3. Miguel
3
MIGUEL
K idnapping?
I paced and cracked my knuckles. Fuck that.
“I don’t do kidnapping.”
He growled. “You don’t—what the fuck, Miguel? You have a contract.”
My fury rose. Who did he think he was? My boss? He was nothing but a fucking messenger. “I have a contract for a hit on Flores.”
“Fine. Now it’s adjusted to be a contract for another Flores.”
I shook my head, gritting my teeth. “For kidnapping? No. Find someone else for that shit.”
It was ridiculous that he was even trying to twist this around. Contracts were dogma. You couldn’t just pencil in something last-minute. That wasn’t how this worked.
“What?” he barked back, incredulous.
“You heard me. Get someone else to handle that.” I narrowed my eyes and wished I had a cigarette. I quit ten years ago, but fuck if the urge for a release didn’t hit me now.
“You hear yourself, man? Who do you think you are to?—”
“I know exactly who the fuck I am,” I growled. Holding my phone tighter, I almost cracked the case. If I could, I’d reach through the line and punch this cocky asshole for talking back.
“I take hits. That’s it. Not babysitting orders.”
Fuck. This.
How dare he question me? He never had, but that didn’t excuse him. I was a trained killer, an operative with a selective and hard-earned set of skills not many others had. I began my career on the “good side”. When I was young and stupid and disillusioned about how the world worked, I served in the military. All it took was one corrupt asshole at the border to frame me for something I had no part in, and I saw how fast the supposed “good guys” could fall from honor. My unwarranted discharge for misconduct was the catalyst that had me joining the Gulf Cartel. And I rose in the ranks immediately with my ability to hunt and kill like no other.
Asking—no, telling—me to snatch someone and babysit them was bullshit. It was disrespectful.
“It’s not babysitting ,” Drago argued. “How fucking full of yourself can you be? A hit is a hit.”
“Yeah, you stupid fucker. A hit is a hit. Not a kidnapping request.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “Then just kill the daughter.”
I furrowed my brow, staring unseeing into the dark night as I waited for him to expand on that. It was already messed up that he was changing a contract after the fact, but…
“What?”
“Kill her. It would make more sense to keep her captive so others can handle more complications that have come up, but fuck it. Kill her then. Make her the new hit.”
He couldn’t just play it by ear on this. Where are you even getting your orders? He was just supposed to be the messenger. Not a boss. Then again, I’d never met him in person so I was clueless. That gap of association was intended, though. I liked that distance to better keep me as independent as I could be.
“The news of her death?—”
“What complications?” I asked before he could finish.
“Other complications. This shit with Flores isn’t cut and dry.”
What ever is? All these corrupt assholes had layered operations and schemes at play.
“Louis has gone into hiding,” he reminded me. “The news of her death will spread and reach him, wherever he is. So it’ll lure him out into the open. It’ll reach him, and he’ll know that he’s going to be next.”
While that sounded reasonable and did make sense, I was still pissed at this change of plans. I was appeased with the permission to kill this daughter, but my annoyance remained that I’d have to start over. I had been working with the intel to track down Louis and stalk him. Now I’d need to go back to square one and do it with a different target in mind. These things required skill and stealth. Strategy and forethought.
“Miguel?” Drago didn’t seem to be in the mood to prolong this call.
Tough shit.
“I was supposed to be off for a while.”
“Yeah. I know. You’ve mentioned it a fuck ton of times. How could I forget?”
I shook my head, peeved with his attitude. We were never friendly, but where did he get off talking to me like this? “All right, then consider the mess you’re dropping into my lap without any warning. I was supposed to take off after this hit tonight. Now I’ll have to start all over.”
“No, you won’t.” The clacks of buttons tapped on a keyboard filled the background on his end, making me again wonder if he doubled as a hacker or on a cyber unit for the Cartel. “You can still get this over with ASAP.”
I raised my brows. “Oh?”
“I’ll send you what I have on her now.”
Collecting, gathering, and holding on to personal information of targets and their families was just one reach of the Cartel. In this day and age of so much being online, it was almost impossible for anyone to really hide that well. Cameras were everyone. Hackers worked wonders.
“I’ve got a file on her that will tell you anything you need to know.”
“But that doesn’t mean I won’t have to travel and find her somewhere else.”
“It does, actually. It does mean that you won’t have to go anywhere. She’s in Acapulco.”
Huh. That did simplify things. “Was she supposed to travel here with Louis?”
“No. Louis wasn’t ever supposed to stay there, anyway, just to stop in on his way south.”
I shrugged. That far into his plans wasn’t any of my business or concern. All I ever had to focus on was how to intercept and eliminate a target at the first possible location and opportunity.
“I’m sending you what I have now,” he said with a sigh, as if I were the one being difficult. He was out of line, changing things last-minute. I wasn’t sure I trusted it.
“And a revised contract?” I asked. “You'd better not assume I’ll jump just because you say jump.”
“Yes,” he drawled, groaning. “You’re such a fucking stickler for protocol.”
With a job based on life-or-death matters, sticking to a protocol while being able to adjust was a necessity.
“Contract sent. Her file, too. Anything else?”
Yeah, you can take your attitude and shove it up your ass, punk. Without lube.
“No.” I disconnected the call. Lowering my phone, I noticed the icons that showed I’d received the information he’d promised. I opened the email and waited for the document to load.
Out here, the reception was lacking. I headed back inside to the bar, head down, mariachi band ignored.
The first thing that downloaded was an image. Even though it was grainy, the standard low-quality grayscale of a still shot taken from a surveillance camera, there was no missing the beauty in the woman I was supposed to capture.
No. Not capture. Kill. Drago had amended that detail after my protest.
But fuck, if I ever wanted to capture a woman just to have under my control, to do whatever I pleased…
I ran my hand through my hair, pushing it back. It fell back forward with the position of my head lowered to continue looking down at the screen. Again, I forced the black mess back, not wanting anything to impede my vision.
Goddamn, is she…
I couldn’t pick one way to describe her, and this was just at a first, shitty-picture glance.
Gorgeous, with a sly smile that I bet would brighten any room.
Sharp, with clear, knowing eyes that suggested she was brilliant and observant, quick to notice details.
Sexy, with curves and a plumpness that was just perfect to hold on to. No skin and bones here.
Those juicy tits.
That round ass.
Long black waves that flew back from the momentum of her walking across the street from wherever this shot was captured. Glossy lengths that I could already imagine how soft they’d be wrapped around my fists as I?—
A chair’s feet skidded on the tile floor, scraping against the surface as I bumped into it.
“Oh.” I smiled, finally looking up from my phone to see the guests seated at a table in the stretch of the restaurant that stood between the bar I was aiming for and the patio I’d just left. “Sorry.”
The woman smiled too charmingly for her date’s liking. He scowled as she checked me out. “Gotta look up and see where you’re going when you’re walking,” she teased playfully.
I didn’t linger. It was flattering to have her attention, but my real interest remained locked on the woman on my phone. The screen had locked with the moments it had taken me to bump into an empty chair at a table. Swiping my thumb down fast, I refreshed the screen and zoomed in again.
Isabel Flores…
I reached the stool at the bar without any more incidents and plopped down, my gaze glued to the screen.
You look like a fucking treat I’ve got no business wanting.
“There you are.”
I flinched at a woman’s voice. Ripping my attention from my phone again, I glance at the blonde who’d taken the seat next to mine. Oh, yeah. You.
She leaned over. One elbow rested on the polished bar, and it pulled off a magic trick of an illusion. Her arm pushed her tits together, somehow showing even more smooth skin than before. Tipping toward me, she flashed me as much as she could in public. Reaching out to stroke her finger along my forearm as I lay it on the bar, she lowered her gaze and tried to pull off a sex kittenish, demure look.
“I missed you.”
And I…
I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
I dismissed her, not in the mood to tell her no thanks. My interest evaporated. All I wanted was to peer at the picture of the woman I was supposed to kill.
I left, totally hooked on the image of the raven-haired young woman. As I walked out of the bar and strolled outside to the busy sidewalk alive with the tourist-driven nightlife, I scrolled down further, reading the bare-bones of her information.
Twenty-three. Birthday the fifth of April.
I grinned. That was my birthdate. “How about that? We’re birthday buddies.”
It was a stupid, nonsensical thing to notice or care about, but it caught my attention.
I scrolled past her identifiable facts, wishing I could get a feel for her short height in person and see what she’d reach to against me. Wondering how her weight would feel flush to mine, how those full tits would fit in my hands and?—
“Goddammit.” I rubbed my hand over my face, bewildered by how filthy my thoughts ran with just one look at her. Leaning my butt against the exterior brick wall of the resort, I settled in to skim over more and more about the woman I was suddenly very curious about.
Never before had a target turned me on like this.
And never before had a simple, single image of a woman captivated me so thoroughly like this.
What the hell… I wondered what kind of a spell was falling over me that my curiosity would be this piqued. At first sight. On the spot.
Isabel Flores… I can’t wait to find you.