Chapter Twenty #15
I slid my phone back into my pocket as I watched Lany write the name down on a sticky note and then stick it to the storyboard. While I was glad that we had another name to look into, it was another name to add to our growing list of suspects.
“Why do I feel as if we’re missing something big here?” I mused, mostly to myself, but Lany must have heard me, as he shook his head.
“We are,” he replied. “We just don’t know what it is yet.”
I knew investigations took time, but the anxiousness pitting my stomach told me our time was running out. Something was coming, and if we weren’t prepared, we were going to be in a lot of trouble.
“Lany, go tell Brant to make sure the estate is fully locked down.”
Lany lifted both eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, and that worries me.”
“Crap!” Lany rubbed a hand down his face. “If you’re worried, we’re in deep shit.”
“Which is why I want the estate on lockdown.”
Better safe than sorry.
Chapter Thirteen
Lany
I hurried down the hallway to the security room. “Brant, Sal wants the estate on lockdown.”
“Problems?” the man asked, but he was already enacting the safety measures that we had made for the entire fifteen-acre estate. Within moments I heard the metal shutters come down over the windows.
“Sal’s worried.”
Brant’s dark eyes snapped to me. “Sal is worried?”
I nodded rapidly.
Brant picked up the phone and ordered the backup security crew to gear up and get to the estate as soon as possible. I could understand his urgency. While Sal put the estate on lockdown quite frequently, he was very rarely worried like this.
It unnerved me.
Sal was my rock, the unmovable mountain that stood between me and the world. If he was worried, even if he didn’t know why he was worried, then we could be in big trouble.
Zombie apocalypse came immediately to mind.
“I need to get back to the study,” I told Brant. “Is Lincoln on the grounds?”
Brant shook his head. “He’s currently at the recording studio. Why?”
“You might want to call him and let him know what is going on, give him the choice on whether to come back here or go stay somewhere else until this is over.” After everything Lincoln had been through when he was kidnapped by some psychotic woman who believed they were in love, we all treated him with kid gloves, especially Brant.
“I’d feel better if he was here where I could keep an eye on him.”
I could understand that. I preferred that Sal stay where he could see me too. It kept my ass alive when the shit hit the fan.
I turned and walked away without saying another word.
I didn’t think I needed to. Brant would take care of security and Lincoln.
I knew there was something going on between the two of them, but I wasn’t sure what exactly that was, and they weren’t sharing, and I wasn’t going to ask.
I had enough trouble keeping my own life in order.
I didn’t need to go messing around in someone else’s.
Sal was on the phone when I got back to the study, leaning over Lyn’s shoulder. He was talking rapidly, and Lyn was tapping away on his laptop just as fast. Both men looked intense.
I felt as if they had found something.
I glanced at the storyboard, but nothing had changed there, so I walked over to them and waited, not wanting to interrupt.
Lyn glanced up, snorted, and started shaking his head. “Man, this case just got blown wide open.”
I frowned. “How?”
What had I missed?
“Rory just called,” Lyn replied before gesturing to Sal. “That’s who Sal is on the phone with now.”
“What did he say?”
“Eben Juarez is not Eben Juarez. The man they have in the cell listed as being Juarez is not Juarez. Sal and Rory are trying to figure out who he is right now.”
Damn.
I tapped Sal on the arm to get his attention. “Have Rory go through video surveillance and check to see when Juarez disappeared. If we have a timeline, we might be able to figure out how long he’s been missing.”
Sal nodded before going back to speaking into his cell phone.
I turned and walked over to the storyboard, made a note that Juarez was missing from prison, and then stepped back to study the board. I didn’t see anything at first, but then a slow dread began to build in my gut.
I reached for my cell phone and dialed my parents’ house.
“Junior.”
“You need to double your security right now,” I told my father in a quick breath. “Better yet, get the kids and come to the estate. We’re on total lockdown.”
“What’s going on, Junior?” my father demanded. “Where’s Sal?”
“He’s on the phone at the moment. We just discovered that a man named Eben Juarez is not in prison where he is reported to be. We’re in the middle of a case involving the DEA, drugs, and money laundering. Sal put us on lockdown last night when he started to get worried.”
I swallowed tightly as I stared at the storyboard and realized what it was telling me. “I think the shit just hit the fan.”
“I’ll call in more guards,” my father stated, “but I think we’ll stay here until you tell us otherwise. You need to concentrate on solving whatever this is, not worrying about the kids.”
That wasn’t going to happen. I always worried.
“Just make sure you’re safe and don’t take any chances for anything. This feels personal, and I don’t want you guys caught in the middle.”
“We’ll be careful, Junior.”
“If you have any problems or feel like something is off, call Sal. He can come get you.”
“We’ll be fine, Junior.”
That remained to be seen.
“I need to go, Dad. I have to talk to Sal. I’ll call and check in this evening.”
“Be safe, son.”
“You, too, Dad.”
I hung up and walked over to Sal.
He shot me a frowning look and then quickly ended his phone call. “What is it, caro?”
I briefly closed my eyes. “I hate to say this, but…” I opened my eyes and looked intently at the man my world revolved around. “This is personal. I think Juarez is after us.”
Sal’s eyebrows snapped together. “Explain.”
I couldn’t, not really. It was just a feeling I got after looking at the storyboard. The connecting factor was the fact that Eben Juarez wasn’t in prison.
“I don’t know if this has anything to do with the case I was investigating for the DEA or if those are two separate things, but I think Juarez arranged to get out of prison so that he could come after us.”
The man loathed me to the depths of his soul. I was the main reason his empire collapsed and he went to jail. He more than wanted me dead. He wanted to torture me before he killed me.
“He was a drug dealer and a human trafficker, Lany, but we caught him and took down his empire. There’s nothing left of it.”
I shook my head. “Why would someone break him out of prison? He was either more involved than we thought or he’s valuable to someone.
I’m betting the cartel. Every single alias we’re researching links back to the Fernandez Cartel except his.
I think there’s a connection somewhere that we just haven’t found yet. ”
“Colombia and Mexico are worlds apart, Lany. What reason would the Fernandez Cartel have for working with Juarez?”
They weren’t that far apart, and most drugs had to go through Mexico to get to the United States. Maybe the cartel was working with Juarez.
“Juarez hates me. You know this. He blames me for everything.” He’d shouted death threats at me during his trial enough times for me to be wary of the man. “If he’s escaped prison, then he is coming after me.”
“Okay, say you’re right.” Sal crossed his arms and leaned back against the desk, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. “What does this have to do with the DEA case? Is it related? And how is he related to the aliases we’ve been researching?”
“As we know, Anton Gambino and Viggo Marcus are just aliases, and Juarez used Victor Cruz as an alias.”
Sal nodded once. “Right.”
“So, what if this is all the same man and his name is Fernandez?”
Sal just stared at me, but his nostrils slowly began to flare.
“Lyn, check with the FBI and see if there has been an uptake on human trafficking in the last year or so. Lany, call Crenshaw and ask him for everything he has on the Fernandez Cartel and the investigation into Eben Juarez, Anton Gambino, and Viggo Marcus.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, even as I fished my cell phone out of my pocket.
“I’m calling Sparks and telling him to get his ass over here if he wants in on this investigation, and then I’m going to call Vinnie and Carlos and see what they have on these guys. I also want to know if Eduardo Salazar is just another alias.”
I pretty much had my cell phone glued to my ear for the next ten minutes. Not only would Supervisory Special Agent Crenshaw be coming by the house, but he was emailing Lyn a bunch of information so he could get started on investigating.
I also made another phone call to my father and asked him to grab Mom, pick the kids up early from school, and come to the house. If Juarez was really after us—as I suspected he was—I wanted my family here where I knew they would be safe.
Sal would never let anything happen to us.
As I started to hang up, I realized there was one more phone call I needed to make…well, a text message really. TJ might be on the West Coast, but he was still my kid, and that meant he needed a heads-up just in case.
I sent a simple message stating that things had gotten kind of messy with a guy we had put in prison and he needed to be extra careful. I made sure he knew I was at the estate with his father and the house was on lockdown.
He needed to know I was safe, or he’d flip.
Once I put my phone away, I walked over to the storyboard, made a sticky note with the name Fernandez on it, and then proceeded to use yarn to connect to all the aliases that I thought Juarez might be using.
When I stepped back and took a look at it, I almost threw up. “Sal.”