In a Fix (Torus Intercession 2)

Once she knew who she was looking for, she could figure out how he was skimming from the cartel and slowly build a case against him. The problem was, he knew it too. When he and his men attacked the DEA safe house in Guadalajara, they weren’t prepared.

“One of my friends,” she said, her eyes filling, “was shot when Murray’s men first breached. We both saw the men coming for us.”

I could guess what happened.

“I had my gun, and I was ready to––” She choked up, voice cracking. “To cover him as best I—but Murray hit me, he backhanded me across the face and…and yelled at me that I would pay for betraying my team.”

Letting go of her hand, I put my arm around her and leaned her into my side. “He knew the risks, El,” I soothed her. “You know it too.”

She was crying, her breathing doing the staccato thing where it catches and stutters.

“His sacrifice gave you the best chance to get justice for all of those guys.”

She nodded quickly.

Murray had murdered her friend right there in front of her, and then asked who she was. Her cover story was always ready to go at a moment’s notice. Very few people had access to DEA agent files, because so many of them went undercover, were stationed abroad, and moved in far too dangerous circles to not have an alias. So even when Murray checked on her in the FBI database, his clearance was only high enough to confirm her alias, Lucia Diaz. She was supposedly a DEA analyst, a lawyer on-site to make sure the agents didn’t run afoul of any Mexican laws. The note in her file said that she was under surveillance for possible obstruction and embezzling.

“He kept me at his mansion in Merida until he was sure I was who I said I was,” she explained, dabbing at her eyes with one of the napkins. “And then he said I could make money after I proved my loyalty, and if I did as he instructed.”

“How did you manage that?” Lund asked her.

“By the thinnest of margins. I told him I wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said under her breath. “It was where I drew the line.”

“Understood,” Montez said with a quick glance around the table.

“He trusted me because I was a woman, because I was, he assumed, a former agent, and more importantly, he trusted my greed and my supposed willingness to commit a crime. I saved his business more than once, and his life on at least two occasions. He sent me here with Maria Elena as a test to see if she could handle herself, because he was grooming her to take my old position so I could be promoted. He killed Suárez and needed a new second.”

“You’ve been acting as one of his lieutenants for how long?”

“He had someone watching over me for two months after he brought me into the fold, and I’ve been independent for the last eight.”

“Altogether almost two years of this, then,” I said sadly. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s hard to stay focused and grounded when you’re living a stranger’s life,” she told me. “Once I reported what had happened, and it was decided that I would stay embedded with the cartel, I saw my contact every three months or so, because at first Murray was paranoid and, as I said, had me under constant surveillance. It wasn’t long, though, that he started relying on me so heavily that we were together almost constantly, which made it impossible to get free to meet with anyone.”

“But when you did, did you hand off evidence?”

“Yes. But the last time I spoke to Agent Rojas, he said that we needed to get out of Sinaloa, so he gave me an address and told me to meet him the following day. When I got there, though, he wasn’t there. Later I found out that he was killed in an FBI raid.”

At which point Ella had no idea what to do. She had no contact with the DEA, and the FBI had killed her handler, who was himself a DEA special agent, so it followed that she could have been killed as well. With nowhere and no one to turn to, and having no idea who to trust, when Murray tapped her to come make a deal for the return of Lane Stanton, she jumped at the chance to come to the US, hoping she’d get the chance to run. But she was, again, just like in Mexico, never alone, and everything had gone downhill fast.

“And then I got out of the car,” she said, easing out of my hold, sitting up and turning to look at me. “Holy shit, Croy, what the hell are you doing in Las Vegas?”

I tipped my head. “It’s a really long story, and right now everyone is much more interested in you.”