“So,” Dallas said, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper before it found purchase and got louder, firmer, “it turns out that Eston and Lane were working together, her from the outside, him from the inside, to bring Stanton-Downey down, all under the supervision of the SEC and the FBI. Where things went sideways was when the DEA, seeing Lane in Mexico, put her into play before she could reach out to her FBI handler.”
“Why wouldn’t Lane just tell the DEA she was working with the FBI?”
“Apparently she tried, but wires got crossed—as they do—and she was snatched by Suárez and his guys before everything got sorted out.”
“Which means what?”
Dallas leaned forward, leveling his gaze on Brig. “Your sister is with Suárez in his compound in Sonora.”
Brig dropped, like a brick, down into his chair. “And she’s being held to leverage me to move his drugs.”
“Yes.”
“And what about Lane embezzling the company’s money?”
Dallas shook his head. “Lane funneled that directly to an account set up by the FBI. It’s all safe and sitting there, ready to be returned. It’s why her friends found themselves cooking meth for Suárez; they didn’t have another option to make money out there in the Sonoran wilderness. She was never funding their life there.”
“I thought you said Suárez forced them to cook meth.”
“He forced them to triple their output once he got wind of it, but they originally started as a means to make quick cash so they could live. Now he’s got them under his bootheel and is coercing them to produce both cocaine and meth.”
“So Lane was there to deliver supplies to her friends, and they showed her the coke, which is why she was in those photos.”
“Exactly. And because she was already on the inside, in the know, and because she makes sense as an asset for Suárez, the DEA fed her to him.”
“She fell into this mess because she was being a good Samaritan and trying to expose the company’s ongoing activities.”
“Yeah,” Dallas agreed. “Lane has been working to out Stanton-Downey, and in the middle of that, she went to Mexico to check on her friends. She figured she’d be safe because she was an FBI informant.”
“Until the DEA grabbed her.”
He nodded.
“All right,” Brig said, trying to get his bearings. “I get the rest of this, but why would Lane talk about Eston on tape? I don’t understand any of that.”
“Suárez has had Lane for a couple months now, and because she has to seem like a radical environmentalist, our undercover guy—I told you we had an agent in there—told her to tell him that she killed Travers to make herself seem hardcore into her cover. Having her show her commitment to the cause diverted everyone from thinking there was even the remotest possibility she was working with the FBI or the DEA. If anyone had found out, or does find out, they’d put a bullet in her head.”
“I see,” Brig said, sighing deeply.
“It’s a lot,” Dallas explained, moving away from me, extricating himself, like he was uncomfortable, uneasy, standing, tipping his head back and forth, as though he was trying to get his blood moving.
It had to be me. Clearly, my closeness was distracting him, lulling him, when instead his instincts should have been on high alert. It was so unprofessional, how I’d sat there, too close, like it was normal. I should have left. I was jeopardizing his safety, which in turn put everyone else at risk, but the Catch-22 of it was that I was there to protect Brig. Me being there was bad for Dallas. Me leaving was bad for Brig. There was no way to win.
Standing, I carried my coffee cup to the window to gaze down at the Strip, which looked gray and barren in the cold early morning light.
“What is the real story here?” Eric asked Dallas. “What’s going to happen?”
“The real story,” Dallas said, coming up beside me, “from what we’ve put together, is that Suárez is going to use Lane to get to Brig. Period.”
“Does he know that Eston’s not dead? Or that they have a child?”
“We don’t know for certain,” Dallas admitted, and I heard the resignation in his voice.
“Are Eston and Annie safe?”
“Yes. Lane doesn’t even know where they are, and won’t until this is over.”
“Eston must be climbing the walls,” Eric told Dallas. “I would if it were my wife.”
“Thankfully, the DEA agents in Mexico have a lot of experience with the drug cartels and how they operate, so they alerted the marshals, who took Eston and Annie into protective custody. This way, even if Suárez finds out about them, he won’t be able to use them as leverage against her. Or you,” he directed at Brig.
“So what’s happening as of right now?”
“We’re going to make it clear to him, when he contacts you, that there’s no deal to be made unless he hands Lane over.”