Jacking Jill

11

“You don’t think she’ll notice her bag is gone?” Romeo Carmine closed the door to the room he used as a private office when he visited his sister and her no-good boy. He watched Kay Steffen take a seat in one of the straight-backed chairs facing the walnut desk. She crossed one long black-booted leg over the other knee, straightening her pencil-thin skirt, then digging into the small black bag she’d swiped from Nina’s friend Jill.

Kay shrugged, pulling out Jill’s phone and squinting at it. “Of course she’ll notice. But what’s she going to do? Come storming in here? Call the cops? Start screaming for help? Don’t worry, Romeo. I’ve got her all turned around and mixed up. She’s probably hyperventilating into a paper bag right now, wondering what the hell she was thinking strutting her ass into this den of snakes.” She smiled tightly at Romeo before glancing back at Jill’s phone. Kay tapped and swiped on the screen, which was locked. She flipped it over, opened up the back, pulled out the battery, and poked around in the space near the SIM card. “Nothing to indicate she’s working for any federal agency. No tracking or listening devices other than normal GPS and microphone.” Kay snapped the battery back into place but didn’t turn the phone on again. “It’s just a normal phone. Locked, but we can unlock it using these new AI hacking apps developed by the Israelis.”

Romeo sighed, stroked his clean-shaved chin, then strolled around his large walnut desk and sat down heavily in the leather swivel chair. He watched Kay connect her own phone to Jill’s device via a small black cord. Her long angular face crinkled up in concentration, lighting up a network of crows-feet and worry-lines that made the thirty-something lawyer look far older than her age.

Still beautiful, though, Romeo thought as Kay swiped and tapped and then smiled with an almost girlish delight at solving the problem of breaking into Jill’s phone. Yes, beautiful, but broken. Damaged beyond repair.

“Nothing interesting,” Kay declared after a few minutes of swiping through Jill’s phone. “Which tells me everything. She hasn’t known Jack Wagner for very long—in fact, there’s a text message sent to his number from earlier tonight. Looks like they only just exchanged phone numbers.”

Romeo blinked himself back from where he’d been running his gaze down Kay’s long lean body, wondering what she’d do if he tried to touch her. He quickly dismissed the thought. He knew damn well what Kay would do if any man touched her. Romeo wasn’t going to risk losing an eye or a testicle or maybe his life before he managed to overpower this broken butterfly. Besides, she was far too useful as his lawyer and advisor to risk losing her by trying to stick his dick into a pussy that was off-limits for not just him but for any man, every man, always and forever.

“Maybe he’s an escort she hired as her date,” Romeo said with a lazy smile even though the tension was mounting inside his body that wasn’t as lean now that he was well into his fifties, but—thanks to the testosterone injections—carried more bulked-up muscle than when he’d been a younger man. “Maybe she deleted all their previous messages. Maybe Jack got a new number. Maybe they’ve known each for years.” He ran his palm carefully over his styled hair which was still thick but dyed jet-black. “Look, I’m all for being cautious—even paranoid—with this new Zeta thing we’re trying to arrange with Diego Vargas. But this guy Jack Wagner might just be a coincidence. Sure, he’s former Special Forces. But so are a couple of my guys. Hell, there are dozens of guests in the hall right now who are former military. The U.S. Military has a big footprint, Kay. You walk into any crowded room in any part of America—including our prisons—and you’ll find folks who’ve served.” He took a breath, sighed it out, shook his head. “Besides, I saw how the guy reacted out there when Bobby called his woman a cunt. Jack wasn’t faking it, Kay. That was pure instinct. The instinct to protect his mate. It’s animalistic. Primal. Wired into every man who’s still got a pair of balls.”

Kay’s face twisted with a mixture of scorn and disgust. Her eyes darkened to the color of a night-sea, and Romeo stayed quiet and waited for the darkness to pass through this dangerously damaged woman. She didn’t respond well to these sorts of comments.

Perhaps because there’d been no man there to protect Kay when she needed it.

Still, what happened to Kay worked out well for Romeo in the long run. After all, it was what made that fiercely principled federal prosecutor switch sides, come to Romeo seeking justice.

The kind of justice that “civilized” society frowned upon.

The kind of justice that was primal, primitive, ancient.

And addictive.

Yes, Romeo thought as he watched Kay glance through Jill’s phone again before sliding it back into the bag and zipping the bag closed. Yes, Kay has acquired a taste of what it feels like to have power over life and death. And that’s a rush more addictive than any drug.

“All right, I admit, there is something about those two that doesn’t fit my story,” Kay said thoughtfully as she tossed the stolen bag onto Romeo’s desk. “I’m sure they only just met, but at the same time, there’s definitely some kind of spark between them. I saw them on the dancefloor. Yes, that guy Jack strikes me as a smooth-talking player with more notches in his belt than Genghis Khan. But their chemistry seems more than just an act, more than just cover for whatever Jack’s plan is.” She crossed her arms over her chest, exhaled heavily, looked down at her slim body, then back up at Romeo. “It’s possible this is about Diego Vargas,” she said quietly, her voice betraying a subtle tremble. “Maybe Jack is on Diego’s trail, not yours.”

Romeo’s face darkened. “How? You said this guy Diego is a ghost. Mexican Special Forces training, plus he’s tech-savvy, well-connected, and decently financed. Fuck, if someone’s onto Diego, then they might be onto you, Kay.” He ran his fingers through his long wavy hair now, undoing the careful styling as he felt his coolness threaten to unravel. “Shit, you know what? Jack Wagner left the mansion some time ago, before you walked into my office. My guards said he seemed to be heading back to the Winchester Hotel.” Romeo glanced grimly into Kay’s eyes. “Maybe he’s going to search your fucking room, Kay! Will he find anything?”

Kay’s face paled briefly. She swallowed, then shook her head. “He won’t find anything. Nothing that implicates you, anyway.” She paused, stroked her lovely throat with the back of her hand, her jacket sleeve pulling back just enough to give Romeo a glimpse at that intricate tattoo which looked like a dragon or some kind of serpent. “But maybe we back off on this deal for a bit, Romeo. I’ll toss my burner phone, check out of the hotel, stay at the mansion through the weekend. We haven’t gone far enough with Diego and the Zetas to implicate us yet. We haven’t crossed the point of no return yet, Romeo. Maybe we shouldn’t cross it at all.”

Romeo’s gaze hardened. He shook his head firmly, held Kay’s gaze until she blinked. “I need this deal, Kay. Every other mafia family is already deep into drugs. Legalized online gambling has killed the bookie business. Protection isn’t much of a money-maker these days. Neither is loan-sharking.”

“You still have deep connections in the dockworkers union,” Kay pointed out. “You still collect fees for placing paroled gang-members in fake union jobs which will cover for them with parole officers. You still own a bunch of parole officers too, Romeo. And your legitimate investments are still solid.” She sighed, her eyes suddenly looking tired. “Romeo, look, we’ve managed to close down the bookie businesses and launder all the money so that you’re pretty damn clean now. Sure, you’re still running all those kickbacks to the union bosses and you’ve still got your fingers into some other illegal pies. But drugs are a different game, Romeo. Especially the kind of drugs that the Zetas will ship up from South America.” She shook her head. “Meth. Heroin. That cheap Chinese-made Fentanyl. It’s all poison, Romeo. It’s killing people. Just like it’s killing Bobby, your own flesh and blood.”

“My only complaint is that it isn’t killing Bobby fast enough.” Romeo chuckled darkly. “And you know my feelings on this whole flesh and blood crap, Kay. I’ve always hated the mafia obsession with bloodlines and lineage, about tracing your ancestors back to some Italian olive-patch where some paisano banged your grandma under the Sicilian sun. The whole thing is bullshit. I built myself up from nothing, and I know that it’s the struggle to succeed that’s the real prize. Not the money. Not the mansions. It’s the fight that makes the man.” He rumbled out a breath, leaned back in the leather chair that he’d paid for in this mansion which he’d paid for. “Nobody’s going to be entitled to my empire just because they happened to slide out of the right vagina with the right fucking genes. This is America. You don’t inherit the throne. You seize your own.”

Kay rubbed her eyes, looked up and sighed. “Then why not let Bobby build his own drug empire like he wants? Let me connect Diego to Bobby. Then we can both step aside. Let Bobby take his chances with the Zetas and the drug trade.”

Romeo shook his head. “Bobby has the Carmine name. I might not give a rat’s ass about bloodlines and family, but the other mafia families do, and so does the FBI and DEA and ATF and every other federal law enforcement agency. The kid is full of that mafia-machismo from the movies. Bobby will toss the Carmine name around like it’s his brand. I’ll be implicated whether I’m a part of it or not. Besides, he doesn’t have the stones to build an empire worth shit. Bobby’s a lazy fuck-up, just like his miserable piece-of-shit dad was.” He sighed. “Wish I could just kill the kid, but it would break his mother’s heart. And she’d know it was me, even if I made it look like an accident.” He shook his head again. “Anyway, hopefully Bobby will be out of the picture soon enough. He’s a junkie, and he’s about to marry another junkie. Two junkies with unlimited access to cash and no real-world responsibilities? They’ll both be dead from overdoses or straight-up heart-failure before their first anniversary. And my sister’s thankfully too old to pop out another bastard child, so that’s the end of the fucking bloodline, good riddance. You’ve seen my instructions for what happens to my estate and operations after I’m gone, Kay. Though with the life-extending miracles coming our way thanks to medical breakthroughs, it’s possible I’ll live forever, right?”

Kay gazed at him with that unreadable expression which Romeo sometimes thought was admiration but was painfully aware was something more clinical and analytic. She was just trying to figure him out like a puzzle, a case, build the narrative for the judge, spin the story for the jury.

Fuck, she used to be a damn good prosecutor, Romeo reminded himself. The woman put away more gang-members than any other U.S. Attorney on the East Coast.

But you can never put away all the gang members.

And sometimes the ones left outside come for the bitch who put their buddies away.

And they show her there are things worse than death.

“Let this Diego thing die a natural death, Romeo.” Kay’s voice was low now, that hint of a tremble still discernible. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Romeo snapped forward in his swivel chair, jamming his elbows onto the table and leaning across the desk. “To hell with your bad feelings, all right? I need this deal to happen.” He took a breath, exhaled slow to calm himself, then leaned back in his chair and tried to recover his poise. “Look, you remember all that money I invested in that hedge fund run by the Northrup brothers?”

Kay blinked twice, then nodded quickly. “Northrup Capital. Kyle and Kenneth Northrup.” She frowned, tilted her head to the left. “They were both killed along with their wives a few months ago, right? Some kind of messed-up domestic dispute, apparently. On board a cruise ship, if I’m remembering right.”

Romeo nodded. “The Rivington. It almost destroyed the hedge fund, but then at the last minute Northrup Capital got bought out by an offshore investment company called IMG Corp.”

“Right,” said Kay. “You had me look into IMG a few weeks ago. It’s a complicated network of anonymous shell companies incorporated in jurisdictions with airtight bank-secrecy laws. Cyprus, mostly, but also the Cayman Islands and a few other up-and-coming offshore havens. Couldn’t trace it all the way to the actual owner.” She frowned. “Didn’t you sell your stake in Northrup after IMG took over the assets? I advised you to get out of it, Romeo.”

Romeo sighed. “My finance guys told me to stay in. It was generating serious cash every month.” He rubbed his jaw, thought back to that strange phone call he’d gotten from IMG Corp, wondered how much he should tell Kay about Northrup and now IMG’s connection with the Zeta Nation via those junk bonds. “Look, I take your advice on a lot of things, but you aren’t my financial lawyer. IMG generates too much cash for me to simply sell the investment and walk away.” He hesitated, then decided that since Kay was going to be making first contact with Diego, she should know everything.

It wouldn’t matter soon, anyway. Kay was already getting close to wanting out of this life, this game, this trap, Romeo knew.

Which meant he would have to get rid of Kay as soon as this deal with Diego got done.

Even though it would hurt him to do so.

Because there was something so tragic about this wounded woman, this broken butterfly, Romeo thought with a stab of uncharacteristic pity. But she was beyond pity, beyond salvation, beyond rescue. She would never heal, and the damage made her deadly, the wounds made her vicious. Romeo could sense that Kay was beginning to think she’d paid off her debt to him, was ready to walk away from this world. Sure, she might have to give up some of the addictive power Romeo had given her through his connections with prison gangs—connections forged from his long history of setting up gang-members with fake union jobs so they could look clean on parole while getting back to their dirty businesses. But by now Kay had made those prison-gang connections her own, and Romeo sensed that if he let her live after this deal, Kay would continue to find ways to dispense justice inside prison walls, with or without him.

“I can’t do this without you, Kay,” he said quietly, keeping his voice steady. “I need you to get a read on this Diego guy for me, see if he’s for real. You’re the best I’ve ever seen at getting a read on a person, nailing the narrative, seeing the story. Do this last thing for me, and I promise I’ll let you walk away after things are up and running with Diego and the Zetas. I just need you to be my go-between for the next few months.”

Kay studied his eyes like she was trying to read his mind. “Why?” she said finally. “Attorney-client privilege doesn’t apply if your lawyer is part of a criminal enterprise, Romeo. Me being a go-between doesn’t protect you in a court of law if I’m cutting deals with drug-dealers on your behalf. You know better than that.”

“I do know better than that.” Romeo grinned. “You trained me well, Kay. I understand how attorney-client privilege works. Which means I understand that so long as I don’t ask you to break the law on my behalf, you cannot be forced by a judge to reveal our private conversations in a court of law.”

Kay sighed, then raised a thin black eyebrow that looked like it had been tattooed on her pale face. “So you just want me to get a read on Diego Vargas, work out the details of how this deal will work, then pass on the messages to you without committing to anything on your behalf.”

Romeo nodded. “Just like always. In fact, you’ve already communicated to me that you believe it’s a bad idea. Therefore, your legal advice to me is to stay away from this deal. Which means that attorney-client privilege will apply, and so I never need to worry about you being compelled by a judge to testify against me.” He took a breath, exhaled slow to let his words sink into Kay. “And I’ve got enough on you that there’s no way you’ll ever turn state’s witness against me. Years of arranging your little vigilante assassinations inside the walls of federal prisons will get you locked away for life. Which locks us in a comfortable stalemate, Kay. There are incentives for both of us to trust each other once our business relationship has concluded. It’s airtight. I can let you walk away without worrying that I’ll see you on a witness stand in a year.”

Romeo smiled when he saw a flicker of brightness in Kay’s eyes, like she saw where this was going, saw that it might indeed lead to freedom for her.

Of course, she was sharp enough—and most certainly distrustful enough—to know better. But they’d been close for years now, close enough that Romeo was damn sure there was nobody else in Kay’s life. No friends. No family. No lovers. No pets. Even someone as brilliant as Kay might have a blind spot.

She just might trust him enough to believe he would actually let her walk away.

“All right,” Kay said quietly, unable to hide the hope in her voice. “But you need to tell me everything about Northrup Capital and IMG Corp. You also need to come clean about who told you to connect with Diego Vargas and make a deal with the Zeta Nation.”

Romeo nodded, glanced at his big gold Rolex watch, then leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers. “Someone from IMG called me a few weeks ago. Sounded like a woman, but the voice was disguised, run through one of those AI-type modifiers.”

Kay frowned, said nothing, waited for Romeo to continue.

Romeo took a breath, blinked twice, rubbed the back of his neck.

Then he told Kay everything.

Everything he knew about Northrup Capital and their scheme to exploit congressional loopholes and use DC lobbyists and divert “foreign aid” money to tiny “nations” started by rogue groups like the Zetas in South America and the Urzis in the former Soviet Union outlands and the Kendos in the war-torn parts of West Africa and similar groups in the Middle East and Asia.

Kay listened like the trained lawyer she was, but her face paled to ash-white as Romeo explained how the mystery woman from IMG had said that if Senator Marcus Robinson won the Presidential Election in eleven months—which was looking very likely—those lobbyist-enabled loopholes would close up, the money being siphoned to the Zeta Nation would dry up, and the junk bonds that had been paying off big for IMG investors would be worth exactly zero.

Unless the Zetas got another source of big money.

Like direct access to the lucrative United States drug market via the sea, so they wouldn’t have to pay a hefty percentage to the Mexican Cartels who controlled the land-border crossings.

Direct access to America via the Philadelphia-area seaports.

Where Romeo Carmine had serious sway with the dockworkers and customs unions.

“So I win double if this works,” Romeo said, his excitement building at the prospect of expanding his empire, getting back into the great game, entering a new fight, a struggle that would re-awaken the instinct to claim and conquer, to possess and own, that primal masculine drive hardwired into any man who still had his balls. “I become a major player in the east-coast drug business. And my IMG investments keep paying off big because now the Zetas will have a fresh source of cash to pay their bondholders. The Urzis and the Kendos and the rest of those groups might still get wiped out financially once Senator Robinson wins the White House, but the Zetas are by far the biggest player in IMG’s investment portfolio, and this deal will ensure their survival.” He shrugged his heavily muscled shoulders, relaxed his face into his warmest, most convincing smile. “Look, these drugs are going to make their way onto American streets one way or the other. Bypassing the Mexican and Colombian Cartels will actually reduce the total amount of violence involved in the trade.” He shrugged again. “And you win too, Kay. If you want out, then after this I will let you go. I will consider your debt paid, Kay. You have my word.”

Kay was quiet for a long time. Romeo knew the wheels were turning behind those sapphire-blue eyes, but he couldn’t tell which way they were spinning. Still, if he knew one thing about Kay, it was that she thought in terms of incentives.

Because she understood the dark truth about human morality.

That it didn’t exist.

Morality was just a mirage that hid the chilling truth:

That every human heart carried within it the darkest potential of all humanity.

The only difference between the serial killer and the serial charity-donor is the particular circumstances of their lives, which side of the street fate found them, which side of the tracks destiny deposited them.

There was no changing human nature.

Sex and violence were the furnaces in which the human spirit had been forged through millions of years of brutal evolution.

Those fires burned brighter in some, darker in others, simmered low in most, raged wild in the chosen few.

But they still burned in every heart, in every man, every woman, every child.

And incentives were the fuel to those twin fires.

Give a man the right incentives, and you can make the whole thing explode into a geyser of sex, a volcano of violence.

“Senator Robinson,” Kay said thoughtfully after a long silence. “There was an explosion outside his townhome a couple of months ago. Robinson and his family were away on the campaign trail, so it probably wasn’t an assassination attempt—or at most it was a warning.”

Romeo frowned. He remembered reading about it. “It wasn’t a bomb, though, was it? Reports said it was a gas-line leak that caught a spark and exploded beneath a parked car.”

“Oh, come on.” Kay rolled her eyes. “That report had cover-up written all over it, Romeo. The whole scene was closed off to the media within minutes. No reports about who was at the scene, but witnesses said there were definitely ambulances, which means somebody was hurt, maybe even killed. All social-media posts and photos were scrubbed from the internet within hours.”

Romeo sighed. “All right, so maybe it was a bomb and not a gas leak. So what? Marcus Robinson is a high-profile Senator on his way to becoming President. He’s a black man, and like it or not, there are still some racist fuckholes in America who don’t want to see another black couple in the White House. So maybe the FBI and the Secret Service covered up the explosion while they’re hunting down the bastards who did it. How is that relevant to us, Kay? What’s your point?”

“Incentives, Romeo.” Kay smiled tightly. “Kyle and Kenneth Northrup very much had the incentive to want Marcus Robinson dead. But then, lo and behold, they end up dead on the good ship Rivington. Maybe they were taken out before they could take the Senator out?”

“By whom, Kay?” Romeo rubbed his eyes. “What are you saying? That the FBI or Secret Service is secretly murdering American citizens to clear Marcus Robinson’s path to the White House?”

“I doubt it’s the FBI or the Secret Service.” Kay narrowed her eyes. “But it’s very much the kind of thing the CIA might do. And Jack Wagner is very much the kind of man the CIA might recruit to a dark operations off-the-books team.”

Romeo raised his eyebrows, then rubbed his eyes again and sighed. “OK, look, I respect your ability to put together a narrative, but we’re going off the deep end here, Kay.” He looked up with a half-smile of disbelief. “The CIA? Really?”

Kay shrugged. “Why not? The Zetas and the CIA were connected way back in the early days of the War on Drugs. And the CIA is known to recruit mostly from Delta Force and Navy SEALs for their off-the-books operations. This could all be connected, Romeo. The CIA, Jack Wagner and his off-the-books team, the Northrups, and Diego Vargas. In fact, it’s plausible that Diego came to the United States to assassinate the Senator, might even be the guy responsible for that explosion which was covered up two months ago. Now Diego wants to cut this deal with you as Plan B for his Zeta Nation because the Senator’s being guarded by Secret Service, making it pretty much impossible to take him out.” Kay flashed that almost girlishly excited smile again as she leaned forward to shift her position on the hard-cushioned chair, giving Romeo an unintentional glimpse down the neckline of her black blouse.

Romeo stiffened behind the desk, his gaze taking in a fleeting image of tiny breasts unfettered by a bra. Romeo was surprised that Kay didn’t wear a bra, and his cock hardened at the sight of her petite tits with beautifully long nipples that would be nice to suck. But what sent the wildest arousal ripping through him was the shocking glimpse of Kay’s tattooed torso, her pale skin adorned with a sprawling black-inked design of some kind of multi-headed dragon-serpent creature with terrible talons and twitching tails and tempting tongues.

Who the fuck is this woman, Romeo marveled as he momentarily lost track of their conversation because all the blood had left his brain to surge into his cock. He had a big fucking erection now, and Romeo had to clench his fists and almost bite his damn tongue off to hold back the urge to leap across the desk and take her now, fulfill that fantasy of owning what was out of reach to not just him but any man, every man, all of mankind, for all of time.

“All right,” Romeo managed to say, blinking his manic gaze from Kay’s chest to her eyes. Had she caught him looking? She didn’t show it, but Romeo was almost certain she’d caught him looking. After what she’d been through, this woman would be hyper-aware of any man’s gaze resting on her body for more than a millisecond. “Let’s say you’re right and Jack is part of some off-the-books CIA-linked team that killed the Northrups on the Rivington and is somehow connected to the explosion at the Senator’s home. And yes, Diego certainly has the incentive to want the Senator dead. He’s also the head of the Zetas, which means he might know the Northrups. Shit, maybe you’re right, Kay. Maybe Diego was involved with both the Rivington and that explosion at the Senator’s home.” Romeo’s throat tightened as he began to see how Kay’s narrative connected the disparate dots into a plausible picture. “And if all that is true, then I guess it is possible that this off-the-books team with Jack Wagner has been hunting Diego ever since that explosion.” He took a breath, narrowed his eyes at Kay. “But then surely Diego would know he’s being hunted, right?”

Kay nodded. “Right.”

Romeo raised both eyebrows. “Well, did you ask him if he’s being hunted or followed or tracked?”

Kay snorted. “Of course. And of course he said no. He wouldn’t want us to back away from this deal. He needs it more than you do, Romeo.”

Romeo rubbed his jaw, glanced up at the ceiling, thought for a long moment, then pursed his lips and gazed across the desk at Kay. “The burner phone you’ve been using,” he said softly. “Is it possible Jack and his team have been tracking it?”

Kay reached into her jacket and slid out a black phone. She placed it on the table. It was turned off.

“I guess it’s possible, if they got a bead on Diego’s burner. But there’s no purchase record on my burner phone to trace it back to me specifically. And we’ve been using end-to-end encryption to communicate, which means it’s technically impossible for anyone to listen to our conversations or read our text messages.” Kay’s narrow shoulders rose as she took a heavy breath, then slumped when she exhaled hard. “But they could have got a GPS location on my burner. That might be why they sent Jack Wagner to infiltrate this wedding party. They’re hoping he can figure out who’s carrying this burner phone.”

“So we’re already compromised.” Romeo’s jaw tightened.

Kay nodded, blinked twice, then looked up. “But it’s not law enforcement. This isn’t FBI or DEA, Romeo. It’s an off-the-books team hunting Diego Vargas. They want Diego, not you.” She widened her eyes, leaned her body forward again. “So let’s just give them Diego and walk away, Romeo. If it’s not law enforcement, they’ll just let us walk away if we give them Diego.”

“Doesn’t matter if they aren’t law enforcement.” Romeo shook his head violently. “I can’t give them Diego. It’ll destroy my reputation, Kay. No other mafia family or druglord will ever make a deal with me after rumors spread that Romeo Carmine cooperated with some undercover government-sponsored team.” He snorted. “That’s the kiss of death for my reputation and you damn well know it. Everyone taking a payout from me will wonder when I’m going to give them up in exchange for favors from the feds. No way.” He rubbed the back of his neck, glanced at Kay’s burner phone on his desk. “It’s too late to back out now, Kay. We have to go all-in. Call him. Diego Vargas. Call him now.”

Kay stared. “You sure?”

Romeo nodded. “You said nobody can listen in on the call, right? And even if someone is tracking your phone via GPS, they can’t trace it precisely to this room, just the mansion. And there are three hundred guests plus a bunch of hired help on the estate right now. Plausible deniability, just like the CIA does it.” He smiled, then nodded again. “Tell Diego we know he’s being tracked and he should come clean if he expects us to ever trust his murderous ass enough to make this deal. I want to know what he knows. I want to know what he’s done. I want to be sure he isn’t already working for the feds or this other team. I want to be sure he isn’t setting me up in a sting because he’s already compromised. I especially need to know if he was connected to that stuff on the cruise ship and the explosion two months ago. Call him now, Kay. I want to sort this out right fucking now.”

Kay took a breath, stared at the phone, then nodded and snatched it off the desk. She turned it on, waited for it to pick up a signal, then glanced once more at Romeo before making the call.

The call rang six times on the other end before it was answered. Kay put it on speaker and placed the phone on the desk between herself and Romeo.

“Yes?” came a man’s voice, low and monotone, with the hint of a Hispanic accent.

“It’s me,” said Kay softly. “Listen, there’s been a development.”

Romeo leaned forward now, knowing that the moment he uttered a word, he was making direct contact with Diego Vargas and the Zetas. It was sooner than he wanted, and he might be walking into a trap. Diego could already be working for the feds and maybe there were a dozen government agencies waiting to bust in on him.

But the probability was low. All that stuff with the Northrup brothers being killed on board the Rivington and the cover-up after the explosion outside the Senator’s home was more CIA-dark-ops than FBI or DEA undercover. Kay was right. They were after Diego, not Romeo.

And Diego would know that.

Which meant Diego would be getting anxious to do this deal, perhaps even desperate.

Therefore, Romeo was in the driver’s seat in this negotiation.

So it was worth the risk to step forward and take control.

“Jack Wagner.” Romeo spoke sharply and clearly. “You know the name?”

There was a long silence. “Who is speaking?” came Diego’s voice finally.

“You know who it is. Just answer the fucking question,” growled Romeo. “You have one chance to prove yourself trustworthy. If we are going to be partners, then all relevant information must be shared immediately and honestly.” He paused for effect, listened to the tense silence on the other end of the line, waited for Diego to take two long breaths. “Your one chance to gain my trust is ticking down to zero. I hang up this phone and it’s over before it even began. Now, we know you’re being hunted. So tell us who’s hunting you and why. No bullshit, comprende?”

Romeo waited for a response.

The silence stretched to what felt like eternity.

Finally Diego spoke.

One word.

“Darkwater.”

Romeo cast a furrowed look at Kay. She shrugged and shook her head. Romeo was about to bark out another ultimatum, but then Diego started talking.

He talked, and Romeo listened.

Romeo listened as Diego talked about intercepting the good ship Rivington and losing an entire team of Zetas within minutes of boarding, all of them cut down by this mysterious Darkwater group headed by an ex-CIA man named John Benson.

The name didn’t ring a bell for either Romeo or Kay, but there was something about the way Diego spat the name out with venom that seemed at odds with the cold-blooded reputation of the infamous Zeta leader. Clearly this guy John Benson and his team of former Special Forces men had gotten under Diego’s skin. And Diego had cursed in Spanish when Romeo mentioned that Jack Wagner was already here, ready and waiting, a hunter on the prowl, a predator poised to pounce.

Shit, maybe he should take Kay’s advice and back off, Romeo thought.

Maybe Romeo should just cut Diego loose, let this shadowy CIA-guy John Benson and his off-the-books killers hunt Diego down. Maybe it wasn’t worth getting caught in the crossfire between Diego and Darkwater.

A chill went down Romeo’s spine. Getting pulled into this Darkwater thing worried him in a way that nothing ever had. It gave him the fucking creeps. Made the hairs on the back of his neck rise up like some primitive instinct was being awakened by the word Darkwater.

Now Romeo’s mind flashed back to those strangely alluring tattoos adorning Kay’s body. They made his hairs stand up in an eerily similar way, like there was some cosmic connection that was drawing all of this together, connecting past and future in ways that defied logic and reason, like this was fate shuffling the deck, destiny dealing the cards, space and time waiting for the players to place their bets, make their choices, call their shots.

And so Romeo called it.

He made his choice.

A choice that seemed spontaneous but somehow fit this strangely mystical mood that Diego’s tale of Benson and his boys had evoked.

“All right, listen,” Romeo said quietly into the phone. “Jack Wagner is at the Winchester Hotel right now. He’ll be on his way back to the mansion soon. Are you close enough to intercept him on the road? He’ll be alone, driving a red Honda hatchback. Here’s your chance to prove that you aren’t working for the feds or Darkwater to set me up.”

“Fuck you,” snarled Diego. “I’m not working for any puta U.S. agency, and certainly not for fucking Darkwater. They fucked everything for me.”

“All the more reason to take out Jack Wagner.” Romeo smiled calmly even as red panic streaked across Kay’s ash-white face. “You get rid of the guy hunting you. And you strike back against your buddy John Benson who seems to have planted his foot firmly up your ass more than once already.” Romeo took a breath, exhaled slowly. “Look, we can’t proceed anyway with this Darkwater goon sniffing around here. You’ll have a clean shot at him on a dark empty road within the next half-hour or so. Finish him and then disappear for a few weeks. Lose the burner phones, go completely off the radar. We’ve received your package with details of the test-shipments. It’s enough for us to get started. We’ll re-establish contact using new burner phones on the day after the last test-shipment, which is in . . .” Romeo glanced inquiringly at Kay, who’d recovered from her shock enough to slide out the brown envelope Diego must have left for her at the Winchester Hotel’s front desk.

It contained a hand-written coded list of ship-names and container-numbers, along with arrival dates at the various Philadelphia-area docks. The ships were all large container-carrying vessels flying Chinese flags. They would all stop at the Zeta Nation’s seaport on the Northeast coast of South America, where the Zetas would offload their usual containers filled with synthetic Fentanyl and the precursor chemicals for large-scale production. Then the Zetas would hide a sizeable load of raw Fentanyl in a single container on each departing ship heading north for the United States. The Carmine-connected dockworkers at the ports of Philadelphia would open those marked containers, offload the drugs, and drive them out of the docks past the paid-off customs guys. Those ship-names and container-numbers would never be typed into a phone or computer. The only written record was in Kay Steffen’s hands.

“Six weeks,” Kay said, looking up from the paper, then folding it carefully and sliding it back into the brown envelope. “One test-container per week for six weeks to make sure our process works.” She leaned closer to the phone. “We’ll connect via the dead-drop if all goes well. Get a new burner phone and drop off the number in our agreed-upon dead-drop location in six weeks.”

Diego stayed silent for a long time. “All right,” he said finally, speaking softly, a dark coldness in Diego’s tone now. “We have a deal. Jack Wagner will be dead within the hour. It will be my pleasure to make it so.”