In a Fix (Torus Intercession 2)

“Why are you up?” Ryder asked from behind me, sounding pained.

Shit. I hadn’t even bothered to check if he was on the couch, assuming he’d slept with Ella, but I turned at the sound of his voice and found him sitting there, holding his Glock in his lap in one hand, the other fisted in his short hair. He looked terrible, like he was going to throw up, ashen and sweaty.

“I have a headache,” I answered flatly. “What’s with the alarm being off?”

His face scrunched up. “I have to…”

I nodded. “You have to what?”

“I don’t want Dallas to get hurt.”

“People are coming here to kill me and her, right?” I said, not wanting to say Ella’s name in case Ryder hadn’t shared her real one with Digby.

“No,” Digby said snidely, and I gave him my attention. “Just you, Croy, nobody else. Murray is going to drive up, I’m going to shoot Ryder in the shoulder, and then I’ll walk you out to his car.”

“Why?”

Ryder got up and moved to the opposite end of the counter from me, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his left hand. “Because Murray wants to hurt Lucia, and killing you—after I saw how she was with you, how much she cares about you—will be worse punishment than killing her. Plus, she gets the bonus torture of knowing that if she hadn’t put you in Murray’s sights, by betraying him to begin with, you’d still be alive.”

That made sense. I couldn’t fault him.

“And plus, I fuckin’ hate you,” Digby snarled at me, moving forward to press the muzzle of the gun to my temple. “You turned my friends against me, you piece of shit!”

He had done that to himself, but since he had a gun in his hand, it was not the time or place to point that out.

“Shut up,” Ryder whispered roughly, pointing his gun at Digby. “If you wake up Dallas, I swear to God, I’ll fuckin’ shoot you myself.”

“We should just kill all three of them,” Digby told him, moving the gun off me and letting his hand fall to his side. “It would be so much easier. Bam-bam-bam, and walk out of here free and clear.”

“For fuck’s sake, think, Ingram. You’re a lowlife, blue blood, nickel-and-dime drug dealer. You kill a federal agent and you go straight to the top of the Bureau’s most-wanted list, overnight. They’ll be gunning for you for the rest of your life, and when they catch you, which they will, you get the needle, no questions asked.”

Digby sneered at him. “I’m going to Mexico, man. I get in that car with Murray, I’m never coming back.”

Digby Ingram was low on the food chain in Murray’s organization, but he knew enough to have put this whole thing in motion to begin with, from the moment he turned up on Wednesday night, to now.

“You told Suárez about Lane,” I said, staring at Digby. “You knew she was there, you told him she was visiting friends, and he picked her up.”

He shrugged, smiling at me.

“And you knew Murray would be pissed when he found out.”

“It only made sense. Why would a cartel want the kind of heat a kidnapping would draw?” he scoffed, leaning on the counter, on the kitchen side, as I walked around the end and stepped into the room with him. The tile was cold under my bare feet, and I gave an involuntary shiver. “But Suárez wanted the stupid foreign trade zone for the Mexican artifacts he was going to start smuggling out of the country, and of course, he thought he needed the new supply route. Little did he know that Murray could already move all the product he needed to just by making sure no one looked his way.”

Of course. Murray was a special agent with the FBI. He was decorated, and he was invaluable in the war on drugs in Mexico. If he said not to check that truck or that plane, why would anyone question him?

“Murray’s blown now; he’s as good as dead,” I told Digby. “He’s poison. His men must have already turned on him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Digby assured me, “he has money and resources, but most importantly, he has the product. He can start over, and I can help.”

Digby Ingram had no idea what was really going on. As soon as I got into the car with Andrew Murray, I was dead, yes, but so was he. Murray was going forward with a clean slate, and that included putting a bullet in Digby.

“I’m gonna enjoy watching Murray kill you,” Digby told me, and I could hear the venom in his tone. “You burned my life to the ground when you outed me to Brig, so believe me when I tell you I’m gonna enjoy being the last thing you ever see before you take a bullet to the brain.”