CHAPTER TWO
Their disturbance made no sense. I’ve known the three men for years and worked side by side with two of them—Aaron and Danny. And never had I faced their incredulous madness.
But what surprised me the most was when Danny ran in worry to the woman, whose handcuffed hands I was still holding.
Danny was a beast of a man. Built like a damn bear, his size alone could be frightening. But when you got to know him, you’d realize he was a puppy. Ben was more reckless; he looked like a man looking for a good time as if always unattached, but I knew his loyalty ran deep.
Then there was Aaron. Stoic, always serious and well-poised, I was pretty sure he didn’t know how to smile. But he protected the ones he cared for. There were few, and they were lucky. I thought I was one of those few lucky ones. But seeing him fidgeting, one hand on his hip and the other one rubbing his mouth, while Ben ran his hands through his hair as they watched the woman in concern was making me question our situation.
Danny pulled her from me and placed his hands on her face, watching for any sign of harm. “My God, cari?o . How are you?”
She shrugged one shoulder as if uncaring, but I didn’t miss how her shoulders relaxed slightly. “Arrested.”
He pulled her into his chest to hug her like a father would. I knew he was in a happy and strong relationship. But the way he was hugging that woman and the fact she was comfortable with it were bothering me for all the wrong reasons.
Ben took his turn and pulled her in for a hug. “Out of all of us, I always assumed I was the one who would get arrested.”
She smiled at him mischievously. “I’ve got to surprise you all every once in a while. To keep you guys on your toes. Please, forgive me. I’d love to hug you back, but my hands are kind of tied.” She looked at me and leaned her head indicating her hands at her back. “Do you mind?”
For the first time in a long time, I had no idea what to do at my job. I made hard and fast decisions for a living. Yet I was unsure of what my next step should be. Or what was going on.
Aaron was still breathing hard by my side. “What the hell were you thinking?”
That seemed like a sign that I should uncuff her.
It was hard to remain respectful and remind myself of our friendship. I felt like I was being accused of a terrible crime when I was trying to stop one.
Against my better judgment, I took her handcuffs off. “I was doing my job. And what the hell are you thinking? Since when do we get in cahoots with dirty people?”
Ben frowned as he pulled a chair for the woman and another one for himself beside her. “Dirty people? What are you talk—is this a Super Mario World’s map?” He picked up her drawing from the table to inspect it, and I felt even more like an idiot. That’s why I knew that map. It wasn’t the answer to my assignment. Unless my mission was to fix pipes and defeat Wario. “Did you draw this?”
She suppressed her grin and shook her head innocently. “It wasn’t me. It was Chris P. Bacon . Marvelous lady.”
The three men looked at me for answers, but if they couldn’t explain her behavior, how could I?
Aaron got us back on track. “What did you mean by dirty people?”
“Well, it surprises me how cozy you get with someone so deeply connected with the cartel,” I snapped. “When you assigned me to this position to conclude what the Prodigy started, you should’ve been clear with me that some people we’d let slide.”
“Wait a second.” She sat up straight in her chair, and it was the first time she seemed to be taking the whole debacle seriously. “Were you assigned to take the place of the Bryant person? Are you Ethan Cross?”
I didn’t understand the uncomfortable energy that took over the place so I ignored it. “I’m afraid so. It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Bacon .”
Ignoring my sarcasm, she looked at each of her cozy friends in confirmation. “This is your Ethan? The guy you’ve been talking about nonstop for the last year? The mysterious hunk with the sexy voice, the guy you claim to be a nerdy genius is this one?”
“Hunk with a sexy voice?”
She turned to me with sharp eyes. “Shush. I’m talking.” She pointed a thumb at me. “The one who arrested me? Who also happens to be the same one to take over my place?”
“Take over your place? Why would I want your position in the cartel?”
“I don’t have a position in the cartel,” she said through gritted teeth.
The fire in her eyes shouldn’t be such a turn-on. “Then why the hell were you gallivanting around the Alacráns ?”
“ To bring them down! ”
Danny pursed his lips and looked down, as Ben and Aaron stared at her in disbelief. “ What? ”
Aaron was vibrating, barely containing himself, struggling to control his emotions and keep his unaffected posture. After some deep breaths, he addressed me and the spitfire, “What happened?”
Since she didn’t seem inclined to answer after her slip, I took charge. “She was trying to make a deal with the cartel to buy their commodities, so I brought her in.”
Ben ran his hands through his hair. “What the fuck? Were you trying to buy their drugs?”
She placed a hand over her chest in indignance. “That’s preposterous! I would never buy their drugs! I was trying to buy the girls.”
Aaron threw his hands at his side. “That’s way worse!”
She looked at him apologetically. “Yeah, I admit, it sounds bad.”
Rubbing his hand again over his lips, he sat down in one of the chairs across from the woman. “How on Earth did you think that was a good idea?”
“At first, I was looking for Matias, but then we found the girl , so I had to try and get closer to them.”
Aaron waved a hand to make her stop. “Wait a minute. Matias was murdered months ago.”
“Yes, and a lot of info we could work on came from the bits I could gather from the cartel.”
Ben startled beside her. “You’ve been bringing new information out of your ass for a year! So what? As soon as you left the hospital you decided to play house with the cartel?”
Why the hell was she in the hospital ?
I stared at Danny, who was oddly quiet. “You knew about it, right?”
He looked back at me and the other men and nodded. “Yes, I did.”
Ben cursed and Aaron was ready to combust. “And you allowed?”
“ Allowed ?” she questioned with a fire burning in her eyes again.
Danny placed a hand on her shoulder and stated, “I chose to trust her. If anyone could pull this off, it was her. And all the assignments we had for the last year regarding the cartel were successful because of what she was doing.”
Aaron took a labored breath and motioned for her to go on.
She rubbed her left arm and looked at him. “When Matias was gone, I figured we had a small window to get the girl out, so when I set up a meeting with Keyes—”
“ You were with Bryan Keyes? ” the three men shouted.
“Damn it, I forgot how much you knew,” she mumbled.
Aaron exhaled heavily and gulped, in an attempt to calm himself. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
She shrugged and mumbled, “It didn’t come up organically.” At their distrustful faces, she admitted, “Fine. Because you would’ve said ‘no.’”
“Of course, we would’ve said ‘no!’”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you! And I’m in the wrong here, unbelievable.”
Aaron rubbed his forehead. “My hair used to be black before I met you. Why? Why did you think that was a good idea?”
She looked at him, her expression pleading for understanding. “Because we need to get the girl out.”
“Who is this girl you’re talking about?” I asked.
“The one the agency left behind right before they canned me and you took my job. How long had you been aiming for it, by the way?”
I was getting tired of not understanding what she said. “What job? The only person I replaced was the Bryant Prodigy guy, and you’re really getting in the way of me concluding what he started.”
She snorted. “Of course, you’d think it was a man.”
“That’s not what I think,” I defended. “It’s what everyone says. He was the guy who was dead set on bringing the cartel down until he was killed over a year ago.”
Ben and Aaron fidgeted in their seats, and Danny curled his beefy arm over her shoulder as she squeezed her eyes and hung her head.
After a while of uncomfortable silence, Aaron explained in a quiet voice, “Zachary Bryant wasn’t the Prodigy.”
I sat down next to Aaron. “So, who is? And who the hell is she?”
She opened her eyes and stared into mine. “I’m Mia Bryant.”
That made even less sense. “You’re related to the Prodigy?”
Ben cursed at her side. “She is The Bryant Prodigy.”
I looked at her just in time to see her making a face at Ben, then she turned to me and offered a smile that never reached her eyes. I burst out laughing. “Oh, come on.” She raised the damn brow again which made me swallow my chuckle. “You can’t be serious. There’s no record of that, and everyone talks about the guy who was kill—”
“ Stop talking about him ,” she hissed. “And if you were so set on getting my job, all you had to do was read the reports on the previous assignments.”
I scoffed. “So that’s your issue? That I replaced you, and you don’t get to carry the nickname anymore?”
She leaned over the table fuming. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking you know me, just because you followed me around and made a bad call arresting me because you were too desperate to skyrocket your career.”
I leaned closer to her until our faces were inches apart. “I don’t know how you get these three fooled, but I know you’re not as special as they claim. I’ve been watching you for quite some time—”
“Creep.”
“Besides,” I ignored her, “there’s nothing about you at the agency.”
She tilted her head in confusion, while Ben frowned. “What do you mean?”
I gazed at him. “Everything on the previous assignments regarding Bryant was redacted. Even if you guys are telling the truth and the crazy lady here was the Prodigy, there was no way of knowing it.”
She turned to Aaron, who was visibly uncomfortable. “You redacted the files?”
“It wasn’t me. They thought it’d be best if—”
“If you what? Pretended I was never there? Wow, your agency went to a lot of trouble to erase my existence.”
“That’s a new low, Scott,” Ben chimed in.
“Maybe you should stick to what you know, Walker,” Aaron snapped.
“How come I didn’t know this?” Danny asked. “I was there for a while after Mia was let go.”
Aaron sighed. “I wasn’t allowed to say it.”
“There’s a lot you claim you’re not allowed to talk about,” Ben mumbled.
“I think we have more important things to discuss than your guilty conscience, Walker.” Aaron was getting uncharacteristically angry. He closed his eyes and pulled in a deep breath. “We need to put our differences aside,” he looked at me then at Mia. “All of us.” He fidgeted in his seat. “Salazar’s escaped prison.”
Mia’s eyes turned even bigger, and I knew they matched mine.
Pablo “ El Segador ” Salazar was the right hand of the head of the cartel. He was the devil personified. One of the most vicious and cruel men I’d read about, Salazar was arrested a few years earlier by none other than the Bryant Prodigy, who I was only then realizing was the spitfire in front of me. I didn’t want to admire her for it, but it was hard not to.
Mia stared at Aaron. “How on earth did he manage to escape? You said there were even more people on top of his security. What did they use to guard him? Their spit?” When he rubbed his lips with no answer, she tipped her head back in defeat. “Someone inside is once again working with the cartel.” She stood up to pace the room.
“That’s only one of our issues.” We all looked at Aaron. “He already has a vendetta against you, Mia. He’s not the kind of man who easily forgets, and I can assure you he remembers you’re the one who put him there. Not only that, with everything that happened—”
He let his words die, but we all knew what he wasn’t saying. It was only a matter of time until Salazar realized his son—Matias, the same Matias who terrorized Danny’s family and friends a few months back—was murdered. By the people in front of me. Things were about to get ugly.
“More than ever, we need to stick together,” Aaron asserted. “Not only for our safety, but to put an end to this. Things have been running for far longer than they should’ve, we need to join forces. We all want the same things, even if we’re going at it differently.” He pulled the lapels of his coat and sat straighter. “That’s why the agency wants...that’s why I want...the agency is offering...”
With a hand on her hip, Mia frowned and eyed Aaron suspiciously, mirroring my wariness. “Out with it, Scottie.”
“The agency wants to add to the contract with Bryants their company. And did you assault him?”
She shrugged one shoulder at Aaron. “I’m not proud of it.” Then raised her hand, the tips of her index finger and thumb almost touching, and mouthed dramatically at Ben and Danny. “I am a little.” She looked at me and made the number two with her fingers. “Twice.”
Before I could argue, Aaron placed a hand on my shoulder and took in a deep breath. “We need to work together. So, what do you say?”
“I’m in,” Ben assured quickly, followed by an emphatic and agreeing Danny.
I was torn in multiple pieces. I’ve heard the tales of The Bryant Prodigy, but I was having a hard time reconciling the unstoppable legend to the deranged woman who seemed to have no sense of safety or common sense. The head below my waist was happy at the prospect of working closely together, but I had no reason to trust her. For all I knew, if she was who they claimed she was and still got canned from the agency, maybe she wasn’t as good and honest as she had them believe. On the other hand, it was a way to keep an eye on her. If she was corrupt or just plain crazy as seemed to be the case, then it’d be best to have her closer.
I was at war with myself when Aaron called my name. “It seems to me you’ve met under...suboptimal circumstances, but trust me on this.”
I looked at her again, and we stared at each other for a few seconds, both of us deep in our analysis over the other. Neither of us willing to back down from our silent staring match. Once again, I was awash with the feeling that she was about to change my life. If for better or for once, only time would tell.
“I’m in,” I conceded.
The men looked expectantly at her as she looked down at the paper and bit the inside of her bottom lip. “What are my options here?”
Aaron sat up straighter in his chair and buttoned his suit. “Well, from what I gathered, you seemed to have broken a couple of laws. And you assaulted a federal agent.”
“What? Will Phoenix here press charges? Did I ruffle some feathers?”
Ben snorted loudly, which only served to deepen my frown.
Aaron cleared his throat. “We will ignore whatever reckless thing you might’ve done and make that payment upfront. Along with other payments as our goals are met. Like capturing Salazar again, taking down Gomes, and so on.”
Danny pointed at the paper. “So, there’s more than that?”
Aaron nodded and the other men cursed. Mia bit her lip again, then ran her hand over her mouth, rubbed her forehead, glanced at me, groaned, and picked up the paper again.
Ben leaned closer to her. “It worries me that you’re not answering.”
“I’m thinking.”
“What is there to think about?” he exclaimed. “Did you see how many zeroes they put?”
“I mean, is that so important? When did we become the people who do stuff for money?” Despite her wise words, she stared at the paper with longing before looking at me and scrunching her nose again.
“Since I realized my son craps for a living. I love my boy, but this is basically what I spend on diapers.”
She looked at him in desperation. “But is it really worth my peace of mind? I have to work with the reviving bird over there.”
“You know I can hear you, right?” I asked in annoyance.
Mia turned to me. “Do you mind giving us the room? This is a private conversation; it doesn’t concern you.”
“You’re talking about me!”
“Thank you. Scottie will call you when we’re done.”
“Mia,” Aaron warned.
She bit her lips again and rubbed her hands over her legs. “Fine,” she spat. “I’ll work with him. But I won’t have fun and I’ll complain the whole time.”
“Wow, I can’t wait,” I chimed in dryly.
She smiled at me. “Your life as you know it is over.”
Truer words had never been said.
Before things could escalate, Aaron stood up. “So that’s settled. Ethan will start right away—”
“Wait.” Of course she wasn’t done. “He can’t just leave his position at the restaurant.”
“I don’t think it’s safe for him to stay there. Even if your...arrest wasn’t broadcast, someone might’ve heard about it. We need to control the narrative, act fast, and get him out of there before they realize he’s not who they think.”
“I agree it’s dangerous, but it’ll be even more suspicious if he vanishes. I’m not saying he should go back if he feels it’s not safe, but maybe we should consider a way for him to get out without alarming them.”
As sincere as she sounded, I was having a hard time believing she was worried about me. Being reckless as she proved to be, I was more inclined to bet she was just an entitled brat who created a mess for fun.
But I had to agree with her. “I can’t close that door like that. I need to at least part ways in a friendly manner. Besides, I’m almost done creating the program to install in their system. Once I do it, then I can leave and still get their information.”
Aaron pondered our words. “You’re right. Come up with a story to justify your leaving without bringing heat to your front door.” He rubbed his lips again. “You can’t go alone, but I need to go back to base.”
“Danny and I ran here, but we’re also needed back home,” Ben said.
“That leaves us you, Mia,” Aaron addressed her. “This could be dangerous for Ethan. You can’t broadcast that you’re working together, but people there might get angry and hurt him, so you need to go as well.”
“Sure, I’d love to see him get hurt.”
“Do you want to try again?”
“I will...hurt him myself? I’m not sure what you’re expecting of me, Scottie?”
I squinted at her. “Are you always this infuriating?”
She grinned at me. “That’s just for you, Phoenix. I guess you bring out the worst in me.”
Aaron sighed heavily. “Let’s just wrap up this day and regroup once we’re rested. After that, Danny, Ben, and I will leave, and you two just go to the restaurant and get out of there alive. And don’t kill each other.”
Mia turned her pleading eyes at me. “May I go now, warden?”
“I should’ve called the arrest when I had the chance,” I mumbled.
Danny stood up. “The circumstances aren’t ideal, but it was nice seeing you, Ethan. I’m looking forward to working with you again.”
Ben slapped me on the shoulder. “Welcome to the Company.”
They left the room, and I stayed behind with Aaron. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Their company is the best call for it. Believe me, their skills are unmatched.”
“What about her? Are you sure we can trust her?”
He slipped his hands into his slacks pockets. “Her methods might seem...unorthodox sometimes. But believe me, she gets the results. Her nickname is fitting. Who knows, you might end up enjoying working with her.”
I highly doubted that.
“What’s her deal with the guy everyone thought was the Prodigy? The one she didn’t want me to talk about?”
Aaron looked down and shook his head. “Zachary Bryant. He’s her brother. Was , I mean.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“What’s the short version?”
“He...uhm...They were in a dire situation. She threw a few grenades, he was in the building, it was...it’s best if we don’t talk about it. At least for now.”
Great. Not only was I supposed to work with a woman I wasn’t convinced was honest and innocent, but I also had to work with a deranged person who apparently had killed her own brother.