Rogue Launch, page 8
Looked like I was incapable of shooting him down.
Instead, we deepened the kiss at the same time, and our tongues met teasingly, unhurriedly. Fuck. One single taste of him, and I had to have more. I slipped my hand to the back of his neck, and he angled himself closer to me. We sucked in a quick breath before we were at each other again, and we started making out.
Shivers rocked my body as he tried to pull me toward him, and I didn’t fucking know what he wanted. I didn’t wanna break the kiss long enough to ask either, but when he grasped my shoulders tighter, I went with it. He leaned back against the sand, I followed, and then I was on top of him.
My fingers disappeared into the sand, and the slow wash of the waves rolling in faded into the background.
Goose bumps appeared across my back as he ran his fingers along my spine, and I couldn’t help but moan into the kiss. Fucking hell, he was intoxicating. My mind swam with lust. I had to remind myself that parts of this were brand-new to him, and I didn’t wanna rush anything.
“You feel so fucking good like this.” He breathed out and locked his feet around my calves. “I can’t believe we’re making out.”
I exhaled a chuckle and kissed him again, at the same time as I pushed my cock against his. Another shudder ran through me, and he groaned. He was hard as a rock already, and fuck me if I wasn’t too.
“Can we get off?” he asked with a pleading note in his voice. “I wanna touch you.”
Like I could fucking resist.
I nodded and kissed him once more before I eased back on my heels.
Christ. My heart was pounding.
Joel sat up and swiftly hauled his tee over his head, only for him to lean back again and unbutton his shorts. The guy was impatient.
I glanced around us, just to make sure we were really alone, and then I shed my tee as well.
“Um, I wanna see you,” he said. “Like, how you stroke yourself.”
I lifted my brows.
He grinned sheepishly. “Please? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve jerked off to…you know.”
No, I didn’t know, and now I wanted to.
“Tell me.” I unzipped my jeans and waited.
He bit his lip, his stare flicking between my crotch and my face. “Okay. Fine. I have this fantasy where I accidentally catch you in the shower, and you’re so close to coming. And you look at me—yeah, kinda like that—and you tell me to come closer and suck you off.”
Jesus fuck. My mouth went dry at those images. Joel on his knees for me in the shower? If that was something he wanted to explore, I could probably make time.
“Any time you wanna try that, call me.” I pushed down my jeans and boxer briefs just enough so I could pull out my cock.
I stroked myself slowly, and he couldn’t seem to look away. He did stick his hand down his own boxers, though. “How about Friday? Mom’s working late.”
God—was I gonna be that guy again? Who snuck in to someone’s house to—never mind. Yes. Yes, I was.
“After tonight, I owe you a dinner. I’ll bring pizza.”
He grinned, and it was fucking adorable. “Okay.”
I eased forward again, planting a hand in the sand next to his head, and I dipped down and kissed him.
He shivered and swallowed, the moment turning serious. “Look. We have two weeks till you ship out. Can we just get together a million times and go nuts on each other? No pun intended.”
I chuckled.
“I know you’re not interested in relationships and shit like that,” he said. “It’s not on my radar either—trust me. But you’re so fucking hot that—”
I cut him off with a hard kiss. He’d said all I needed to hear. Two weeks—yeah, definitely. Two weeks of going through however many firsts he wanted to experience. And hopefully more than a few blow jobs. My mouth watered at the mere thought of swallowing him down.
Sign me up.
Chapter Five
Navojoa offered a little bit of everything, from paved roads and cars to dirt roads and horses. A bustling city in a smaller format—and currently ninety-five degrees.
Hoping against hope that we’d be picked up earlier by Vincente’s men, Joel and I had arrived at the exact coordinates by lunch. It was a café at the end of a dirt road, and the ceiling fans did absolutely nothing above us on the boardwalk slash seating area. But at least we weren’t in the sun. Ironically, the store right next door sold fans. I just might buy one of those handheld things that Blake liked to run around with in the summers. Hers had a spray bottle too.
I adjusted my new sunglasses and surveyed the people across the street. They had a similar strip of stores, with two outdoor seating areas. Café, burger joint, bodega—offering the best fake Ray-Bans a man could buy—a cell phone repair shop, and a bait shop.
One-story buildings with flat roofs on both sides of the road. Small park nearby. Vincente’s men could appear from anywhere, not to mention watch us from countless angles.
“Who’s the single R in the group chat?” Joel asked.
“Ramirez,” I replied. “Ryan is RQ.”
They’d joined this morning.
“I think Darius is the only one who knows Ramirez’s first name,” I said.
Joel nodded absently, scrolling away on his phone.
I was extremely tempted to ask for a smoke. I hadn’t caved yet.
He had. Possibly because I’d been a fucking asshole last night.
I was working on an apology. I just… It went against my nature these days to be civil to Joel. Even more so to be nice. Or fair. Or whatever. Soon as I saw his face, I immediately wanted to hurt him.
Every now and then, I wanted to hurt myself too—for caring so goddamn much. It wasn’t like he’d fucking cheated on me. We’d never been together. He’d never made a promise to me. And yet…
Joel and I had a sideline story that had impacted me more than I was willing to admit, and it terrified me to think I might still—
“We might have activity on the roof directly above us,” Joel said quietly, not looking away from his phone. Or so it appeared. He’d bought shades too.
“How do you know?”
“The man in the red car across the road—at your two o’clock—is looking upward.”
I found the car in question, a rusty Honda, parked under a tree, and sure enough, he was staring in the direction of the roof above us. Nice catch by Joel, I had to admit.
“They could be scouting the area to report back to Blanco.” That was my theory, anyway. “I’ll go across the street and buy another paper.” I wanted to have a look.
“Do you think they’ll pick us up earlier?”
“Based on experience, no,” I admitted. “He likes to use the cover of darkness to conceal the locations of his properties. But with what’s going on back home, you never know. He could be as eager to see us as we are to see him.”
At around four PM, we had more movement. Joel had been right earlier; a man had stood on the roof above the café, and he’d left at the same time as the red car.
Now it was back, circling the neighborhood every fifteen minutes. An SUV with tinted windows that stood out like a sore thumb had also driven by a couple times before it’d been parked outside the entrance to the park at my four o’clock.
The heat wasn’t as brutal anymore, so I ordered a cup of coffee. We’d already taken turns eating lunch across the road, and there wasn’t much else we could do. We sat there at our corner table and pretended to read papers while we kept an eye on our surroundings. We’d gone through the café’s selection of pastries out of sheer boredom.
I pushed out the third chair at our table and rested my leg on it. Time to elevate it for a moment again. The pain wasn’t awful today, but it cramped up if I sat in the same position for long.
Joel lit up a smoke. “Any guesses about where they’ll take us?”
“None whatsoever.” It could be a ten-minute drive, a helicopter ride, a couple hours in a plane… “I only know we’re staying in Mexico. Blanco doesn’t cross borders unnecessarily.”
I was ready for whatever. I’d warned the guys in the chat server that we would likely not be able to communicate until we’d left Vincente’s compound, because he liked to confiscate phones. All to ensure the secrecy of his whereabouts.
In return, Darius and Ortega had updated us on the situation at home. The news of more killings was spilling out into the public, triggering experts to predict the next cartel war. Seven known Blanco affiliates had been found dead so far, not at the hands of River and Reese. And, of course, what we knew was that the dead men had no longer been Blanco members but rather Carillo recruits. There were no rival gangs to speak of this time, just an in-house war.
According to Ortega, the authorities had put together a task force with the DEA in charge. Three kidnappings, one prison break, and cartel members ending up dead—yeah, no wonder everyone was scrambling.
“Someone just climbed out of the SUV,” Joel said.
I glanced over there and spotted a man looking directly at us. Then he nodded, and a spark of anticipation ignited within me.
“That’s our ride. Let’s go.” I took a final swig of my coffee, then rose from my seat and made an effort not to show I was wounded.
“Finally.” Joel followed me.
I checked my watch and tapped my foot restlessly.
We’d been in the air for nearly four hours.
We could be fucking anywhere.
“I wonder how many private jets he has.” Joel eyed the luxury we were surrounded by. Eight cushy seats divided into groups of two with a table in the middle for each pair. Tan leather and mahogany. Private bar. “It never ceases to amaze me how the underworld has set up its own infrastructure.”
Yeah, me either. Theirs was better funded too.
I took a swig of my Coke.
“Did you ever meet any of the Colombians when you worked with Vincente?” Joel asked.
I mean, Vincente was Colombian. And his sister. And their dad, whom I’d killed. “His dad would be the one.”
“He ranked higher than his son, I assume.”
I nodded.
“So where do their Italian roots come in?”
“Vincente’s grandfather Luca Blanco,” I replied. “He was born in Sicily and moved to Colombia solely for the cocaine. He was a made man. Then he met his wife there, they popped out a few kids, and he branched out on his own.”
They’d incorporated some of the more traditional mafia structure into their organization, only with a few more steps involved. The big boss was untouchable. No clue where he even resided or what region they’d laid claim to. I figured Joel could benefit from the knowledge, so I gave him a rundown of the Blanco Family. Underneath the boss was a line of advisers, coordinators, and snakeheads, who kept the regional officers in check. With each regional officer controlling a drug route. In-house wars were actually not uncommon, because so many crews were part of the cartel, whether they bossed over a territory or a responsibility. Vincente was, in his own right, a boss. In business terms, he was the manager at a branch that reported back to corporate.
“We never heard anything about the so-called corporate growing up,” Joel mused. “I remember gang wars, and we saw the name Blanco in the papers, but…”
Yeah, pretty much. Hector Alvarez had been the regio back then, an old friend of Luca.
“How many drug routes do you think they control?” Joel asked.
I scratched my jaw, still a bit sore from his punch last night. “I know they don’t have Florida anymore.” Technically, no single player had controlled that state since the ’80s and early ’90s. The black market in Florida today was oversaturated with freelancers, a handful of semi-major cartels, and small-scale hustlers with their own crews. “Last I heard, they shifted focus to Texas. That’s where you have the human trafficking too.”
Joel shook his head. “So another regio is in charge of Texas.”
I nodded. “That’s it for the US and Canada. As for Europe…” I blew out a breath. Europe was an ever-changing market. Crew and Ryan were ready to go, and we didn’t fucking know where to send them. We had too many options. “We’ve had reports of Blanco operations in the Netherlands before, but that area’s becoming too hot. They’ve cracked down hard on smuggling through their ports. Spain is another hot zone, though the route is still being used every day. We have a list of cities we might send Crew and Ryan—Barcelona, Antwerp, Hamburg, Valencia, Rotterdam, and Marseille. This is based partly on the role these cities play in the cocaine trade today and partly on Blanco history.”
Joel scrubbed his hands over his face, visibly exhausted and frustrated.
I knew the feeling.
That was just Europe—and only the coke trade. Blanco shipped heroin too.
I tilted my head, curious about something. “Do you ever confiscate anything other than coke?”
The Coast Guard was every smuggler’s nightmare because of the amount of drugs they seized.
“Meth and small amounts of heroin,” he answered. “For a while, we saw an upgoing trend in chemical compounds often used to create synthetic drugs, but I think the cartels realized it was easier to ship smaller volumes legally in the mail, as opposed to smuggling massive volumes illegally.”
Ah yeah, the wonders of US regulations, restrictions, and import laws.
“The heroin is interesting,” he said. “We have people on our cutters who take pictures of every package we confiscate, and then we send that off for analysis before disposing of the drugs. Bricks of coke rarely have many markings, but the heroin—man, you can find novels on there sometimes. Scribbling, dates, stamps. Every time the shipment changes hands, someone leaves a mark. So when I was in Florida, we’d be able to track shipments all the way from Afghanistan—and we saw how their routes changed in real time when the Balkans became too hot and they started shipping through Kenya.”
That was interesting. I did know Kenya had become a big part of the drug trade, but I hadn’t reflected on how it’d replaced the Balkans. That made sense, though. Cartels looked for countries with good infrastructure and poor leadership. The Balkan region consisted of stronger democracies today; their politicians weren’t as easy to corrupt.
Kenya, however…
“Your mind is spinning.”
I flicked my gaze to Joel, immediately ticked off. Great, he could still read me very well—what-the-fuck-ever.
“As soon as we get our phones back, I’m gonna reach out to Squeezy,” I said. “She’s frustrated because she doesn’t know where to search for Carillo men in Europe, but how often do people from Mexico travel to Kenya?”
He sat up a little straighter. “I wouldn’t put it at the top of their list for vacation destinations—or business, for that matter.”
Exactly. Squeezy could start going through passenger data. Because if Carillo was trying to establish a drug route, chances were he’d sent Delgado to strike deals in Kenya.
Fucking hell, Carillo wasn’t merely screwing over Vincente. He was leaving the entire cartel, wasn’t he? The man was going rogue and planned to bring as many members as he could with him.
“You mentioned the heroin you confiscated in Florida,” I said. “What about San Diego?”
Joel shrugged a little. “Like I said, small amounts. In fact, I don’t think there was anything at all last year.”
Because of meth taking over, I bet. “But it used to be primarily from the Golden Triangle, right?”
He inclined his head. “Laos and Myanmar.”
Right. And that entire region was changing. Growing opium poppy was illegal, less profitable, and difficult to conceal. You flew over the jungle and caught a field of red flowers from the sky, game over. Meth labs, however, different story. A single lab could crunch out thousands of pills every hour completely undetected.
“And the meth you confiscate,” I went on. “Less from Mexico and more from Southeast Asia, am I right?”
“Yeah. Mexico’s still the dominant player, but the influx from Myanmar is growing a fuck-ton, especially with those damn yaba pills.”
I nodded. “Let’s say Carillo is starting his own organization. He’s free to do whatever the fuck he wants. Does he stick to coke, or does he branch out to increase his market?”
He pinched his bottom lip, his mind spinning too. “You wanna cross-reference travel information between Kenya and Myanmar?”
“It would narrow down Squeezy’s search field.” I didn’t know how many men Carillo assigned for this kind of thing, but we did know Rafael Delgado was his closest associate with similar tasks. Hopefully, Vincente could give us more names.
Joel opened his mouth to say something, but we both noticed we began descending, and that killed the topic.
We glanced out our windows.
“That’s gotta be a coastline,” he said.
“We just don’t know which one,” I muttered. In the dark, it was easy to see the towns dotting the edge of wherever we were. So many lights in such small clusters could indicate they were resort towns.
Mexico was packed with those.
Joel hummed. “That looks like an island to the east.”
I saw it just as he finished his sentence. With how the supposed coastline was shaped, Cozumel came to mind. In which case, we were a long fucking way from home. Jesus Christ, Cozumel was in the Caribbean Sea, putting us much closer to Florida than California. Cancún was the closest resort that I knew of.
We’d taken off from Hermosillo, and we’d been in the air for four hours now. I’d have to check to be sure, but Cozumel sounded logical in terms of how long it would take to fly there.
“Are you thinking Cozumel too?” he asked.
I suppressed a sigh. “Yeah.”
A moment later, the flight attendant came over with two black tote bags.
Something told me we weren’t about to go shopping.
“Are you kidding me?” Joel snapped.
The woman answered in Spanish and told us to put them on right now. Then she left again.
