Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Dewi
Dewi pulled up short when she emerged from Customs at Tampa International and heard her name called.
By Peyton.
Who was standing right there, apparently waiting for her.
Ooooh, shit.
She took a deep breath, adjusted her backpack, grabbed her carry-on, and headed toward him. She’d planned to take a ride share home, but it looked like that wouldn’t be necessary.
He reached for her carry-on without a word—although his look of brotherly and Pack Alpha-ly disappointment spoke volumes—and she handed it over.
“Thought you were supposed to be on vacation,” she snarked.
He tipped his head, his meaning obvious. She followed him to the elevator, to the parking garage, and then to his SUV. And still, neither of them spoke, aloud or with their Prime.
He started the SUV and they sat there in silence for a moment with the AC running before he finally spoke.
“What happened?”
“First, I’m curious about what gave me away.”
“The coffee you bought this morning on your credit card.”
She winced. “Shit.”
“Yeah. You forgot Ken has access to those records since Gillian’s not supposed to be working. The system sent a text because of the purchase outside of the country. You were already on the plane when he called me.”
“Fuck. That was sloppy of me. I should’ve had Alvarez buy it for m—”
“Dewi!” She flinched, and he continued. “Ken is not happy with you. I’m not exactly thrilled with you, either. I’d say it’s currently a toss-up between his level of anger and Gillian’s at me for leaving for Europe before I got abducted.”
She slowly nodded. “I figured he’d be upset if he found out. Which was why I was trying not to let him find out.”
“And frankly, I do not blame him.” He looked at her. “Give me a reason not to agree to order you onto permanent desk duty?”
Dewi bristled but managed to temper it to merely tensing her shoulders. “He asked you to do that, huh?”
“Not yet. I wouldn’t be shocked if he did. In fact, I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t. How did you lie to him about where you were going? He said you flew out to San Antonio?”
“I never lied to him,” she countered. “I told him I wanted to touch base with Enforcers, but I never said who or where. Last time I checked, Alvarez is one of my Enforcers. How did you come to meet my flight?”
“I called Alvarez and asked him where the fuck you were immediately after Ken called me asking me where the fuck you were. I looked up the purchase info for the coffee shop, cross-referenced the address, and connected those two dots. Wasn’t difficult.
Alvarez gave me your flight info. Although apparently someone Primed him to defer to you on the details of what happened until after you returned to the States.
Peyton waited, and when he realized she wouldn’t volunteer anything, he finally continued. “What did you do?”
“That’s not specific enough, you—”
“Why did you go to Mexico, Dewi? What did you do or accomplish, and what, if any, repercussions can we expect from those actions?”
“I proactively took care of a problem in a permanent and relatively low-risk way.” She stared out through the windshield at the dim parking garage. “I left Alvarez to observe the outcome.”
He stared at her, waiting.
She finally broke first. Sure, they could sit there in the car all night staring at each other, but she knew that was pointless. “I took care of Abundio’s baby momma, Jacinta, who was getting nosy.”
His eyebrows arched. “You killed her?”
“No, she’s pregnant, duh. Give me a little freaking credit, huh?” Dewi picked at her nails. “I gave her a choice. Which way she chooses is up to her.”
“Sooo… the situation is not taken care of?”
“Either she stays silent, or she dies by her own hand.”
“Dewi!”
She snapped. “Listen, you did not hear that woman, how she talked. You didn’t see into her brain.
She was totally and completely fucked up, and if she’d gotten her hooks into us, it wouldn’t have been easy to take care of like we did Manuel Segura.
She is flat-out evil. But she’s also way smarter than Miranda and Manuel put together.
Hell, I’m certain she’s smarter than Abundio. She’s certainly outfoxed him so far.”
He glared at her.
Lying to Peyton would do no good for a variety of reasons, and words didn’t adequately explain it, so she reached over and grabbed his wrist and showed him. His face went blank as he absorbed the info, then he looked sick. He twisted his wrist free of her grip and didn’t speak for several minutes.
Then he blew out a long breath, tipping his head back against the headrest, eyes closed, and pinching the bridge of his nose. His dark mental rumblings were so loud she heard them clearly, even though they were no longer touching.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “I have had a recent forcible mental readjustment about the cruelty of people.” He finally opened his eyes and looked at her. “There wasn’t any other way, huh?”
“No,” she quietly said.
“Now what?”
“I—” Her cell phone rang, and she looked at the screen, her heart dropping.
“Answer it,” he said when he saw the caller. “On speaker.”
She thumbed into the call and Peyton didn’t even let her speak. “Alvarez, it’s Peyton Bleacke. I’m here with Dewi. You’re on speaker. Status report.”
He didn’t respond at first. “I’m here,” Dewi wearily said. “Go ahead. He already knows.”
“Situation is resolved,” Alvarez said. “Parameters met. Boy, you weren’t fucking kidding that I’d know.”
“What’s that mean?” Peyton snapped.
“Uh, sorry, sir. Subject confirmed deceased.”
Dewi couldn’t look at Peyton but felt his gaze drill into the side of her skull. “Do we know if she said anything to anyone?” he asked.
“I followed her into the church, where she went straight after work. There were maybe twenty of us in the sanctuary, where the priest was hearing confessions. She walked into the booth and, about a minute later, there was a gunshot. It was chaos, but I was able to run up and see because the priest had jumped out and was trying to pull her out to do CPR.”
Dewi swallowed the bile threatening to rise in her throat.
“But you’re sure she’s dead?” Peyton asked.
“Yes, sir. I slipped outside in the confusion and waited where I could watch with the crowd. She was rolled out in a body bag on a gurney. Abundio Segura showed up and screamed his fucking head off before they loaded her into the coroner’s van.
I was kind of hoping the guy would stroke out, but I don’t think he did. ”
“Okay. What are you doing now?”
“I’m heading to the airport, as per Dewi’s instructions.”
“What about your apartment?”
“All my stuff’s in a shipping container arriving in Port Galveston sometime tomorrow. I am completely mobile. You tell me where you want me, sir.”
“Book a ticket on literally the first flight you can get a seat on out of there to anywhere in the continental United States,” Peyton said.
“Then make your way to Tampa from there. Come to Dewi’s.
Have the container shipped and dropped at Dewi’s house.
Pack’s dime, obviously. Coordinate it with Badger. We’ll decide where to go from there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Call me on my cell immediately when you’re back on US soil, no matter what time it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Alvarez? You do not discuss this with anyone besides me and Dewi. Understood?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Safe travels.”
“Thank you, sir.”
She felt Peyton reach over and end the call. He didn’t speak for several minutes.
Finally, “Look at me, Dewster.”
She forced herself to meet his gaze.
“Normally, I would chew you a new asshole for this.”
“I wasn’t going to send someone else to do it,” she quietly said. “I couldn’t. Even if, logistically, I could’ve sent someone else. I refuse to drop that weight on someone else’s head.”
He sighed. “You didn’t tell me first because you knew I’d order you not to.”
“Fuckin’ A,” she muttered.
“This was extreme.”
“Yuuup.”
He slowly shook his head. “I can’t and won’t dictate things between you and Ken.
But no one else gets told about this. Not Badger, not Duncan, not Trent, and damned sure not Gillian.
If you tell Ken, you have to Prime him to stay silent.
If he needs to talk to someone about it, he can talk to me. Period. Do you understand me?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“What was that?” he growled.
Oops. Pack Alpha time. “Yes, sir.”
“And you never do something like this again without consulting me first, unless you or someone besides me is the Pack Alpha, or there’s an immediate threat to one of our packmates’ lives.”
“Hopefully, we never have to. But what about blood edicts? I am the head of the expanded pack council—”
“You fucking know what I mean, Dewi. Swear to me.”
“Fine. Yes, sir. I swear. I didn’t enjoy this, you know. But I couldn’t risk her digging deeper or revealing information. We still might have to kill Abundio. Miranda is MIA, and Jacinta believed Abundio killed her or had her killed. Miranda obviously knew something.”
“Unless they bring a threat to us in the future, we are done with the Segura cartel and any people related to it in any capacity,” he said. “That is a Pack Alpha order. Do you understand me?”
She clenched her jaw. “Yes, sir, but how are we going to know if they’re doing something unless or until they show up at our front door? And by then it’s too late.”
“What you don’t know—and would have known had you looped me in—was that I had a plan if they were still gathering digital intel.
Finding out what they’re up to, as well as salting false info.
Scattering virtual chaff. Flooding them with junk data that they would have needed years to unravel, and with just enough truth in there, harmless truths, that they would have chased their own tails trying to figure out what was true and what wasn’t until they gave up.
And with fake data that, if it got back to others and started showing up elsewhere, we’d be able to track the network. ”