Chapter 6 #2
Alana slowed her steps. “Right. Tourists. With a murderer wanting to off us for some reason we can’t remember.” She threw him a sideways grin, albeit a forced grin. “Got it.”
She liked the feel of his arm hooked in hers. Liked the hardness of his muscles against her body, and she wondered, not for the first time—and probably not the last—what it felt like to make love with him. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember.
But she had remembered his kiss. Her core coiled and heated.
No woman could forget a kiss like that. That kiss fired up memories of a dance that had ended in a similar kiss.
She remembered the fire in her veins as he’d spun her around the floor, the way his hips had moved to the rhythm of the music, and how he’d dipped her low to the ground, crushing his lips to hers in a searing kiss that had left her panties damp and her heart pounding to the beat of the Latin music.
Even as she walked into the bar, her heart thrummed to that tune in her head, firing up her nerves and making her pulse beat hard against her eardrums.
Once inside, Alana reached for her sunglasses. The dimness of the interior made it hard to distinguish between the shapes of people or furniture.
“Might want to keep those on.” Chase covered her hands with his and guided the glasses back onto her nose. “Your eyes are unforgettable.”
“You managed to forget them,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but I was drunk. We can’t expect La Casa Loca staff to have been in the same inebriated state last night. We’re better off if they don’t know who we are.”
“If we don’t want them to know who we are, how will we ask about last night?” Alana asked.
“Leave it to me,” Chase said. He made a beeline for the bar and settled her onto a stool before sliding onto one himself.
The bartender took their orders and delivered a Salty Dog for Chase and a beer for Alana.
“I would’ve guessed you as a whiskey drinker,” Alana said.
“And I would’ve guessed more margaritas for you.”
“Normally, I would have a margarita.” She lifted a shoulder. “But after all the tequila I had last night...” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “My head still hurts.”
“And normally, I would drink a whiskey. But now that I’m out of the military, I have to watch what I drink. I figure grapefruit juice is healthy, right?” Chase lifted his drink and grinned. “And, like you, my head is numb from the tequila last night.”
Alana laughed. “The grapefruit juice might be better for you, but the vodka…not so much.”
The bartender drifted off to wait on another customer. He returned a few minutes later. “Anything else?” he asked while wiping the counter with a cloth.
Chase smiled at the short, meaty Hispanic man. “We heard there was some excitement here last night.”
With a shrug, the bartender continued wiping.
Alana gritted her teeth and waited for Chase to continue.
“Were you here?” Chase asked.
Again, the bartender shrugged.
After a quick glance around the bar, Chase leaned forward. “Was there a fight?”
The man nodded, glanced around the interior of the bar, just like Chase had a moment before, and leaned closer.
“We had a visit from the Jalisco cartel. Raul Delgado, one of the leaders of the cartel, got into a fight with a tourist. The tourist beat the shit out of Delgado. Delgado wouldn’t back down.
He was very angry that he got bested in front of his men. ”
“Why didn’t his men stick up for him?” Alana asked.
“They did,” the bartender said. “Only the tourist they targeted was a better fighter than Delgado and his men.”
“Good to know,” Chase said. “Does this cartel hang out here often?”
“Delgado likes to flirt with the pretty tourists,” the bartender said.
Alana tilted her head. “The Cabo police don’t keep them out? I thought they were pretty good at protecting the tourism trade.”
The bartender snorted. “The last policeman who dared stand up to Delgado ended up hanging from a bridge.”
Alana swallowed hard. With all the nice trappings of the tourist hotels and resorts, there was a seedier side to Cabo San Lucas. And it appeared that seedier side was infiltrating the tourist haunts. “Do you know how many people are a part of the Jalisco cartel?”
“One, maybe two hundred,” the bartender said. “And that’s just in the Cabo area.”
Her belly knotted as Alana fought to stay upright. “Do they ever show up in the same place all at once?” she asked, her voice squeaking slightly.
The bartender’s eyes narrowed. “Why so much interest in the cartel? The cartels are part of life in Mexico. We learn to stay clear or give them the payola they demand to leave us alone.”
“Is that what you do? Pay the Jalisco cartel to leave you alone?” Chase asked.
A frown settled on the man’s thick brow. “You ask too many questions. If you don’t want another drink, you go. We don’t want trouble here.”
Chase slid an American one-hundred-dollar bill across the counter. “Thank you for your time.” He got up, helped Alana off her bar stool and walked out of the bar.
“I remember what happened last night,” Chase said, his jaw tightening.
“Why is it you can remember, but I can’t?”
He touched a hand to his bruised cheek. “I remembered a Hispanic man hitting me. When that memory returned, I remembered why he hit me.”
Alana stopped and faced Chase. “Why did he hit you?”
Chase cupped her elbow and steered her around the back of the building.
“Where are we going?”
“I need to know the layout of the building and the surrounding area.”
Alana dug her heels into the ground and stopped. “You’re not actually considering showing up for Delgado, are you?”
“If I want him off my back and yours, I may have to confront him.”
Her pulse quickened, and her chest grew tight. “You heard the bartender. And you’ve seen news reports. Confrontations with the cartel don’t end well.”
Chase didn’t look at her. He scanned the immediate vicinity, studying it as if committing every nook and cranny to memory. “He won’t leave us alone unless I show up here.”
“Then we should leave Cabo.” She touched his arm. “Now.”
“I have a feeling leaving won’t be an option. He probably has contacts at the airport. He had them at the hotel. If I’m not wrong, that near-miss in front of Cabo Wabo was one of his people. He wants a piece of me and won’t be satisfied until he gets it.”
“So, you’re just going to march into a hive of cartel thugs?
Alone and unarmed?” Alana shook her head, her heart hammering, her mind spinning with the potential scenarios.
“Why did you get into a fight with Delgado?” she asked.
“You don’t strike me as someone who goes around picking fights with cartel members.
Perhaps it’s all some big misunderstanding. ”