Page 58 of Heartless

“Yes and no. The DEA wanted to know how they got so big so fast. It all seemed to occur under the radar. The feds went after them hard, looked like they had all their ducks in a row to bring them down. Within a month, the investigation was over.”

“How? Why?” Eve asked.

“My sources—the ones willing to talk—said they were told to back off. The cartel was untouchable.”

“That takes a lot of influence and money to make that happen,” Serena said.

“Exactly.”

“And this shadow organization that OZ is after, that my mother was apparently part of, you really believe they’re involved?” Olivia asked.

Hawke felt a settling, an easing of the muscles in his body. It was the first time she had acknowledged him since entering the room. When they’d gotten back late last night, she had been quiet, pensive. He knew she had taken his subtle rejection hard. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. If there was anyone in this world he would give his life to keep from hurting, it was Olivia. But what she wanted and what he could give her were still worlds apart.

She had stopped at her bedroom door, and what she’d said had gutted him to his soul. “Thank you for your help. I’m sorry for what happened, how it happened. I was angry with you when you came back, for not telling me you were alive. But now I get it. You had moved on. We were finished, and you knew that. I didn’t, but now I do. Once this is over, once we’ve destroyed the people who killed our friends, it will be over. I’ll be finished.”

She hadn’t said with you, but those words had been implied.

Without another word, she’d opened her door and shut it in his face. A part of him had been infuriated, wanting to go in there and tell her they would never be over. But the sane part had recognized she was right. And if he cared for her at all, he needed to let her go.

“Hawke?” Olivia said.

Telling himself to get his head out of his ass and do the job, he shrugged. “Sorry, guess I zoned out. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

He’d gotten exactly zero sleep because, after her words, he had done the only thing he could do, the only thing that had ever saved his sanity. He’d gotten to work.

As if he hadn’t zoned out, he answered her question, “I have no doubt that this shadow organization is involved. Once we take the cartel down, we’ll get them to talk. Then we’ll find these people and end them one by one.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Gideon said. “Let’s get started.”

As he revealed what he had, and laid out the plan, Hawke felt a resurgence of energy. This was what he lived for. From the day he’d joined the Navy at age eighteen, he’d found a purpose in life. In the almost twenty years since, that hadn’t changed.

He and Livvy had shared that passion once. They had been unconquerable, but they’d gotten careless, taken things for granted. What once was could never be again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Fury overshadowed heartache as Olivia watched while Hawke revealed the Gonzalez holdings. A collective gasp could be heard around the room. Olivia barely registered the sound as she stared at the screen. Really, how was this remotely possible? Outrage bubbled within her like lava. She had come to this meeting, sure of how things would proceed, sure that she knew what they were facing. But this? This was so much more than she had ever thought possible. Hawke had said the Gonzalez cartel had exploded into a huge conglomerate, but this…this…

“How on earth could this happen?” she whispered.

Though everyone else in the room was likely outraged at the sheer enormity of the cartel, Olivia’s anger was much more personal. Little more than five years ago, they had brought this cartel to its knees. After Hector Gonzalez had gone to prison, the Colombian government had seized all their assets and monies. All product had been destroyed. All lieutenants and soldiers had either been captured or had retreated out of fear. The cost had been painful and devastating. There had been a tremendous loss of life. She had taken three bullets that day. She had almost died.

The injustice in this world never seemed to end. It was one of the reasons she loved working for Last Chance Rescue. There was a balance there, unlike with OZ. Option Zero took down bad people and saved lives. Last Chance Rescue saved lives and took down bad people. A subtle difference, perhaps, but it was there.

No wonder the DEA had been told to back off. The cartel looked untouchable. How many politicians and backdoor dealings had it taken to create this kind of gargantuan enterprise?

If she’d ever had doubts that a powerful organization or entity in the background was funding and manipulating world events, she no longer had them. This just did not happen without tremendous backing. What had Gonzalez promised to do for them in exchange? The mind boggled at the consequences of such an arrangement.

“As you can see,” Serena was saying, “we have our work cut out for us.” She clicked the remote in her hand, and a map of South America appeared. “These stars represent known warehouses. We know that in at least three of these warehouses, they have labs.”

“Do we know what they’re creating in these labs?” Liam asked.

“Not yet, or at least nothing is confirmed,” Hawke answered. “Coincidentally, a top biochemist and two pharmacological scientists disappeared a couple of years ago. One from Chicago, the other two from Mexico. They’ve not been heard from since. No leads, but there’s plenty of suspicion pointing to the Gonzalez cartel.”

“So they could’ve kidnapped these scientists and forced them to create new drugs.”

“That’s our best guess.” Hawke sent a look to Olivia that she couldn’t quite decipher.

“There’s got to be weaknesses,” Eve said. “Something they’ve overlooked.”

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