Page 7 of Ranger's Justice

I fire up my laptop, pulling up the records again. The wire transfers, the shell companies, the shipment manifests linked to Hollister’s business. I stare at them, my father’s words whispering in my mind.

“Follow the money, sweetheart, and you’ll always find the truth.”

“Trust your gut—most people aren’t as honest as they seem or as we’d like them to be.”

My gut is screaming at me. My eyes catch on a single entry—a shipment moving through a warehouse near the border, set to transfer to an offshore account. The numbers don’t match. The timeline is too convenient. This is it. I don’t hesitate. I grab my phone, pull up the address, and make the decision that will change everything.

I’m going after it. With or without backup.

The warehouse smells like old oil and desperation. Stale cigarette smoke clings to the corrugated steel walls, mixing with the acrid scent of sweat and something distinctly metallic—blood, if I had to guess. The dim overhead lights buzz, casting long, flickering shadows across the concrete floor. This is a bad idea.

A catastrophically stupid idea.

I crouch behind a stack of rusted-out shipping crates, my heart hammering against my ribs as I listen to the indistinct murmur of Spanish echoing through the cavernous warehouse. The scent of old motor oil and rotting wood clings to the air.

Goddammit.

I’m not cut out for this. I balance ledgers, not infiltrate cartel meetings. I analyze risk, not throw myself into the middle of it. But the moment Marcus Kane dismissed my findings—again—and the police conveniently lost interest, I knew I had two options.

Let Hollister keep getting away with murder or prove it myself.

I chose the second. Which is how I ended up in a border-town warehouse at midnight, dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans like I belong here, when in reality, I couldn’t stick out more if I were waving a neon sign that read “I am absolutely not a criminal.”

This was supposed to be simple—get in, snap a few photos, get out. That’s the way they always showed it in movies and television shows. But as I peek around the crates, my gut twists. There’s nothing simple about this, and it’s scary as hell. What amI doing here? At what point did I decide I was the heroine of a romantic suspense novel?

Seven men surround a semi-truck, the rear doors thrown open to reveal steel drums marked with the Del Toro cartel’s insignia. Money and product change hands in a silent, deadly rhythm. I don’t need a finance degree to know what I’m looking at—Hollister’s blood money at work.

I hold my phone low, snapping a few quick shots. My fingers shake, just a little, but I ignore it.

Here’s your proof, Kane. Let’s see you ignore this.

I move slowly, angling for a better shot, and step straight into a pile of broken glass. Shit. The sharp crunch echoes like a gunshot.

Every head turns in my direction. Bloody hell!

A man—big, barrel-chested, and very much armed—whips toward me, his gun raised before I can think of a plausible excuse for being here.

“¿Quién carajo es esta?”he barks.

I do not freeze. Freezing is for people who want to get themselves shot.

Instead, I straighten, fixing him with my best “you’re beneath me” look. “Elena Vasquez,” I say, spitting out the fake name like it actually means something. “I’m with the broker. There was a discrepancy in the transfer.”

The bullshit rolls off my tongue smoothly, but the air in the warehouse tightens. Even though I’m not trained in law enforcement, it doesn’t take a genius to know how to read a room full of criminals. I am about ten seconds from getting a bullet right between my eyes.

One of the other men, lean with a snake tattoo curled around his neck, steps forward, gun still raised. “Never heard of you.”

I keep my voice even. “Not my problem.”

The first man narrows his eyes, stepping closer. Too close. I’m running out of time. What the hell am I supposed to do? What the hell have I gotten myself into? Before I can formulate an answer, a gunshot rings out, snapping through the thick silence.

For a moment, no one moves. Then chaos detonates like a bomb.

A man drops, clutching his leg. The semi driver yanks a pistol from his waistband. Someone else screams orders in rapid Spanish.

And then? More gunfire. I dive for cover—not in that perfect way heroines do in novel, movies and television series, no this is a curvy body hitting the filthy, cement floor, crawling as quickly as she can to get to something that even vaguely resembles safety.

Bullets rip through the warehouse, pinging off steel drums and shattering crates. I make my way toward what I think will be adequate cover, my pulse roaring in my ears.

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