Page 25 of Fast Vengeance

It’s too late. You’ve lost Oceane. She’ll never forgive you.

Rage and terror blasted through him. He shoved to his feet, began pacing as he did whenever he became agitated. He thought best on his feet, always had. And he was determined to figure out a way past this.

He crossed the small room to push aside the curtain and look out the grimy window. David was fifty yards away checking the property, standing guard as always. It was already getting dark, the sun behind the trees, leaving a brilliant blaze of orange and pink. Soon it would be pitch black here.

He hated the nights the most. That was when his conscience pricked him like merciless needles, making sleep impossible. He always pictured Anya’s face. Oceane’s face. The terror and hatred in their eyes when they looked at him with identical accusing expressions.

He shook his head, refusing to accept that all was lost. Oceane was his only child. His sole heir. And he’d risked everything, clawing his way through the muck of poverty to get to where he was today.

He’d tried to shield her for too long and it had backfired on him. He needed her at his side. To prepare her for the day when he passed his empire to her. One he’d deliberately kept her ignorant of for her own protection. But it hadn’t been enough. And now she’d suffered so much she might hate him forever. Still, he had to try. Get her back and begin the process of repairing everything. She was his legacy.

His jaw tightened as he glanced at the guns laid out for cleaning on the bench by the front door. Neither he nor David went anywhere without having at least two weapons on them. Because the men coming after him were the most dangerous in the entire cartel. Manny should know; they used to be his.

Montoya was a liability as well as a threat and needed to be eliminated immediately. Except so far, he was proving as impossible to find as Oceane. The head of the cartel had promised to help Manny locate him, but the shadowy El Escorpion had dropped off the grid last week.

So, for now at least, Manny was on his own.

He should have dealt with Montoya long before now. His former enforcer was a loose end he couldn’t afford to leave hanging in the wind. The man was too dangerous. Montoya knew too much about him, about his operations and contingency plans. He was also the most likely person to be able to find Manny.

He stalked over to the bag in the corner and yanked out the bottle of scotch he’d brought, unscrewing the cap and drinking straight from the bottle. He needed to get good and drunk so he would be able to sleep and stop being tortured by all his mistakes.

But alcohol only helped so much. The driving need to find Oceane was always there, burning like a fire in his gut. Before he could look to his future, Manny had to erase his past.

Starting with hunting down Montoya, the man he had asked to be Oceane’s godfather.

****

“You got everything you need?”

In the act of spreading out his bedroll on the dirt floor, Juan Montoya looked up at the elderly farmer who was allowing him to crash in his house for the night. One of a series of contacts who made up a safe network he was slowly working his way through across the countryside to stay under the radar. “Yeah, thanks.”

“My wife will make breakfast in the morning. I’ll bring it to you.”

“I appreciate it.”

As soon as his host left, Juan got up and checked every corner of the guestroom, searching for any cables, cameras or bugs. Not that he expected to find those things way out here in this tiny village, but he hadn’t managed to stay alive this long by being careless. Unlike the men he used to work for, he preferred to work alone. Having men beneath him was useful in some situations, but it was also a pain in the ass when they weren’t disciplined and murdered or tortured without his permission. That was all behind him now.

His actions over the past few months had made him one of the most wanted men in North America. Not only was he trying to evade U.S. and Mexican authorities, but the entire and formidable Veneno cartel network as well.

There was a million dollar bounty on his head. Damn near four hundred times the annual household income down here in rural Mexico. So yeah, he had to look over his shoulder all the time, because that was a lot of money to a poor man. And the lure of money made even the most morally upstanding people do bad shit. He knew that better than anyone.

The bounty was being offered by the Mexican government, but Juan had a feeling it was likely backed by El Escorpion and/or Nieto. There were probably other bosses involved as well, but the head of the cartel and Nieto were the two most powerful men in the entire organization. Between the two of them, they practically owned half of Mexico, and as much of the government and law enforcement as well.

He sank down onto his bedroll with a weary groan, going over what he needed to do tomorrow. A tip had come in that Nieto was only seventy miles from here. A two or three hour drive in the jeep Juan had rented. Juan would get some sleep, get up before the sun, then go after Nieto.

His former boss would have David with him, but that didn’t concern Juan. He could get there while it was still dark and be in and out of there before anyone noticed. Two quick kills within a matter of seconds, then be back here in time for that home cooked breakfast the farmer had offered.

He’d already taken steps to mitigate the risk to himself and gain some protection, namely flipping teams and taking over Carlos Ruiz’s old network. Juan had been in communication with him through an unnamed source at the prison Ruiz was being held in.

With Ruiz’s blessing, he was free to use that network and its materials at his disposal. He would begin by going after his former friend and boss, Nieto. It was business. A matter of self preservation. Either kill, or be killed. That was how things worked in the narco universe.

Once he had taken over Nieto’s sizeable organization and territory, he could set his sights on the big prize: el Escorpion himself. He hadn’t figured out who the man was yet, but he would eventually. Juan didn’t have a personal grudge against him, unlike Ruiz. But with el Escorpion out of the way, Juan could make his move.

For a man who had been born into abject poverty in a dusty little farm town in the foothills, the prospect of that much money and control was everything Juan had ever dreamed of and more. Once he eliminated Nieto and el Escorpion, he was going take control of what was left of the once untouchable Veneno cartel.

Chapter Eight

Clipboard in hand, Brock went around the room cataloguing the remaining number of rounds as the team stacked the unused ammo from the range that morning and cleaned their weapons. Not exactly the most exciting way to spend an afternoon, but it was downtime for them and a necessary part of the job to make sure they had what they needed if they got called out on a mission.

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