25. Dax #2
“So is the problem he heard us or that he might start making advances on me again?” Wes teased as he knocked his hip into mine. “Seriously, don’t stress. Knowing our crew, I doubt it’s the last time something like this will happen. At least no one can say we don’t love our wife well and often.”
“God, please stop talking,” I begged as we headed down the stairs.
Everyone else was exacty where we left them at the dining table working on various things. Ghost spotted us first and merely smiled and winked but didn’t comment as he nudged Cam’s arm.
He looked up and motioned for me to come over. “Dax, I need your thoughts on something.”
If no one wanted to comment, then that was perfectly fine with me because I wasn’t going to bring it up. Leaving Wes to send the video out to whoever needed to have it, I joined Cam at the table as he stepped back to give me room.
“When we met with Mariana, she was talking about where she grew up and what it was like for her. I remember her saying that the town was so small, about a thousand people, up in the mountains,” Cam reminded me.
“What I can’t remember is what she said the townspeople called it.
She told me a nickname, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. ”
“Joyful Town,” I answered. “Pueblo Alegre, I believe is the right translation.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Cam exclaimed and typed the name into the internet search.
A few options came up, but then when I saw a picture of the small mountain village, I knew that had to be it. “Look, their town motto is joyful town. It’s also rather close to Guadalajara, but on the other hand, it’s not really all that close to Lázaro Cárdenas, where the port is.”
“True, but what if that’s where it was originally and possibly where Martin and his wife are staying?” Sprocket interjected. “It would make sense to me to keep my heir separate from me in case something happened. That way, we both don’t get taken out.”
Cam used a red marker and circled the town. “We need to find multiple sites to hit, so we’ll consider this one of them.”
“Wait,” I interrupted, looking around the room. “Where’s Alvaro? He might be able to answer some of these questions.”
Harper’s gaze drifted over to Magnus at my question.
Immediately, I rounded on the man jamming a finger right up in his face. “What the fuck did you do?”
“I didn’t think it was smart to have him here for this, getting to know everything we were going to do,” Magnus said in his defense. “He’s perfectly fine and being looked after by someone we can trust.”
“Who?” I demanded.
Magnus narrowed his gaze at me. “Dax, I’m gonna need you to take it down a notch. Why the hell are you so uptight when you just got fucked?”
“Maggie,” Harper snapped, slapping his arm. “That was absolutely not necessary to say, and you damn well know better than to tell a woman to calm down.”
Growling something under his breath, he rubbed his arm where she hit him and answered my question, “He’s with Raven.”
While I could see his logic and agree with it in some ways, Alvaro had valuable information we needed to know.
Things had been going so fucking well today, but both groups of men have been used to running the show, and now we were forcing them to play as a team.
It would take time and adjustment that we didn’t fucking have.
“Look, I get it,” I stated. “You were probably right to make that call, but I entrusted him to you to look after.”
“No,” I snapped, holding up a hand when he wanted to speak.
“Magnus, you’re gonna let me finish what I was saying before you try and bitch me out again.
Alvaro is the informant I pulled out of the clutches of the FBI.
He holds the information we desperately need, and none of us can afford to have anything happen to him.
What you should have done is called or texted me to let me know your plan for Alvaro.
If you’d have done that and explained your reasoning for it, I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’d have agreed and told you to do it.
The difference being that you kept me in the loop.
What if I had information from Tommaso that something happened last night, making it unsafe for Alvaro to be there? ”
Magnus frowned and scratched his jaw as he considered that thought.
“I concede you make a good point about keeping each other in the loop. Tommaso informs you of things he wouldn’t tell us, and knowing what happened when we were there, I should have at least ensured it was safe to leave Alvaro with Raven. ”
As far as apologies go, I’m pretty sure that was the best I was going to get.
“That’s all I’m saying. The more we keep each other in the know, the smoother this is going to work.
How can we make a plan when the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing?
That shit is going to get someone killed. ”
“Mag, she’s right,” Jaxson stated, always the peacekeeper, that one.
“We need to work as a full unit, the thirteen of us. If the generals don’t know what’s happening in the battle, then how can the soldiers know what to do?
Soon enough, we are going to have an army of people we need to worry about above and beyond ourselves.
If we can’t manage that with this small group, what does that say about us? ”
“You’ve all made your point,” Magnus grumbled, not at all happy about getting ganged up on.
Out of everyone, he was the first to fly off the handle, and it was driving me crazy. Ghost and Jaxson were on board with the whole idea. Why couldn’t he be?
“Alright, since we don’t have Alvaro with us right now, let’s keep a list of the things we need to go over with him. Cognac, can you keep a running tally of what we need answers to?” I asked.
“Already ahead of you, loba,” Cognac answered with a grin and winked. “I’m not just a pretty face, you know.”
“If anyone ever believed that, then it’s their funeral when they underestimate you,” I agreed and turned back to the map.
“So we have one possible location that doesn’t make sense based on other information we know.
Have we done any satellite searches of the area around the port?
With the amount of product I’m assuming he moves based on the information we have from Diego’s files, he’d need a reliable way to get it to the port quietly. ”
Ghost flipped around the laptop he’d been working on, showing me detailed satellite images. “The area outside the port is pretty barren, which makes me think it’s perfect for him to set something up. It’s just harder since I’m looking for a needle in a haystack.”
I zoomed out slightly to get a general idea of the area. Then I spotted something that had me grinning. “Do you see this river,” I asked, pointing it out. “Is there any way to tell if it’s a river you could, I don’t know… send a boat of drugs down?”