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“Geez, thank you, Benny. I’m happy to see you, too.” She was the only one with enough street credit to call him that.
“Seriously, you look paler than usual, your eyes are weird, and talk about dark circles.”
“You sure know how to make a woman feel special.”
Before their bickering could get out of hand, I interrupted with, “You just missed Ethan Cross.”
“Oh, the mysterious hunk with the sexy voice was here?”
I chuckled. “No. He called. Why mysterious? Oh right, you guys haven’t met yet.”
“No, we haven’t. And until that happens, I’ll keep believing he’s a make-believe man you guys created.” She plopped down on the chair beside Ben’s. “I bring news—is that a new color?” She leaned over my desk to inspect my nails. “Fee is getting good. Anyway.” She shook her head. “I bring big news.” Ben and I straightened in our chairs, the mood somber again. “I’ve been doing some research,” she started as she rubbed her left hand, pressing it against her belly. “I think we have the address of another one of their bases. Where they stash their commodities. And I have reasons to believe they’ve just put their hands on new women to...sell.” She scrunched her face in disgust. “God, I hate to say this. Even verbalizing it feels dirty.”
“That’s huge. How do you know that?” I asked in wonder. It only confirmed Ethan’s suspicions.
“From our investigation. I connected the dots on some things and came up with it.” That should be enough of an answer for anyone who didn’t know her. But we did.
“What aren’t you telling us?” Ben was as distrustful as me. Not at what she found out, but at the ways she claimed she did.
“Nothing important.” She waved her right hand, dismissing him, then proceeded with her story, not giving us any time to question her more. “From what I gathered, they’re keeping the women at this place,” she placed a bunch of files on my desk, “but they intend to sell them in the next few days, so we need to act soon.”
“Are you planning on invading another one of their spaces?”
“Aren’t you, Benny? We know it’s going on, we know where they are; I’m not letting any more victims be sold on my watch.” Her voice seemed sharp, but we knew it was for the betrayal she endured.
That was exactly the reason why she was fired. Mia was closing in on a human trafficking venture, and she was about to bust the place to rescue the victims when the high ranks of the DEA said no, jeopardized her mission, and decided to fire her. Which was an odd call to make, what with her being The Bryant Prodigy, as the agency called her, and after the huge arrests she was responsible for.
That always left a bad taste in my mouth.
Understanding where she came from, and both of us being furious about the whole situation, we jumped on it and started brainstorming on the best strategy to get in.
“Maybe we could call Ethan. He’s just told us about the cartel being involved in human trafficking. It’d be good and safer to have him be a part of it.”
“No!” Mia rebutted Ben’s idea. “No one from the DEA. I know you guys like this Ethan person, but can we honestly say he’s not involved in whatever shit is going on?”
“No way, Mia! He’s as trustworthy as Aaron. And if you stretch it out the right way, we could get the buyers, not only the cartel.”
“Even if he’s as upstanding as you believe, Danny, we can’t count on them for that. We all know we can trust Aaron, yet he was outvoiced when I decided to act on this investigation right before I was...when the DEA...when I left. That means we need to consider someone inside might not be happy with this. If we tell either of them about this, they’ll need to run it by their superiors. I don’t like that.” She leaned her head to the side. “We don’t have the manpower to get to the buyers, I give you that. But we can get the girls. And if we stop this selling, we can harm their operation and make them waste time for a bit. It could give us enough room to act again.”
Even though we could use more hands on deck, Mia’s worries were legit. We didn’t have enough people to get to the buyers, but we also couldn’t risk our whole operation going down. If we could help those women and take down even a part of theAlacráns, I’d count ourselves lucky.
Since we were all on board with busting the place, Mia showed us what she’d been working on so far, and we dove into strategies to make them once again pay for what they did.
I was energized by the prospect of getting them, even if just a chapter of the cartel. It felt good to have a new purpose and solid idea after being in the dark for so long, dealing with the grief they’d forced upon us.
I just hoped we didn’t lose another one of us in the process.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I was happy. I wasn’t naive enough to affirm everything was going according to my plans and dreams, but I could honestly say I was happy.
Babysitting wasn’t my dream job, but I loved my time with Fee. Coming back home because my father was sick had been scary, but I was relieved to see him getting better, and it made me realize Holy Water would always be home. I wish I could broadcast to the world that Danny and I were becoming something, yet I enjoyed our stolen moments. Since they belonged to us only, they felt special, something for us to cherish.
Since he had to work late on another assignment—most likely through the night—and his mother hadn’t come back from her trip, I was once again spending the night with Fee.
He even suggested I have a friend over. That shouldn’t have surprised me; he proved time and again how thoughtful he was. His suggestion only made me want him more. My feelings for him were getting out of control, and I didn’t care one bit.
Taking him up on his suggestion, I invited April to spend the day with me and Sofia. She wouldn’t stay the night, but we arranged a whole day of fun for the three of us. Instead of a Girls’ Night Out, it was something like a Girls’ Day In.
