Page 38 of Echoes and Oaths
His comms crackled in his ear. Brando’s voice came through. “I’ve identified most of the pictures Raven took. Sending them to your cell.”
“Copy,” Jinx replied, pulling into a dusty parking space across from the cantina.
The inside of the small building was dim and cool, shadows stretching across the cracked tile floor. Behind the bar stood a woman he didn’t recognize. She was in her late fifties, maybe early sixties, with dark eyes that gave him a once-over like she was sizing him up for trouble.
“What can I get you?” she asked, wiping down a spotted glass with a rag that had seen better days.
“One beer,” he replied, laying cash on the scarred wood of the bar.
Her eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, but she took the money without question and filled a dusty glass with beer, sliding it across to him.
Jinx carried it to a table in the far corner, his back against the wall, a clear line of sight to both the door and the grimy windows. He leaned back, tipping his chair just enough to balance, and pulled out his phone.
Brando’s pictures with faces, names, and sparse information flicked across the screen. Too sparse. The men on that hill weren’t the average cartel scum. They were military-trained bastards from other countries, ghosts in their own right. And ghosts were hard to kill.
When the bartender disappeared into the back, Jinx spoke low. “There are four pictures without any information.”
“I know,” Brando replied. “I’m working on it. I dumped all the images into Interpol’s system. It’s scraping for hits. Most of these guys aren’t locals. I thought it was a good place to start. Raven said there were a couple of the brown-nosers who she couldn’t get a good picture of. I’m having AI recreate the full face from the partials she took, and I’ll be scraping those, too.”
Jinx grunted in agreement but didn’t reply. When the bartender returned, he shifted his focus back to the pictures, memorizing faces, names, nationalities, and known connections.
Forty percent of Ortega’s men, he recognized. The other sixty percent were new, fresh meat drawn in by promises of power and money. It was the way of the cartel. Loyalty meant nothing. Life expectancy meant even less.
He drained the last of his beer, warm now and bitter, when the sound of fast engines shattered the stillness outside. Black SUVs rumbled to a stop in front of the cantina, their exhaust fumes curling into the air like snakes.
Jinx rose, moving to the bar just as the woman glanced toward the street.
“If you want to avoid trouble,” she murmured, her voice low, “you should leave now. There’s a back door.”
“I know. Another beer, please,” Jinx said calmly, placing more cash on the bar.
She gave him a long, measuring look. Something flickered in her dark eyes, recognition, maybe, or wariness, before she shook her head and turned to the tap to pour him another drink.
The door creaked open behind him.
A mangy dog slunk in off the street, ribs sharp beneath matted fur, tail wagging nervously. It made a beeline for Jinx like it recognized one of its own. Jinx crouched, scratching behind the animal’s ears as two SUVs’ doors slammed shut outside, followed by crude laughter and the sharp, grating sound of men who thought they owned the world.
The dog tucked itself behind Jinx’s legs as the men filed into the cantina, swaggering and loud.
Until they saw him.
The room shifted, voices dying like someone had sucked the air out of the place. Jinx smiled to himself and lifted his beer, taking a slow sip.
It was always good when the wolves recognized there was a viper in their midst.
One of the men pushed through the crowd, muscling his way toward the bar. Jinx slanted a glance his way and felt recognition flash cold and sharp through his veins.
Newer enforcer. Fresh blood. A bastard, if Brando’s files were to be believed, and they always were. That one had a reputation. A video, even. He’d made his bones on the dark web, carving a family apart with a machete. He forced the wife to watch as he mutilated her husband and sons before killing them. A coward with a taste for violence only when his victims were already broken.
Jinx met his gaze over the rim of his beer, his smile sharp and cold.
The bastard would do.
The man squared his shoulders, hitching up his jeans like he thought it made him bigger, meaner. His eyes locked on Jinx at the bar. Jinx could feel the fucker zero in on him. He couldn’t have scripted it any better.
“Hey, you! This ain’t your bar. You need to leave.”
Jinx didn’t even glance his way. He set his beer down with a quiet clink, staring at the glass like it had more of his attention than the fool running his mouth.
