Chapter 8
8
VAUGHN
U nable to get Elena Espinoza out of my thoughts, I was still wide-awake when Brandon returned with a video call a few hours later.
“What have you got for me?” I asked.
Sitting behind a computer desk, Brandon adjusted his black-framed glasses. “The good news is I’ve been able to find out a lot more about Elena from before her abduction. The bad news is I don’t have much intel after her supposed death. Her alter ego, Hope Garcia, surfaced in Playa de la Palmera three years ago and has had little to do with the outside world since then.”
“No contact with her father?”
Brandon braced his elbows on the swivel chair’s armrests. “I can’t find any evidence of it, which might mean he thinks she’s dead, just like everyone else in the world.”
How had the daughter of Carlos Espinoza remained hidden? Then again, no one was looking for a dead girl.
“Are you ready to hear the CliffsNotes for Elena’s life story?” Brandon asked.
“Hit me with it.”
He picked up a coffee mug and took a sip. “I guess it begins when Carlos met his American bride-to-be, Angelina Demarco, in Florida. Her family didn’t approve of the match, and she became estranged from them after moving to Acapulco to wed Carlos. Elena María Espinoza Demarco was born less than a year later. Two years after that, her brother”—Brandon leaned toward his laptop to look up a detail—“Rafael arrived. When Elena was six, her mother and brother were killed in a car bombing intended for her father. To protect his only remaining heir, Carlos sent Elena to the US, where she lived in New Jersey using the alias María Demarco. She has dual citizenship, which must’ve made the relocation easier. Elena already spoke decent English because of her mother, and once in the States, she was raised by an American nanny.”
Now it made sense that her accent was different from the locals’ and that she sounded as American as me when speaking English.
Brandon continued. “She was homeschooled by a private tutor. Bright girl. Studied economics at Princeton with solid grades. Carlos did everything in his power to suppress her identity. She had no social media, always had bodyguards watching over her, and rarely socialized outside of attending class. Very few people from Mexico knew what she looked like as an adult or where she’d been hiding all those years. It must’ve been like living under witness protection her whole life.”
Which was why no one in the village knew that the daughter of a cartel boss lived right under their noses.
“Found a couple of interesting rumors,” Brandon added. “Apparently, Espinoza was going to bring Elena home and introduce her to the less salubrious side of the organization once she completed her degree.”
“And she never finished it?”
“Nope. Only six months shy of graduating from Princeton with honors.”
“What’s the other rumor?” I asked.
“She is—or was —engaged to this guy.” He spun his laptop to show me an image of Elena and a man at an expensive-looking restaurant. Brandon clicked through to the next image of the pair sipping champagne on a luxury motor yacht.
A sour taste filled my mouth because I recognized who she was with. “Jorge Ortega.”
As Carlos Espinoza’s second-in-command, Ortega was another of our high-value targets.
I scratched my jaw, baffled by Brandon’s intel. “Elena Espinoza is engaged to el Se?or del Dolor?”
Ortega’s moniker translated to the Lord of Pain. If the stories were true, even the most loyal of men sang like canaries, hoping Ortega would deliver them a swift death. He rarely did, and the mutilated bodies he left on the streets had perpetuated his reputation.
Ortega wasn’t responsible for my torture, but given my history, my hatred for el Se?or del Dolor bordered on obsessive.
“That’s the one,” Brandon said. “He was a street kid until he completed his first hit for Espinoza at ten years old. Carlos took a shining to Ortega and treated him like an adopted son. He earned his stripes when Espinoza gave him the Colima Plaza to run, and he’s been second-in-command for the Pacific Coast Cartel for almost a decade now. Jorge was one of very few people permitted to visit Elena in New Jersey. Looks like a quarterly booty call was enough to keep their long-distance relationship fresh.”
I felt sick. Elena was engaged to a sadistic fuck who was no better than the men who’d kept me in a cage. She had to know about Ortega’s reputation. He lived for the notoriety it gave him and thrived on its intimidation power.
How could she want to spend the rest of her life with a psychopath who made delivering pain an art form? What kind of person did it make her? That was a cartel princess for you. Born into the narco life and accepting of all its ugliness. I’d misjudged her. Thoroughly.
And I’d just saved her undeserving ass from those thugs. I should’ve let her deal with them on her own. Except the scorpions freshly inked on their necks identified them as Pacific Coast Cartel. They’d had no idea who she was, but why had she been so angered by their arrival? After all, they were her father’s men. Ortega’s men. Something was off.
But that wasn’t important right now.
“So the Alvarez Cartel found Elena in New Jersey and kidnapped her?” I asked.
“Not even close. Here’s where her story takes a bizarre turn. Three years ago, Elena boarded a commercial flight to Guadalajara and surrendered herself to the Alvarez Cartel.”
The PCC’s rival and enemy?
“What?” I recoiled. “Why?”
“Because a friend of hers from Princeton, Natalie Parker, disappeared. According to her missing person report, she was last seen stumbling out of a club in New Jersey, leaning heavily on the arm of a dark-haired man after only one drink. I guess Elena used her connections to figure out that Natalie had been trafficked to Guadalajara by the Alvarez Cartel. She offered herself up in exchange for her friend’s release.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t Elena ask for her father’s help to have her friend released?”
Brandon leaned back in his chair and braced his hands behind his head. “Maybe she did. Carlos Espinoza’s relationship with the Alvarez Cartel has always been tense. He wouldn’t have wanted to ask them for a favor.”
I shook my head. “You’re telling me Elena sacrificed herself to save her friend?”
“By all appearances, that’s exactly what happened. I think we need to consider the possibility that Elena Espinoza isn’t tarred with the same brush as her father.”
I choked back a bitter laugh. “I wouldn’t be so hasty drawing that conclusion. You’re forgetting she’s engaged to a deranged murderer.”
Brandon frowned, looking as confused by Elena as I was. “Maybe the engagement wasn’t her choice. Arranged marriages aren’t unheard-of when empires are at stake.”
Fuck, I really wanted him to be right. Yet the photos of Elena and Ortega on what appeared to be romantic dates did nothing to ease my suspicions. I’d need convincing evidence before I accepted Brandon’s theory.
“What happened after Alvarez got hold of Elena?” I asked.
“Once Espinoza found out what his daughter had done, he attacked the Alvarez compound to get her back. Except Elena wasn’t there. Alvarez had sent both Elena and Natalie offshore on his megayacht for safekeeping. When he found out Espinoza had shot up his home, Alvarez got pissed off and killed both girls.”
“Let me guess. Elena’s body was never found?”
“Alvarez very publicly taunted Espinoza with how his daughter had been shot and tossed overboard miles from the coast. I guess Espinoza never expected to recover Elena’s remains. I can’t be certain where her alleged murder happened, but Alvarez’s yacht sailed up the Pacific coast during that war. Right past your current location.”
“I have even more questions now than when I first called.” I released a heavy breath, struggling to grapple with Brandon’s information overload.
Brandon removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I know. I feel like there’s something big we’re missing here.”
“Do you really think Espinoza believes she’s dead? Maybe this is how he’s hiding Elena now. Let the world think she’s been murdered, and no one will come looking.”
“It’s possible, but I don’t buy that. He went to war to find her. Her death motivated him to wipe out the Alvarez Cartel. And if he wanted her safe, he’d have her locked down in his compound or sent to another country again. He wouldn’t leave her unprotected. As sleepy as Playa de la Palmera is, it’s still Mexico. Anything can happen. Plus, I suspect she’s not as sympathetic to the PCC as you might think.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Think about it. Handing herself over to the Alvarez Cartel to save her friend was brave, but it was also a giant Fuck you to her dad. Can you think of a more brazen way to defy the man who’d kept her hidden all those years?”
He had a point, but I wasn’t as willing as Brandon to believe Elena was even remotely innocent. For all we knew, she had plans to start up her own cartel and go into business in competition with her dad. Even more likely was that she and that piece of shit, Ortega, were planning to overthrow Carlos in a mutiny. Who knew what Elena was capable of, and deception was obviously a skill she’d mastered. She’d fooled me.
Brandon continued. “From what you’ve told me and the intel I’ve gathered, my guess is Elena Espinoza is hiding from everyone in her past life, including her father. That explains why she reacted so negatively toward the cartel members in the restaurant. Maybe she doesn’t see eye to eye with Carlos. Maybe she doesn’t want the wealth and power that comes with running the biggest cartel in Mexico.”
Maybe she doesn’t want to be married to Jorge Ortega.
That she’d been with him at all was bad enough. It didn’t matter if she’d changed her mind.
I scoffed. “That sounds like a lot of maybes.”
He smiled smugly. “I’m rarely wrong.”
“Cocky son of a bitch.”
“You would know. Listen, whatever her reasons are for hiding, we need to get to the bottom of it, because if we’re playing a game of chess with Carlos Espinoza, Elena could be our queen.”
Her knowledge of the Pacific Coast Cartel would be invaluable. I still had my reservations about Elena’s allegiances, but Brandon was right about one thing. We needed her. What secrets did she hold in that pretty head of hers?
“I’ll go get her right now,” I said. “Throw her in the King Air and bring her back to the ranch.”
“That’s too aggressive.”
Was there any other way? “We’re wasting time.” I kicked the truck’s front tire. “If I can’t kidnap her, how do you want me to play this?”
“With caution. It sounds like she’s cemented her alter ego in the community. If we take Elena against her will, there’ll be a public appeal to find her. If her face gets splashed all over the news, we risk Espinoza finding out she’s still alive, and it’s vital that we keep that quiet. First, we try using diplomacy and discretion.”
“Then you’d better send someone else down here, because I have neither of those skills in my bag of tricks.”
“I was hoping you’d dig deep and find them.”
“Dig deep?” I snorted. “I’ll have to drill to the earth’s molten core.”
“Then do that. Besides, it has to be you to get through to Elena. She already trusts you.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You helped her at the restaurant. She let you drive her home, right? If she didn’t trust you, she wouldn’t want you to know where she lives.”
I’d neglected to mention that I hadn’t really given her a choice in being driven home.
“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea.” I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Fine. What should I say to her?”
“Tell her everything—who we are, what we do—and gauge her reaction. If she’s still loyal to the cartel, she’ll be anxious. If she despises them as much as we do, she’ll be intrigued. And then you hit her with what we know about her.”
“She might try to run.”
“I’m almost certain she will. We can’t let her disappear again, which is why you’re going to be her new shadow.”
I laughed nervously. “She’s gonna love that.” She already couldn’t stand the sight of me.
“The last thing we want is for anyone to snatch Elena from under our noses. You need to convince her that you’re her ticket to safety and persuade her to fly to Montana with you.”
“And if she refuses to leave?”
“Then you have my permission to bring her here any way you like.”
I grinned. “Now you’re talking.”
“That’s not the outcome I’m hoping for. We want her to be compliant, which means you need to watch your mouth and keep that sunny attitude in check.” Brandon sighed like he held little hope of me following his instructions. It wasn’t my fault he’d tasked me with a job I wasn’t qualified for. “If she’s willing to help us, we need her to feel safe enough to talk. You know how much is on the line. We’ve been hunting Carlos Espinoza for over two years now and have gotten nowhere. Bringing Elena to our side could be a game changer in taking down the entire Pacific Coast Cartel.”
I scratched the back of my head. “Yeah, I get it. Don’t fuck this up.”
“Correct. Call me when you have news.”
“Copy that.”