he found the bathroom, no one was in it.
Gene wasn’t using the facilities, and now, he was even more confused.
So, he stopped his waitress who was bringing out food to serve at her tables.
“Excuse me, but did you see the man I was with?” he asked, curiously.
She nodded.
“He was taking a phone call outside. I saw him making a call as he walked out the back exit,” she stated.
Oh, well, okay.
That worked for him.
Maybe he was just talking to Greyson and got tied up in the call. There was likely some evidence that had come in.
It was a good thing he’d come out.
Pushing the door open, he exited, and much to his surprise, Gene was NOT there.
He wasn’t taking a call.
What the hell was this?
Moving around, he tried to see if he’d gone around the building, or was off near the dumpsters, but he wasn’t.
Pulling out his phone, he started dialing his number, and now, he was getting that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
This.
Felt.
Off.
His sixth sense was screaming, and Ethan lived or died by that sense. This was the same feeling he’d had when he’d gotten into his Mustang at Syn, and had been taken.
Turning in a circle, he made sure no one was behind him, or lurking.
Then, he waited as his phone put through the call.
And that’s when he heard it.
Gene had a specific song for when Ethan called on his phone. He could hear it, and that made Blackhawk want to freak the fuck out.
He shouldn’t be hearing it coming from the dumpster.
Oh, Jesus.
What had happened?
There were no cameras back there to catch anything, so he was going to have to piece this one together on his own.
Jumping off of the concrete dock at the back of the building, Ethan raced for the dumpster, and with a jump, caught the upper lip with his fingers. He pulled himself up so that he could straddle it and look inside.
What he was hoping for wasn’t a dead body.
His lover’s.
Some of the mob men had disappeared, and he’d been too busy talking to Corbin about his wedding plans to keep an eye on them.
Rodrigo and Esmeralda didn’t move, but he couldn’t say the same of the other men.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
As he stared into the dumpster, he saw Gene’s phone lit up. Pulling a pair of gloves from his pocket, he pulled one on and picked up the phone.
There was blood on it, and the screen was cracked from some sort of melee.
Oh, no.
Grabbing it, Ethan knew what had happened. He was willing to bet that the killer came for Gene since they were digging into the investigation.
He was only following his normal plan.
Eliminate the investigator.
Putting Gene’s phone in his pocket, he used his to call Corbin. The man answered in seconds.
“Yo,” he said.
Ethan didn’t give him time to talk.
“Someone took Gene. I found his phone. Get out here now! I need backup.”
That was all he had to hear.
The call went dead, and it was seconds before the man burst through the door and onto the dock.
“What the hell?” he asked.
Ethan pulled his phone from his pocket.
“I fucked up. I shouldn’t have let him come out here alone. Of course, the killer was going to come for one of us. We’re trying to solve the case. Jesus Christ!” he said, that panic building.
Enjoying their vacation over prioritizing working his case had just bit them in the ass.
And it might cost Gene his life.
Corbin hopped off the dock just as Will made it to the doorway.
“Okay, what do you want to do?” Corbin asked.
Ethan began thinking.
“We need to go. We know where the killer will take him,” he said, fighting through the panic that now had him by the balls.
Oh, and it was a huge panic, too.
Ethan was trying to figure all of this out—mainly who was behind this. Gene wasn’t easy to overcome. That told him that it had to be an ambush or they knew the person.
Corbin ran his hand up and down Ethan’s back.
“Focus,” he said. “Look at me.”
Ethan did, using the man’s calming voice to help him focus on anything but what was about to happen to the man he loved.
The man he’d not protected.
“Talk it out,” Corbin said. “Because whoever took Gene had to move his big-ass body, and it wasn’t that long ago. We can still catch up if you focus. Do that Voodoo that you do so well, EJ.”
Ethan did.
He began working it out.
“We found the sugar cane plant today. It’s this old processing center. That’s where they’ll end up. As long as he isn’t aware that we know about it.”
Corbin was curious.
“Did you mention it to anyone?” he asked.
They did.
To Ben Crowley and to Greyson.
That.
Was.
It.
From where he stood, Will was quietly watching, and he understood the panic.
Truth be told, Will was scared for Gene.
How could he not be?
These two men were his family now, and he knew Gene was a good man who loved his people more than anything.
“Okay, so we go there,” Corbin said, “and we stop the killer from hurting Gene.”
Was it that simple?
Ethan was freaked out.
“What if he doesn’t take him there?” he asked. “We will have wasted precious time, and Gene won’t have much. There’s a small window, Corbin, and I don’t know what to do.”