Page 12 of Fast Kill

With agitated strides he walked to the bar in his hotel suite and poured himself a much-needed highball, his hand tight around the bottle of single malt scotch.

An entire shipment seized. Christ. They’d lost several smaller ones over the past few weeks, which wasn’t uncommon in the business. This was different. He’d planned everything so carefully, from hiring the subcontractors to build the sub, to hand-picking the men to load and sail it to the U.S. mainland.

The liquor burned down his throat, igniting a warm glow in his stomach. There was no way anyone would have just randomly come across the sub or the loading dock, because he’d ensured there was good security on site. All he knew was, the Bahamian special police had done a joint raid with an American force. The sub was gone, many of his men killed, others taken prisoner.

His best trafficker was dead, along with more than a dozen others. Dammit, he’d liked Eduardo. Hell, he was godfather to Eduardo’s two kids.

Annoyance burned through him, stronger than the alcohol. Everyone in this line of work knew the risks, and that they could wind up ripped apart in a hail of bullets just as easily as they could get rich. But the promise of that kind of money made the risk worthwhile.

Now he had to build a new crew, from scratch. A pain in the ass he couldn’t afford right now.

He’d have to find someone to replace Eduardo as soon as possible, and it was so hard to know who to trust these days. Competition among rival cartels was fierce, and the head of theVenenocartelwas anxious to expand their power base throughout all of the U.S. rather than the several corridors it had established already.

His heavily encrypted cell phone rang. Franco, one of his best men. “Give me good news, man.”

“Wish I could, boss,” he said in Spanish.

Hell. “How many were captured?” That was the real concern here. The dead couldn’t talk. The living might.

“We still don’t know yet.”

He tamped down the irritation pushing his blood pressure to unhealthy levels. Some of the captured men would be tempted to talk under interrogation, to try and get themselves protection or a better deal from the Bahamians, or the U.S. if the Americans had enough on them to extradite.

Little good it would do them to try and save their skins now. The cartel was powerful and had tentacles everywhere. It could get to them easily enough inside prison walls, no matter where they were being held. They had people on their payroll in almost all divisions of the prison system throughout Mexico and were making serious forays into the U.S. system as well.

“Find out who they are. I want everything you have on them. If they talk, they know what will happen to them and their families.” He was good at compartmentalizing to get the job done, however dirty. He didn’t care if innocents died—he’d stopped caring about that kind of shit a long time ago. Maintaining power was the most important thing.

In the ruthless world of the cartel, that required absolute control over those beneath him. Which meant pretty much everyone but a handful of people in the cartel. And past experience had taught him the only way to do that was through fear and intimidation.

The more brutal, the more effective it was.

“I need the intel by noon.”

“Sí, señor.” Franco hung up.

Dillon downed the remainder of the scotch in one quick swallow, barely noticing the burn as it slid down his throat. He dreaded this coming conversation, but there was no way around it. Carlos was his direct boss, a lieutenant ofEl Escorpion, the mysterious and elusive head of theVenenocartel. He needed to hear it straight from Dillon, and no one else, even though the boss didn’t like to be disturbed or talk business before eight in the morning.

Dillon rolled his eyes. This couldn’t wait any longer.

His pulse accelerated as the ringing droned in his ear. Carlos was notoriously unpredictable. Dillon had known and worked for the man for five years, and even he couldn’t predict his boss’s capricious moods. Carlos was one obnoxious bastard.

“Yeah, D. Why you calling so early?” Carlos answered, sounding annoyed.

Since there was no point in dancing around it, he bit the bullet. “Last night’s shipment was seized. Bahamian special police on a joint op with Americans.”

“Americans?” A cold silence filled the line. “DEA?”

“Don’t know yet.” Could be, though. The bastards had been all over them lately, ever since the Baker incident. Another thing in a long list of problems that he had to deal with. The pressure would only increase from here.

“Hijos de putas,” Carlos spat.

Yep. “I just wanted to tell you I’m on top of it. I’ll let you know as soon as I get more details.”

Carlos grunted. “What else?”

“Eduardo’s dead, along with several others. No word yet on how many were captured.”

Carlos swore under his breath. “You think he was behind it?”

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