Page 14 of Drawn Blue Lines

I scrubbed a hand over my face and dialed Leo Pinellas’s private number. It took two rings for him to answer, his voice a satisfactory mix of fear and unease.

“Hola, Señor Harcourt, I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

I’ll bet, considering the last time we spoke, he put up so much resistance to my request, I had to threaten him. To be fair, he did end up betraying his own country.

“Yeah, well, I have a problem—which means you have a problem.”

“Vete a la mierda,” he grumbled. Not that I expected a warm greeting, after all this time, but telling me to fuck off was a bit over the top. “I can’t be involved with you anymore. It’s too risky.”

“It’s riskier for you to ignore me.” On edge, I tossed the picture frame onto the floor. “I already made one widow today. Don’t force me to make another.”

Silence filled the line while I assumed he weighed his options. He really didn’t have any, but I humored him and spun a full two revolutions in my chair before he came to his senses.

“Tell me what you want,” Leo hissed through clenched teeth, his broken English slipping as his anger grew. “But this has to…” The rest of what I presumed to be a futile demand trailed off as a muffled voice laced with huskiness and an edge of insolence filtered through the line.

Son of a bitch.

I had enough on my plate without having to worry about some jerkoff in the Mexican Embassy hearing me spell out the details of someone’s murder.

I closed my eyes and cursed. “Is someone there?”

“Just my puta secretary who doesn’t know how to fucking knock,” he yelled, the two words punctuated by the sound of a slamming door. “As I was saying, this has to be it. The Harcourt name isn’t too popular around here and unsealing Adriana Carrera’s birth records for you turned too many eyes my way.”

I winced at hearing her name again. It had been months since I’d thought about her, and now she was the ghost who wouldn’t go away. An unwelcome pang of guilt settled deep in my stomach. The woman nearly assassinated my boss then walked out of a Houston safe house like a fucking queen. She made my life hell for months. A Muñoz creation whose mind ticked with only one emotion—hate.

Until I blew her life apart by revealing her entire life had been a lie. Marisol Muñoz was Adriana Carrera, Val’s not-so-dead sister.

After she disappeared off the face of the earth, I assumed she was buried in a shallow grave somewhere. It was inevitable. She never would’ve stood for her family’s legacy to be dismantled, and they never would’ve accepted a Carrera.

I assumed wrong.

Dragging myself out of that lethal rabbit hole, I changed the subject. “Unfortunately, you don’t call the shots, Leo. However, I’ve had a bitch of a day, so I’ll make this brief. The Muñoz Cartel has restructured. I’ve already had a chat with a man named José Rojas. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.” I didn’t wait for a confirmation. I didn’t need one. “He’s given me some interesting new information on Adriana Carrera. I need you to do some recon on her last known whereabouts.”

“Why don’t you just blackmail it out of him?”

Smartass.

“He’s missing.”

“Shouldn’t you be trying to locate him?”

“No.”

That’s all that needed to be said. Leo Pinellas was an arrogant bastard, but he wasn’t stupid. Reading between the lines wasn’t a hard skill to master. Especially when his fat ass would be the next.

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

“You have twenty-four hours.”

Probably even less for me if Adriana was motivated enough.

“You’d better know what you’re doing, Brody. Every time you try to fuck over a cartel boss, a woman pays the price. First, your sister, then Carrera’s girl, then Carrera’s sister.”

My hand tore through my hair, ripping the strands at the root. “She wasn’t his girl!” I let out a dry laugh. “But he sure as hell made sure she didn’t have any other option.”

“That’s a little hypocritical, don’t you think?”

The coil that had wound tighter and tighter in my chest since returning from Chicago snapped. “Twenty-four hours, Pinellas.” Grinding my teeth, I jerked the phone away to disconnect the call, but at the last minute lifted it back to my ear. “Make that twenty-two just for being an asshole.”

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