Rogue Launch, page 10
He sat up with a nice bed head.
I wanted to remember that. How perfect he looked when he was freshly fucked by me.
I put on my tee next, and I patted my pockets to make sure I had everything.
My chest felt a little tight. I didn’t like that one bit.
“Hey, Elliott?”
I glanced at him. “Yeah?”
He radiated awkwardness, and I sensed he was going to put himself out there, not for the first time. It made him braver than me.
“I really hope we see each other again.”
I drew a breath and then swallowed. Fucking hell, this actually hurt. It wasn’t supposed to.
He deserved some honesty from me.
“I’m gonna go,” I said, clearing my throat. “Because…you kinda got me attached, and that wasn’t part of the plan.”
He smiled, without awkwardness, without trepidation, and it widened to show he’d really wanted to hear that. “Fucking feelings, right? Be safe out there, sailor.”
I grinned faintly and shook my head. In another time, in another place… Damn. “You too, Coastie.”
Chapter Six
No one could accuse Vincente of not being accommodating, at least.
At two in the morning, after an extensive debrief of all things Carillo Mesa, a guard showed us the guest rooms upstairs. We were also given carte blanche to anything in the house—within reason, Vincente had said with a gleam in his eyes—and being the cool motherfucker that I was, I asked for a whiteboard or something similar.
My mind was fucked with all the running scenarios and information, and I wanted to get things on paper.
I saw no reason for two guest rooms when each one had two queen beds; besides, I wanted Joel close. It was stupid to get separated in a place like this. So I made the decision that we would share, and our room had a balcony that overlooked the pool area and seemingly never-ending party on the patio. Vincente liked his expensive rugs and ceiling murals. The one in our room portrayed the Blanco family tree. The ceilings on this level were almost domed, and the corners and edges as rounded and smooth as downstairs.
Minutes later, the guard was back, and he wasn’t alone. One woman wheeled in a big easel pad, and another rolled in a cart with drinks and snacks. Oh—a third showed up too. She opened a leather bag filled with neatly folded clothes, brand-new. Before she left with the others, she gestured to the bathroom and said it was fully stocked. And if we had any requests, just hit zero twice on the phone between our beds.
There was money in coke…
Once we were alone, Joel locked the door.
He hadn’t spoken since the introductions downstairs, basically.
His mind had to be swamped too.
“I’m gonna take a quick shower,” I said. “You wanna go first, or…?”
He shook his head, and it looked like he was leaving it at that—until he cleared his throat. “Why would Vincente give Carillo to us? I don’t believe he couldn’t spare a crew to get the job done himself. It’s going to cost him way more to fund our op.”
I’d thought about that too. It was a good question. “I’m not so sure. I was thinking along the same lines as you, until he brought up Europe. Vincente’s men know the SoCal route like the back of their hands, but Europe is a whole other playing field. It might actually be cheaper to send us. We know the area better, he doesn’t risk losing any manpower, and we don’t have any standing Blanco responsibilities that would be put on hold while we hunt that fucker down.”
Because after tonight, one thing was clear. It wasn’t just Crew and Ryan who were heading to Europe. It was pretty much all of us.
When the painkiller kicked in, I could relax a bit more. The discomfort was just annoying enough to mess with my concentration, and I didn’t have time for that. While Joel showered, I toweled off and dug through the cartel-provided bag of clothes from high-end brands. Nothing could be moderate with these guys. Vincente was going to take every opportunity to display his riches.
I pulled on a pair of boxer briefs in my size and found a pair of jeans too. That was good enough for now. I wasn’t planning on leaving the room until morning.
Despite that the AC was top-notch, I wouldn’t mind some outdoor air, so I opened the balcony door. It didn’t hurt to catch a word or two of what was transpiring on the patio. Vincente loved to mix business with pleasure.
Joel had left his smokes on the foot of his bed, and that annoyed me too. I was tempted.
Instead, I walked over to the easel pad and began writing things on the paper, starting with the list of names Vincente had given me on a note.
Rafael Delgado, Jorge Gomez, Luiz Gajero, and Dimitri Petrov. They were the four men Vincente knew that Carillo kept close. Vincente’s guess was that Petrov, a Russian freelancer recruited by Carillo, had led the operation that’d set Carillo free. Gajero and Gomez were former lieutenants who had expressed their dismay at being shut out from the heroin and meth trade. Which aligned with Carillo’s own beef with Vincente’s territory. The Blanco Family pushed heroin all over the place, but the drug routes tended to be divided by the drug. Vincente had other crews working with heroin.
Gomez and Gajero were also the two with permanent residences in the US. Finding them—or Delgado and Petrov—would lead us to Carillo.
I created a mind map with the names and linked Crew and Ryan to Delgado. Vincente had confirmed that he was most likely based in Europe, because that was where Vincente believed Carillo was moving. Like, everything. Whatever operations Carillo set up, Europe would be his headquarters.
Joel came out from the bathroom with a towel around his hips, and I averted my gaze.
Fucking hell, he was still too gorgeous for words. Or more gorgeous, I should say. He’d been smoking hot at eighteen, and thirty-three, too, but forty-one knocked the others out of the park.
As I’d gotten older myself, I’d come to realize age was beautiful. We were no longer blank canvases. Our bodies revealed scars, memories, experience, and stories. We had more to grab on to, emotionally, mentally. More to rest our eyes upon.
I suppressed a sigh and returned to the board.
Joel sat down on the foot of my bed, and he eyed the board. “Who’s staying in the US?”
“River and Reese.” I linked their names to Gajero and Gomez. Since they had established crews in San Diego, they were our best bet at finding Blake, Shay, and Marisa. “If we’re to believe Vincente, Carillo will try to make his way to Europe in the next week or so. He will likely surround himself with as many men he trusts as possible, so I’m thinking you, me, Ortega, and Ramirez will focus on Carillo and his entourage.” I added Valencia and Marseille to the list, because that was where the Blancos operated, according to Vincente.
True to his word, Vincente hadn’t had a whole lot of concrete information to take us directly to Carillo, but he’d had enough for us to put together a compilation of likely scenarios. I’d been able to profile Carillo better.
He was greedy and wanted to get his hands dirtier than ever. Coke, H, meth, fentanyl… He wanted it all.
“I’m gonna talk to Darius too,” I said. “If they’re on board with coming with us to Europe, they can be drivers or scouts.” It would be safer.
I was fucking itching to get my phone back. We had so much intel I wanted to share with the guys, and more than that, with Squeezy. She was the genius behind the computer screens who got us coordinates faster than anyone. She turned a clue into a result.
“So who’s going after the Russian?” Joel asked.
“Well, if he’s traveling with Carillo, which Vincente and I believe, it’ll be us,” I answered. “Then Crew and Ryan will try to find Delgado.”
To be a bit more specific, I added the last destinations where our searches would hopefully begin—unless Squeezy came up with better alternatives. Joel and I would go to Valencia, Ramirez and Ortega to Marseille, and Ryan and Crew to Nice, from where they would drive into Monaco.
Monaco, despite its strict regulations and close relationship with France, was where dirty money could hide. The microstate was a paradise for shady people with more money than they could spend.
I glanced over at Joel. “We should…” I trailed off when I saw how fucking defeated he looked. Head bowed, shoulders slumped, hands gripping the edge of the mattress.
I didn’t have to ask what was wrong. I already knew. And I bet he felt even worse because I’d called him useless.
I swallowed hard, regret and remorse flaring up. Screw old issues; I needed him on his A game here, and he sure as fuck wasn’t useless.
Taking a step toward him, I—
A sharp blast cracked through the air, followed by rapid gunfire and screaming. Shock paralyzed me for a hot second before the shattering of glass made me snap out of it. I sucked in a quick breath and—then I was crashing to the floor.
I thumped against the rug with a grunt, automatically screwing my eyes shut, and I couldn’t fucking breathe. Something heavy was—fuck, it was Joel. He’d rammed into me. I blinked and stared at him, completely dumbfounded, as he eased off me and stayed low on the floor. Why would he protect—
“Get your guns,” he growled.
Another shrill scream sounded from the patio, and we catapulted into action. The window to the left of the balcony door was blown out, and as I tucked my gun into my jeans, I spotted a bullet hole in the wall over my bed.
Joel jumped into a pair of jeans and grabbed one of his guns, and then we darted out of the room and down the stairs.
Adrenaline pumped through me, and I raised my gun when we approached the patio. People were running all over the place. Shouldn’t they be fucking used to gunfire?
“¡Quítense!” Vincente shouted to his guests to get out of his way.
I couldn’t see him in the crowd.
Joel suddenly took aim at the lower part of the patio doors and fired. The bullet got stuck in the glass, presumably answering his question of whether it was bulletproof.
“¡Métanse y cúbranse!” I yelled for people to get inside and take cover, then ordered them to hide in the bedrooms or bathrooms. “¡Escóndanse en los baños o en los cuartos!”
If Carillo knew we were here, if he knew Vincente’s location and that we were working together, we could be screwed. Or even worse, Blake, Marisa, and Shay could be screwed.
As guests started swarming in from the patio, screaming, drowning out the awful club music, Vincente once again yelled for everyone to get out of his way. “¡Putas de mierda, muévanse! ¡Quítense!” Then he pushed past the crowd and ran inside. His gaze was wild and filled with fury—and the high from however much coke he’d done.
He turned to a few of his guards, one of them in particular. “¡Prenda los reflectores! ¡Encuentre a esos hijueputas perros!”
He thought it was Carillo. He’d ordered his personal militia to light up the jungle and find the “dogs.”
“Vincente!” I hurried over to him, and I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I needed my goddamn phone—right now. “Ya dame mi teléfono.”
He breathed heavily and looked at me.
He had bloodstains on his neck and shirt, but he hadn’t been hit.
Someone had, though.
A quick look outside revealed a woman lying in the pool of her own blood.
“Don’t fuck me, Jones.” Vincente spoke for only me to hear.
“You know my priorities—and you have my word.” I gave him a brief, serious look before I had to follow Joel outside. “Joel, slow down. Stay behind me.”
He ignored me completely but spun on his heel and called back for Vincente, and he demanded a precision rifle. “Blanco! Dame tu mejor rifle de precisión—olvídalo.” He changed his mind as he eyed a guard running by, and I wanted to fucking smack him. Joel stole the guy’s rifle before darting outside.
“Are you crazy?” I growled. “We don’t know how many there are!”
“If they know where Blake is, I don’t give a shit!” he shouted back.
Goddamn idiot!
Bullets started flying again as soon as we reached the end of the patio, each one cracking into the concrete walls around us. We ducked low and ran for the stairs toward the driveway below. Meanwhile, Vincente’s guards were firing back at the damn jungle—until the whole place lit up by industrial spotlights. Every tree, every bush, every vine glowed bright green. And fuck me if I didn’t also see a handful of people perched on ladders outside the perimeter, beyond the outer walls that circled the property.
The gunfire ceased almost immediately, and I heard shouting from the other side. Rapid orders to get back to the cars.
Joel sped up, and we wound up on the drive where half a dozen of Vincente’s guards were wasting bullets.
“Joel!”
Why was he faster than me?
He sprinted down the driveway toward the gate, barefoot, shirtless, and with a rifle in his hand.
“¡Abran la puta puerta!” He roared for the guards there to open the fucking gate.
“I swear to Christ, Joel!” I yelled. He was approximately ten feet ahead of me, and the distance was growing.
The gate was open just enough for him to slip through, and my chest seized up with panic. He had absolutely no cover out there; someone could be lying in wait right outside.
I followed and scanned the thick vegetation on both sides of the dirt road. Up ahead, two SUVs were driving away from us.
Joel stopped abruptly in the middle of the road and lifted the rifle. Three shots popped off, and I stared in bewilderment and awe as he took out three tires of the SUV closest to us, causing it to drive off the road.
He wasn’t done. He aimed at the last SUV, and he used his last three rounds to take out three more tires. He didn’t miss a single fucking shot; he knew exactly how many rounds he had, and…Jesus Christ, the SUV farthest away hit the ditch almost half a mile down the road.
When he threw the rifle aside and started running again, I automatically sprinted after. There were too many, too fucking many. Three—no, four. Four men stumbled out of the first SUV, guns ready. Joel had already grabbed his handgun from the base of his spine, and he killed the driver with two shots. Another four men had poured out of the SUV farther up the road too, but I estimated we had at least ten seconds before they’d be within firing range with their pistols. I couldn’t see any rifles.
Joel yelled at the three men mere feet away. Where’s my daughter? Are you with Carillo? Answer me! Where are you keeping my girl? And all I saw was the situation escalating into something we couldn’t handle. I killed another with a shot to the head while Joel shot the damn hand off the third, rendering it useless. The man’s gun thwacked against the dirt road, and he screamed.
Sorry, but Joel was going to have to interrogate someone another time. I killed the fourth guy who was semi-hiding behind the SUV, and now we had to deal with the next problem. Or I did. Joel grabbed the man he’d injured and slammed him up against the car, more focused on getting information.
Bullets ricocheted against the car. I stayed behind the driver’s door and aimed at the four darting up the road.
“Keep them alive!” Joel barked out.
I shot the first one, and he went down.
Then I heard Joel’s furious shout, the sound laced with so much pain that I knew he’d been hit—and I heard him drop behind me. You dumb son of a bitch, you’re not allowed to get hurt. I unloaded my gun on the remaining men as fear shot through me. The last man to die was the one Joel had pushed up against the car, and I got him while he was trying to make a run for it. Backup was on its way, a minute or two too late. I fell to my knees next to Joel and frantically searched for an entry wound. The top of his shoulder. He groaned and tried to get up, but I held him down.
We were suddenly surrounded by Vincente’s guards, and they busied themselves with the dead guys.
The bullet had to be lodged in his flesh; I didn’t feel any exit wound on the other side. I prayed it looked worse than it was. He was losing a lot of blood, and I had nothing to stop the bleeding with.
“Hold here. I’m gonna get you back to the house.” I pressed his hand to the entry point, then hauled him up into a seated position. He cursed and winced. The spotlights over by the gate cast the brightest light over us—and the blackest shadows when guards blocked the beam.
I got him to his feet and repositioned myself on his uninjured side, so I could drape his arm around my shoulders.
“Are some alive so we can interrogate—ow, fuck.” He hissed.
“You worry about that later,” I told him. Knowing Vincente, I didn’t think there was a risk he traveled without a doctor. The bosses liked to bring their infrastructure with them wherever they went. And that person better free up some time to help Joel.
Christ, I needed my heart to stop racing.
I was gonna blame Joel for driving me to smoking again. Vincente’s personal doctor, referred to only as Garcia, had set up shop next to the pool table in the office, and he’d been working on Joel’s shoulder for about half an hour now, after we’d waited twice that long. The man was in excruciating pain, but it had very little to do with the gunshot wound.
Joel was equal parts the strong and silent type and the one who wore his heart on his sleeve. He didn’t complain for nothing; he could handle physical pain just fine. But something had happened tonight. I could only guess that being so close to Carillo affiliates had given him hope.
Now he was crashing. He’d heard Vincente mention that all eight men from the attack were dead, and maybe Joel saw that as defeat. I didn’t know. What I did know was that I couldn’t handle hearing another whimper or sniffle from him. I couldn’t stand to see him wipe his tears one more time.
Guilt weighed down on me, brick by brick, for every time I’d told him he wasn’t Blake’s dad. For every time I had corrected Piper by calling him a stepdad. I was such a fucking asshole.
