Page 8 of Fast Justice

Chapter Three

Carlos Ruiz sat with his spine ramrod straight in the chair in the prison interrogation room as he waited for the U.S. Attorney to arrive. The orange jumpsuit was uncomfortable and smelled musty, his ankles and wrists shackled, and they wouldn’t allow him the use of his cane. Ridiculous overkill procedures designed to make a prisoner feel like a trapped, whipped dog.

There was good reason why he and the other cartel members would do anything to avoid being extradited to face trial in the United States.

This wasn’t anything like being imprisoned in Mexico. Here he couldn’t easily bribe or threaten his way out. Couldn’t run his operation from behind bars the way he was used to. Here there was nothing but the monotonous daily routine of the incarcerated. A mind-numbing cage designed to break his will and spirit.

That would never happen. He was stronger and more resourceful than they gave him credit for. And even though he faced the probability of being convicted of most charges laid against him, he was not defeated.

His lawyer shifted beside him, anxious. They couldn’t talk openly here. Everything was being recorded and watched. Not that it mattered. Carlos still had his ways of finding out what he needed to know, even in here.

The door opened behind him. He refused to turn around, sat perfectly still facing the far wall with its two-way mirror while the federal lawyers came around the table and took their seats. A fifty-something man with a paunch and pasty skin that told Carlos he rarely left his office.

And a hot, raven-haired beauty around thirty or so, her firm, trim body outlined so nicely by a snug skirt and tailored jacket. Classy. Attractive enough that she would have fetched a nice profit from one of his Asian buyers.

Setting a pile of folders on the table in front of him and leaning back, the male lawyer regarded Carlos with a no bullshit expression before introducing himself and the woman. She wasn’t his assistant, as Carlos had assumed. She was an Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Rowan Stewart.

He would remember that name, and her face, for later. If he ever got out of here while he was still vertical,afterhe got even with the people who had put him here, he would punish both these bloodsuckers as well. For building a case against him that could keep him behind bars here in the U.S. until the day he died.

The man he’d have killed in a creative way that made an impact. The female, he’d make wish she were dead.

“Since you asked for this meeting,” the man went on, all business, “I assume you’ve got something new and important to give us.”

“What are you prepared to offer my client in exchange?” his lawyer countered. He had instructed Carlos not to say a word. Not to give a hint of emotion during this meeting. So Carlos stared at his current adversaries, letting the rage burn inside him.

“Nothing, until he gives us something we can use onEl Escorpionand the cartel bosses.”

Carlos repressed a snort as his lawyer shook his head and answered on his behalf. “You know that’s impossible. No one within the cartel even knowsEl Escorpion’strue identity.”

“So he’s a myth, then,” the female said, a Southern kind of drawl doing nothing to soften the disdain in her voice. “A figment of everyone’s imaginations.”

“He’s real,” Carlos’s lawyer said. “But my client has never met him. His only dealings with him have been over the phone.”

“Then this meeting’s pointless. If he gives us nothing, he gets nothing,” she finished.

Carlos squeezed his hands into fists beneath the table, seething inside, both from his current predicament and the female’s attitude. If he had anything onEl Escorpion, he would give it to the Americans willingly.

Someone from inside the cartel—high up inside it, where he used to be until recently—had turned on Carlos prior to his arrest. It was the only explanation for how the Americans had known he was on that plane.

His source here at the prison had told him the rumor wasEl Escorpionhimself had been behind it, out of disapproval over the kidnapping of a DEA FAST member’s young daughter. Apparently the secretive head of the cartel had decided that damage control was in order and cut Carlos loose, handing him over to the Americans like a naughty dog that had pissed in its own bed.

Carlos would doanythingto destroy the traitorous bastard.

The male attorney drummed his fingers impatiently on the file folders before him. “So why call us down here, then? Wasting our time and not cooperating with the federal investigation isn’t going to do your client any favors.”

“He can’t give you what he doesn’t have,” Carlos’s lawyer answered.

“Then what?” the woman demanded, raising her coal-black brows in a haughty expression Carlos longed to wipe off her face.

Her arrogance was so like another woman who’d thought herself untouchable. An American investigative reporter named Victoria Gomez who had learned the opposite in a way she wouldn’t soon forget. It galled him that she was walking free instead of living a life of sexual slavery in Asia as he’d planned, likely a star witness for these same two prosecutors while he was trapped in this shithole they called a prison.

His patience snapped. “Nieto,” he snarled, stretching his legs out beneath the table to help alleviate the deep ache in the right one. Not that it helped much. The bullet wounds had healed but the nerve and soft tissue damage was permanent. A permanent reminder that the bitch reporter Victoria Gomez had nearly cost him his life in a shootout with the DEA.

Carlos shook off his lawyer’s warning hand on his shoulder, holding the female’s intense blue gaze. To hell with legal advice, to hell with all of them. He was stuck in here, and likely wouldn’t be getting out. But he was far from beaten.

“What about him?” the female said.

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