21. Miguel
21
MIGUEL
I sabel sighed against my lips as I broke the kiss, and that simple sign of her understanding soothed me. She didn’t balk at the idea of my being a hitman. She wasn’t freaking out at my vow to kill anyone who’d try to hurt her. She accepted it—she accepted me—in a way not many others could have.
Perhaps growing up as Louis Flores’s daughter had hardened her. Being near such a corrupt businessman had taught her how low some people could go. She hadn’t grown up as a sheltered person, oblivious and na?ve of all the bad things that happened in life.
“Come on, let’s find somewhere to crash. It’s only going to get hotter, and I need to sleep.”
This time, she took my hand and led me to walk. “Can I get some things from my last room, first?”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t going near that dead man I’d left at my last hotel. Besides, I had more clothes and essentials in my car that I’d parked in a garage when I arrived. I could get them later.
“I appreciate your telling me, um, where you are coming from on all of this, but do you know what’s going on? Why anyone would’ve thought I’d be a vital part in this?” She peered at me with curiosity, not hostility.
I shook my head, focusing on the perfect fit of her fingers between mine. How she slotted against me, shorter and just the right height that I didn’t have to adjust how I walked to meet her in the middle. She was a curvy, short thing, made just to match me, to fit with me like she’d been made for me. “No. I really don’t know what’s going on. Nothing is adding up like it should be.” Glancing at her, I wondered what she could contribute. Even if she thought she knew nothing, maybe something was lurking in her mind that would shed light on this situation. “What do you know about Louis’s dealings with the Cartel?”
She frowned. “Nothing. I know I sound like a broken record, but I really don’t know anything about what my father used to deal with or what he currently does.”
“Nothing about the Gulf Cartel? Or the Carmello?”
“No. Why?”
“Because I work mostly for the Gulf Cartel. My contact is more of a general in-between, so it’s often hard to know for sure where a specific hit is ordered from. But the man who snuck into my last room, the one who shot me before I could kill him, he was from the Carmello Cartel. He was a Cartel member. I recognized the tattoos on his neck.”
She shook her head slowly, lowering her gaze. “I really have no clue, Miguel. I cut ties with Louis years ago. I filed for emancipation when I was sixteen.”
I knew I was reaching and grasping for anything right now, but I was desperate for something, some nugget of intel that I could work with to figure this out.
“But I’m not surprised if he’s pissed off the Cartels. As a corporate conman, he’s dealt with all kinds of criminal organizations before. And the Cartel does have some significance in his life. I don’t know which Cartel she was from, but I know that my mother was given to Louis as a bride from one of them.”
That was news. I was limited with my knowledge about Esmeralda Flores. “Your mother was from a Cartel?”
We approached her hotel, and I went up with her to gather her things.
She nodded. “Yeah. She was given to him as a reward, I think, or a bribe? I can’t remember what they said. I eavesdropped a lot.
“Maybe this is the connection?” I wondered aloud. More than someone wanting Isabel captured or killed. “As her daughter, you are connected to the Cartel too.”
“No. No, I’m not. I’m an innocent,” she protested.
“Are you?” I leaned against the wall as she stuffed things into a tote bag. I admired how she knew not to bring too much, that we’d need to stay on the move and adjust on a second’s notice. She really did have experience with this hiding and stealth thing. “Last night, I ran after the shooter and found him arguing with someone else. Both of them were Cartel members, but I couldn’t place them. One of them said they had to end ‘Louis’s woman’. To end his ‘femme fatale’.”
She furrowed her brow as she walked back out of her room with me. “Femme fatale?” She huffed an incredulous bark of laughter. “Okay, that’s definitely not me.”
I would agree, but still, the comment had snagged my attention. “He had to have had a reason to say that.”
She shot me a look before we exited her room, just one bag hanging off her shoulder. “Just before you killed him? I doubt he even knew what he was saying.”
Because many other people were near us, in the elevator and down the corridors, we stayed quiet, just holding hands, until we checked into another, different hotel. In the privacy of this room, she showed me how she must have taken every minute of that time we were quiet to think about what I’d said.
“Louis’s woman?” She sneered. “Yeah, that’s not me.”
“But who is?”
She kicked off her sandals, giving me a dirty smirk. “I have no clue. And I don’t want to know.”
“A girlfriend?” I guessed.
“Probably. He always had a mistress or two that my mother didn’t know about or react to. I haven’t seen or talked to him in years, so I’ve got no clue what his love life is like.”
Maybe she hadn’t talked to him, but I couldn’t be so easily swayed like this. I couldn’t be convinced that she didn’t have anything informative to add. The faster I could figure out why anyone would put a hit on her, the faster I could ultimately start to save her. Until things added up and made more sense, I had to challenge her whenever I could.
“What about the other thing he said? Louis’s femme fatale?”
She shook her head and scowled. “It’s not me . I don’t know how else to convey to you that I’m not connected with Louis and haven’t been for years.” With that, she walked to the bathroom. Pissed and apparently wanting to shower, as the water was turned on, she staked out some distance between us.
I slumped to a chair, rubbing my hands over my face. The numbing ointment on my arm was fading, and with the beginning of that gnawing sensation, I was extra irritated.
I hadn’t wanted to push Isabel too far for answers to the point she’d stalk off and close herself in the bathroom, too angry to hear me out and think this through together. But I couldn’t blame her for reacting like that, either. She had to feel like a broken record with her repeated claims that she had no ties with Louis anymore. But I was starting to feel like I was a broken record, too, for every time I asked her and challenged her.
My phone rang, tearing me from my thoughts. Upon seeing Drago’s contact name scrolling over the top of the screen, I tensed.
Dammit. Now what?
I answered, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. “Hello?”
“Why the fuck hasn’t she been killed yet?”
Because I don’t want to kill her. Because I’ll stop anyone who tries to hurt her.
My suspicions deepened about this whole situation. “How the fuck do you know she’s not dead?”
Are you spying on me? On us?
“Because reports are coming in that she’s just out there, living her life. Going to the salon this morning and having an ordinary time like she’s not about to fucking die.”
A salon? No, Isabel hadn’t gone to a damn salon today. We’d walked in and out of a series of businesses throughout the morning. Weaving in and out, coming and going through lots of establishments, we’d maintained a confusing and twisted route all day on that busy street in case anyone was trying to follow us. But not once did she or I go into a salon.
Maybe we’d gone past a salon, but not in one.
What the fuck kind of reports are you getting?
I shook my head and rubbed my brow.
“You’ve got people tailing her?”
He growled. “What does it matter? But no, I don’t. I’m just the middle man here, Miguel. Someone’s watching her out there to complain that she’s not dead yet. And that’s where you come in. What’s taking so long?”
I had to stall him, but I wasn’t sure how to word a nonanswer to his demands. Things just weren’t adding up, and I was trained to pay attention to every possible detail.
First, he’s making it sound like she was near the rain before that storm even came.
Now, he’s saying she’s been seen near or at places she clearly wasn’t…
The longer I mulled over what he said and the more I read between the lines, I was perplexed, wondering if Drago—and whoever was orchestrating things on the other end of this hit—were confusing Isabel with another woman in Louis’s life.