Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
MALO
I roll over, stretching my arm out over her side of the bed, so I can pull Maria close, but, I soon realize, the space next to me is empty.
My eyes fly open, and I bolt upright and look around, panic gripping me. Where is she? I know she might have just gone to the bathroom or something, but I get the feeling something is seriously off. I run my hand over my face, trying to pull myself together, and swing my legs out of bed so I can go in search of her.
Blue is already up, in the room we were planning in the day before, when I find him. He hands me a coffee, and looks me up and down.
“What’s wrong?” he asks bluntly. I take a long sip of the coffee, glad for the caffeine to help me shake a little of the sleep from my brain.
“Maria,” I mutter. “Have you seen her around? I woke up this morning, and she just wasn’t there.”
“Nope,” Blue replies, shaking his head. “Any idea where she might have gone?”
“None,” I admit, and I curse under my breath. I should have kept an eye on her. I could tell last night there was something up with her, but I had been too distracted to ask her about it.
“Shit,” he replies, shaking his head. “You don’t think she’s done something to risk the operation, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I confess. “We need to find her, that’s all I know. Will you help me look around the compound?”
Blue and I search the place, but she’s nowhere to be seen. I try to keep calm, but at the back of my mind, panic has started to kick in. I don’t know if she would have left of her own accord, or if she’s been made to go. What if she's been double-crossing us this whole time, still working for El Serpiente?
No, I don’t believe that, not for a second. Not with what happened last night. She was so vulnerable with me, so open, and I know she couldn’t have faked that. Not a chance in hell.
I call up Beast an hour later, not even sure what I’m going to say to him. No doubt he’s going to be pissed as all hell when he finds out we’ve let her slip through our fingers this easily. Beast snatches up the phone in a matter of moments, like he’s been waiting by it this entire time.
“What is it?” he barks down the line.
“It’s… Maria,” I reply, wincing as I say her name out loud. “She’s gone. We can’t find her anywhere.”
“Shit,” Beast mutters. “This is exactly what I was worried about. You think she took off herself?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I just woke up and she was gone.”
He pauses for a moment before he responds, and I realize what I’ve just given away—talking about us waking up together like that. But that’s not the problem right now. No, what matters is getting her back in one piece before she can do anything that might compromise the operation.
Or her own safety.
“Did she take her phone with her?” he prompts.
“I think so.”
“There’s a tracking device in it,” he explains quickly.
I cock an eyebrow even though he can’t see it. “A tracking device?”
“I made sure she had one when she went out to Mexico with you,” he continues dismissively, as though it should be obvious. “Didn’t want her pulling something on us like this. If she’s got that with her, you’ll be able to access her location. I’ll send you the password to the app, you can check it out yourself.”
He passes along the details, and I log in quickly. I should have known he would have something like this keyed up and ready to go. Beast doesn’t trust people that easily, let alone someone who was previously working for his enemies, and it’s not a surprise that he’s keeping tabs on her, though it is a relief. I flex my fist by my side as I wait for the tracker to come up with something, and, sure enough, a few moments later, it flashes with a location across the city.
“I think I’ve got her,” I tell him. “I’m going to go over there and check it out with Blue. I’ll call you back.”
Blue appears by my side, apparently having heard his name, and raises his eyebrows at me.
“You got her?”
“I think so,” I reply, throwing on my jacket. “Go ask the Desperados if we can borrow a couple of bikes. We need to get to her before she does anything stupid.”
Within ten minutes, we’re on the road, on a pair of borrowed bikes, and heading towards the pin on the map that seems to be her location.
My mind races as we speed toward her – or, what I hope is her, anyway. Why did she leave? What was she thinking? She knows we can’t protect her if she doesn’t play by our rules. I get it, it can’t be easy, but she can’t do this to us. To me.
I’m still surprised by how much it hurt to wake up and find her gone, especially after what happened last night. That connection between us, it’s powerful, intense, and I know she feels it too. So why leave like that? Doesn’t she trust me after all we have been through?
Blue and I screech to a halt outside what looks to be an abandoned warehouse, with large concrete walls rising up on every side. The gate hangs off its hinges, and I approach slowly, eyes sliding this way and that, trying to figure out if we are being set up and led into a trap. I have no idea what to expect as I slip inside, but, as I enter the main square of the compound, I hear something.
Crying.
“Stay here,” I tell Blue, as I rush toward the door. “I’ll call you if I need back-up. Keep watch, okay?”
“Will do,” Blue replies, and I kick open the door. Inside, I find the building completely gutted. The only thing inside of it, sitting in the middle of the floor in a helpless heap, is Maria, her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
Relief hits me first. She’s okay. Thank fuck she’s okay. I rush over to her, and sink down beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She jumps as soon as she feels my touch, but when she turns and sees that it’s me, she begins to cry even harder.
“I’m so sorry, Malo,” she blurts out. “I don’t know what I was thinking, I just…I just...”
“Hey, hey,” I soothe her. “Breathe. Take a deep breath. Slow down for a second.”
She closes her eyes, and forces herself to inhale, then exhale.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. I’m not angry, though I likely should be. She shouldn’t be running away from us like that, fleeing in the middle of the night when anything could happen to her. I don’t know this city well, except that it’s infected by Las Rosas Negras, men who’d probably like to get their hands on her to shake loose any information she has on us.
“This…” she begins, gesturing around. “This is where I last saw my father.”
“Your father?” I reply, shocked.
She nods, looking downcast. “El Serpiente brought me here to see him,” she admits. “And I thought… oh, I don’t even know what I thought. I thought if I could come back here, and just see that he was alive, we would be able to get him out faster. But this place…”
She glances around again, as though hoping this time she might see some sign of life.
“This place is empty,” she adds, shaking her head. “He’s not here. And I don’t know what I expected, but seeing this place with nobody else around, it’s just… I’m just scared, that’s all. Scared they might have done something to him. Scared I won’t be able to help him.”
“Hey, you will,” I assure her, as I gently draw her to her feet. I need to get her out of here. We’ve got planning to do today, and I know the guys won’t take well to falling behind because she got it into her head that she didn’t want to wait.
“I don’t know,” she replies, leaning against me heavily. “I just… I don’t see how I can help.”
“Let’s get you back to the compound,” I tell her. “You need some rest.”
“I’m sorry,” she mutters again as I lead her toward the door. The sound of our footsteps fills the empty space around us, and I feel so fucking useless. I know I promised her I would get her father to safety, but how much use have I been since then? She snuck right out from under my nose, when she was sleeping in bed with me, or was supposed to be. How can I keep the rest of her family safe, when I can’t even keep an eye on her?
Outside, Blue is waiting for us, and when he sees Maria, he raises his eyebrows at me expectantly.
“Light the place up,” I tell him, jerking my head back toward the building. “Nobody in there. Better not to leave it standing. Don’t want to leave Las Rosas with anywhere else to hide out.”
“On it,” Blue replies, his eyes flashing with that familiar excitement. I help Maria onto the back of my bike, and she hangs on to me, head pressed against my back, as though she never wants to let go.
She’s relying on me, counting on me to get her father back in one piece. I need to do better, I need to show her that I’m really capable of this. Not let her get out on her own again. Shit, if one of the cartel members had seen her… I don’t even want to think about what might have happened. This was way too close for comfort. I’m not going to let her get this far from me again. Not until I know Las Rosas Negras are dealt with, once and for all.
I take her to bed when we get back, and insist she gets some rest. After all the emotion of the last couple of days, she falls asleep quickly, and I head through to meet with Los Desperados and Blue to figure out what our next move is. In our search for Maria, we discovered that the Rosas Negras base that Maria remembered had been cleared out, leaving nothing behind.
“We have to check out the warehouses,” Marquez explains, tapping his finger at the spots highlighted on the map laid out on the table. “Check out how heavily-armed they are, what’s going on there. Before we attack, we need all the information we can get our hands on.”
I nod in agreement. I need to get out on the road for a while, anyway—anything to blow off a little steam. I don’t want to leave Maria alone again quite so soon after what happened, but I figure I’m going to need to put my trust in her. She seems to realize what a huge mistake she made, running like that, and I get the feeling she’s going to be too exhausted to think about going anywhere anyway.
We head out to the locations across the city that we’re planning to attack, and the first one, just like the warehouse where I found Maria, is pretty much empty.
“I thought you said they were dealing from this place,” I tell Marquez, and he frowns and shrugs.
“That’s the last intel I had from my men,” he replies. “Let’s check out the others. Maybe they’ve just moved it across the city.”
But the next two we visit are empty as well, as though Las Rosas Negras knew we were coming. It doesn’t sit right with me. What if they know we’re on to them? Has someone been feeding them information, giving them enough time to move before we could make a hit?
Marquez grimaces as he looks out over the abandoned building, and I can tell he’s pissed. We came here because we thought we could trust the information he had, but clearly, it’s not as solid as he thought it was. He jerks his head back toward the road.
“One more,” he says. “That has to be where they’re hiding out. No other place in the city it could be.”
We ride toward the final warehouse, and, as we approach, I can already tell our luck has finally turned. There are vehicles parked all around the outside, and guards patrol the large concrete walls that surround it. Barbed wire is silhouetted against the sky above, and Blue, Marquez, and I keep our distance as we do a wide sweep of the area. I’m not wearing my colors or anything that might give away who I really am or what I’m doing here, but that doesn’t mean I want to get close enough for them to clock us.
We convene a few blocks away, and when Marquez pulls off his helmet, there is a grim expression on his face.
“It looks like they’ve taken everyone and put them into that one place,” he remarks. “Like they’re battening down the hatches for a siege, or something.”
“No way are we going to get close without a damn army,” Blue mutters, shaking his head. He might be trigger-happy, but he knows an impossible situation when he sees it.
“We need to go back to base,” I reply. “Reconvene. This is a completely different mission than what we thought it was going to be.”
Blue nods and pulls his helmet back on, but I hesitate for a moment before I do the same thing. I’m not sure why, but there’s a part of me that wants to hold back before I return to base. Maybe because I know I’m going to have to tell Maria that things aren’t as straightforward as we first thought—that shit is about to get a whole lot more complicated.
Her father is likely under lock and key in a compound crawling with most of the cartel members in Mexico. And that might be too much for even the Kings to break through.