Page 59 of Chris

“We’ll make sure he can’t come after her.”

“How?”

Because his focus was getting Valeria and Maria out. Nothing more, and nothing less. If he added the hit of a cartel leader onto this job, then they would have a hell of a lot more problems than they could handle.

Did he need to spell it out?

“We’ll figure it out,” Andino was quick to mutter.

Chris rolled his eyes. “Sure, sure.”

He didn’t like what ifs.

He hated unanswered questions.

Flying by the seat of his pants?

No fucking thanks.

He would have to roll with it whether he wanted to or not.

Great.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a man stepping out of the house on the far left to his that the guards used. One of several. The man headed toward Chris’s home, which meant his day was about to get started. For the last few days, the focus had been on transferring crates of product out of the barns, and onto trucks, all the while, they prepped for the trip to the tunnels this weekend.

It never stopped here, it seemed.

“I have to go,” Chris told Andino, “and don’t call again.”

“I got it—get the job done, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

That was the plan.

As unknown as it was.

“Right here, amigo,” the Lòpez man said, pulling the back of a Jeep wide open for Chris. “Toss that bag in, we’re just waiting on the boss, and his wife.”

Chris nodded, pleased that Valeria was coming along for the weekend trip. He knew better than to show that on his face, however. “Thanks.”

With his weekend bag thrown in the back of the Jeep on top of the other couple of bags piled there, the man closed the hatch with a slam. Chris settled on leaning against the back of the vehicle while the guard—or driver, whatever his designated job was for the day—headed for the house closest to them.

It was funny in that the only vehicles Chris had seen come this far into the ranch were all ones the guards and Jorge used to come in and out. Even the man’s siblings weren’t allowed to take a vehicle in and out of the place.

He filed that information away for later.

Vehicles were a no-go.

The slam of a screen door had Chris pushing off the side of the Jeep to look around the side of the vehicle. Jorge stood on the porch with Valeria where the two talked fast. She tried to remain calm and pleasant. It didn’t matter; her husband was animated and irritated enough for the both of them.

Chris’s irritation picked up a notch.

The more he observed the two together, the clearer it became to him that Valeria was neither happy with Jorge, nor safe. She carefully measured her behavior, and words. Even if she hadn’t told him the truth when he asked, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that marriage was a steaming pile of shit.

It didn’t help he had somehow got into his feelings about Valeria, and whenever he saw her being dismissed or mistreated by the bastard she called a husband … it took everything in him not to kill Jorge right then and there with his bare hands.

Chris’s gaze slipped past the two on the porch to the little girl peering out the screen door, watching her parents’ quiet argument. Well, it was only quiet from Valeria’s side of things. Jorge didn’t seem to give a shit, to be honest.