14. Sprocket
SPROCKET
Gazing down at Dax’s sleeping face was one of the rare times I ever saw her truly at peace.
There wasn’t an ounce of worry, fear, anger, or scheming going on behind her eyes, just rest. The past few months would have been grueling for anyone, and a lesser person would have snapped long before now.
There had been that incident with Tommaso’s adoptive father and bringing up her past, but even that didn’t slow her down for long.
It worried me that she wanted to take a step back and let us play a bigger part.
Logically, it made sense. It was the smart, calculating move to make.
Yet something made me question if that was the only reason she was doing it.
Up until now, she had nothing and no one to lose.
She could pull all the crazy stunts and not worry about it affecting someone else.
We’d changed all that—I’d changed all that when I lashed out at her after the fight with the Mad Dogs.
For a moment, I’d worried that I’d made her somehow question everything she does.
Then when everything came together for the fight night and how to manipulate it for our needs came into play, I relaxed.
The old Dax was back to play if a little more aware of those involved.
What had me worried is this was the first attack aimed at us, her men.
Had it taken the world this long to figure out how important we were to her? That we’d do anything for her in return?
Marco was proving to be a brilliant mastermind, but his flaw that’s just recently been revealed is he can’t plan on the fly.
He’s methodical and has to have all the data to predict our moves, placing a counter-attack where it was needed.
Us taking out Diego and putting in a new power wasn’t something he’d prepared for.
Marco assumed we’d go after Diego and call it good enough.
My bet was he had another person ready to step into the role, and that’s who is causing all the trouble.
If we were going to do this our way and not Dax’s, then we needed to hand that problem off to Tommaso and move on.
Marco would expect Dax to seek her revenge because that’s her standard MO.
Personally, I didn’t see the need to go after someone who wasn’t really our problem or a roadblock in the efforts to get to Marco.
The soft clacking of keys alerted me to Wes still being awake.
Lifting my head, I saw him sitting on the sofa in the bedroom, lit up by the blue light of the computer screen.
It seems I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep.
Carefully, I slid out of my spot and let Cognac fill the space as he seemed to naturally gravitate to her side.
Picasso was on her other side, arm tossed over his eyes with Dax’s leg over his stomach.
His other hand was hooked behind her knee as if to ensure she didn’t move from that position.
We were all hopeless when it came to her, and I couldn’t be happier.
Padding over to Wes, I dropped to the seat beside him and glanced at the screen. As I suspected, he was looking over the data we’d pulled from the De León hard drives. Skimming over the screen, I figured out it was an employee file, but I didn’t recognize the name.
“Did you find something?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“I’m not sure…” Wes let out a heavy sigh.
“Only as I’m looking through some of the invoices and shipping logs that don’t make sense, this name keeps coming up as the employee who was assigned to it.
What makes it even stranger is that the information in this file makes no sense.
When I look things up, they aren’t even located in New York but all over the US.
Clearly, this is a dummy file, but I can’t figure out what it’s covering up. ”
“Could those locations be stash houses or drops for drugs or other goods?” I inquired. “To me, it seems like if they have a list of various places, then those places must mean something.”
“That’s what I thought too, and when I pull up satellite images of the area, I don’t see much of anything, just small farm towns,” Wes explained. “They’re all on the East Coast or Midwest area, nothing near our turf. Then there’s this location that doesn’t come up with anything.”
Shifting the computer so I could see better, he flipped over to another tab that showed the name in the search bar with no results.
Frowning, I stared at the name, and something about it was making me feel like I’d seen it somewhere before.
It wasn’t tied to a city or town name, though it was when I was searching through desks at the office.
“What’s the employee’s name?” I asked, hoping it would trigger something more of the memory.
“Miles Row, but I already told you it’s not a real person,” Wes countered. “There’s no real employee with that name in their system, past or present.”
“Hold on a sec,” I said, raising a hand for him to stop talking.
Closing my eyes, I replayed the afternoon as we rifled through people’s desks looking for anything that would give us ammo to use against them.
People always left things in their desk they never thought would get them in trouble because of the societal rule that you don’t look in them.
I’d started in the back of the room away from any of the main traffic areas, feeling this was where I’d want to sit if I were trying to keep a secret.
The desk didn’t have much of a personal touch to it like the others, almost as if it was a spare for anyone to use.
There was a file drawer that had been locked, but it wasn’t hard for me to pick the lock and get it open.
File drawers weren’t all that challenging or secure, if we’re being honest. The files weren’t labeled, and when I looked at them, it was simple invoices for goods that had been shipped.
It seemed to be a fair amount of farming and gardening supplies, but most of the items were things I didn’t recognize.
They sounded more like chemical names for pesticides or fertilizer, but that was a guess.
What caught my eye was the fact the name of the buyer was crossed out and handwritten with the words, Joyful Garden Supplies.
“It’s absolutely a place,” I announced, my eyes popping open.
“There was a desk I looked through and had invoices originally marked for another company. I don’t remember what that name was, but what I do recall is that it was crossed out and marked Joyful Garden.
Do you have a seating chart or anything to find out whose desk it was?
I got the feeling it wasn’t someone permanent, but it might also be because they didn’t want to leave any trace of who they were either. ”
“Why would they risk having that out in the open?” Wes muttered as he searched for something that might help us.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was just a normal shipping invoice. There was nothing else about it that would have given me pause until we found this here.” I gestured to the computer. “The supplies were garden shit, so why would I question if it was going to a garden?”
The screen was suddenly covered in a map of the office cubical area, and there were names typed near each desk.
“Lucky for us, one of the new managers made it so he could keep track of who was who and where they were,” Wes shared. “Now which was the desk you found the papers in?”
Getting my bearings for what angle this was being made from, I pointed to the back corner, only this desk didn’t have a name. Instead, it just said keep open for interns.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded like the computer was going to tell me.
“Wait, there was a list in here somewhere, one of the managers was super big into the whole make your people feel known. He kept notes on all his employees to remember things like kids’ and wives’ names.
This guy even made sure to have birthdays written in his calendar so he could buy them lunch,” Wes explained.
“Right now, I could kiss the man because it makes everything so much easier.”
When he pulled up a list of interns, there were tons of information down to days they worked, where they went to school, and if they were getting credit or not for it.
The list was thankfully a short one, about fifteen of them, and they all used the same desk.
Reading over the names, I didn’t see any that caught my attention until the last one—Alvaro De León—Diego’s second youngest son with Mariana, if I remembered correctly.
“Didn’t he already graduate college?” I asked. “Why would he be an intern for his own father’s company if he could just be hired to work?”
“Seems tomorrow we’re gonna need to talk to Mariana. Cam said they needed a day or two for the meds to really start helping, but we don’t have that kind of time,” Wes reasoned. “She’s the best link we have to put all the various pieces we have together.”
Running a hand through my hair, I glanced at the time. Two in the morning was becoming all too familiar. Before Dax, we’d had a far more routine schedule, but now it seemed we slept when we could and drank enough coffee to keep us going.
“Think we can manage to make it through a day without someone trying to kill us?” I wondered aloud.
Wes snorted. “Wouldn’t count on it.” Closing the laptop, he got to his feet then looked at the bed. “I’m gonna crash in the other room. It’s gonna be hard enough to sleep without someone kicking me.”
“Smart idea, but I’m gonna chill here for a bit. My mind’s just too fucking wound up for me to even think about sleeping,” I said, letting my head fall back to rest on the couch.
“God, do I feel that, but my body is fucking screaming at me to get some sleep. The laptop is unlocked if you need to use it,” Wes offered, and I gave him a thumbs up.
As a kid, I loved fucking puzzles. It’s one of the reasons I became such a good mechanic.
Being able to figure out how all the parts fit together just did something that made me feel like I had a purpose.
Now here I was with all kinds of fucking mismatched pieces of a puzzle scattered on the floor.
Each time I tried to pick one up and figure out what it could possibly fit into, nothing seemed to work.
It was almost as if there were two different things we were trying to tackle instead of one.
Could it be that simple? Were there two different mysteries we were trying to solve at the same time?
It would make sense. Diego was running things for Marco, but I got the feeling he was trying to branch out into his own venture as well.
So how did we determine what was tied to Marco and what was tied to Diego?
Once that was separated, we could clearly see what leads we needed to hunt down.
Wes was right, talking to Mariana would be a major help and give us some direction to start bringing Marco down.
At this moment, whatever Diego had been up to wasn’t our problem that needed to be handed off to Tommaso.
Our only focus should be on Marco, but I don’t think we’d expected how Diego was trying to free himself from his master.
That thought had me questioning if these recent attacks and the bomb had anything to do with Marco at all?
Could they be from the second party that Diego was working with?
Eagle had filled us in on the FBI agent and the fact that Cam was moving to the CIA.
That would also give us some extra insight if they gave him access to the files and such about the Tesoro Cartel.
Marco is the king now, but he hadn’t been long, and I had a hunch Dax was right about him being in the US before taking up his mantle as the new boss.
Rubbing my head, I felt like everywhere I turned, we were running into dead ends. Marco was fucking worthy of being our arch-nemesis, that’s for damn sure. Yet as Dax had repeatedly told us, he’s going to fuck up now that we’ve taken his biggest supporters.
If I were him, left with no army in the Mad Dogs and no general to lead things now that Diego was removed, what would I do?
“Hey,” Dax’s sleepy rasp pulled me out of my thoughts.
Cracking open an eye, I found her standing there in one of Wes’s T-shirts, hair all mussed, looking far sexier than she should. “Hey.”
“Why are you awake?” she asked, coming over to straddle my legs and sit.
Instantly, my hands were on her hips, needing to hold her as much as keep her safe. “I should be asking you that question. When I left, you were passed the fuck out.”
“Yeah,” she murmured, her eyes drifting down to her hands not wanting to meet my gaze.
Lifting a hand, I caught her chin and forced her to meet my eyes as I searched her face. There was a glimmer of fear and what I might have guessed to be dried tears on her cheek. She’d had a nightmare.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked as I cupped her cheek.
She shook her head and instead wrapped her arms around my neck, and I pulled her tight to my chest. After Dax had been shot, she suffered from lots of nightmares.
Dani thought it was a side effect of the medication since she seemed to get better once she was off of it.
We never told her, but every so often she’d still have them.
Normally, we could soothe her before she woke herself up, but it seems we failed tonight.
I let my hand stroke gently up and down her back, just offering her the comfort she clearly needed. To be this vulnerable was a lot for her, and I was going to do everything in my power to show it was safe to do that with us.
“I didn’t shoot him in time,” she rasped. “I failed and got you all killed.”
Ah, I really shouldn’t be surprised that this is what set off a nightmare. Right after she shot the man, she’d frozen at the realization she wasn’t the only intended target—all of us were.
“You did shoot him, and we are all still alive right here with you,” I told her, resting my head on hers. “Listen to the sound of my heartbeat, little rebel. It will tell you just how alive I really am.”
She didn’t say another word, just clung to me until I felt her finally drift back to sleep.
There was no way in hell I was going to move other than to shift so I was lying down.
She protested the movement in her sleep which had me smiling but didn’t wake.
Slowly, I ran my fingers through her hair, cherishing this moment and the fact she’d come to me for help.
My fierce little rebel might actually be figuring this whole being-in-a-relationship thing out.