He was fuming mad, the more he thought about the money he’d lost. The feds had seized all his accounts before he’d had a chance to transfer the money. They’d found the accounts overseas, as well. It was useless to try and get anything back. This is what the government did—they slowly strangled anything and everything they could get out of people. They did the same thing while he’d served in the military. They had sent him on missions, stating that if he got caught, then he was on his own and they didn’t know anything about why he was there killing, destroying, and infiltrating the enemies.
It was one of the reasons why he’d started dealing guns and importing hard-core drugs into the United States. He’d made connections overseas. He was feared, and so were his men. Fucking Caden and his own brother Dom screwed up big time fucking with Lois.
Cornero remembered when Caden met her and fell head over heels for her. She had been barely nineteen but was sexy as damn hell. The lucky bastard. Cornero had to admit he’d found her very attractive and sweet. She was sexy but didn’t know it. Quiet and trainable yet had a little fight in her. Maybe that’s where the shit went wrong between him and Caden. He let his desire be known to have a taste of her, to possibly take her from Caden, and that had really pissed the soldier off.
How could one fucking twenty-four-year-old woman fuck up an entire operation? He was pissed off and angry. Where the fuck were Ganor and Spitz? They were the last men he had left and there was one more job to do in Texas. What the fuck?
“Cornero?”
He looked up and saw Mercury, an oil man and jack-of-all-trades who owned the estate Cornero was staying at.
“You got yourself a hell of a fuck
ing situation.”
“What do you mean?” he asked as Mercury sat down with a cigar in one hand and a brandy in another.
“Got some news from Dallas. Your two buddies just got busted during the deal you were counting on. Feds were all over the fucking place.”
“His eyes widened and he sat forward in his seat. He felt his forehead begin to perspire and that nervous twitch he had been fighting for years was getting stronger every day. He was going to lose his fucking mind. After all of this. After fighting for a real life, to not live on the fucking streets like others he knew from the service, he was going to wind up exactly where he’d started—needing drugs and living on the edge of his suicidal tendencies.
“I’d like to help you out, but I got my own deals that could be in jeopardy by my association with you.”
He shot him an angry look.
“Don’t be pissed. It’s fucking business, man, and that’s it.” He looked around them and then back at Cornero.
“Here.” He passed him a piece of paper with one phone number on it and one address.
“That’s the location of the woman you’re looking for. She’s here in Texas, in a town called Salvation.”
His eyes widened. “How the fuck did you find her so quickly?”
“I got my resources, which also informed me of that bust and your buddies going down. These detectives and feds want your ass badly. You need to take the money you have, plus the fifty thousand I’m loaning you until you’re back on your feet again, and go get her. Take the last thing you wanted from the men that fucked you over. That number will connect you to a guy who does transports.”
“Transports?”
“He gets people out of the country under the radar.”
“She won’t cooperate.”
“She doesn’t need to be conscious,” he stated very seriously, like a man who had used these services himself.
He nodded his head.
“There’s an SUV all gassed up with the directions to her location in the navigation system. After you grab her, leave that SUV at the location that guy gives you to meet him. I’ll get rid of the vehicle,” Mercury told him.
Cornero didn’t want to be thankful to Mercury or owe him, but he had no choice. He was handing him not only his freedom from spending the rest of his life behind bars but also the opportunity to be happy. Maybe when he got his hands on Lois she would know where the drugs and money were, and they could get someone to sell them and get him that money once he was in a safe location with her? He shook Mercury’s hand and stood up. As he walked away and headed to grab his shit and go to the SUV, he wondered if he would get away with this. As he packed his clothes and all his stuff he saw his hands shaking and he couldn’t stop them. “No. Not fucking now. Not when I need my shit together.”
He looked through his bag and took out the small case. He laid the items on the dresser, set it all up, and then held one nostril and inhaled the white powder up his nose. He shivered from the tingling sensation and shock to his system.
“Just a little fucking bit to take off the edge. Just a little,” he said aloud and then packaged the rest up for later if he needed it. He was going to be free no matter what, or die trying.
* * * *
“He wasn’t with them, but our sources say he is somewhere in Texas,” Investigator Yorkin told Danny. Danny ran his fingers through his hair. He had been at this long enough to follow his gut. Why had Spitz and Ganor been in Dallas doing this deal? Who else was involved with these guys and their operation?
“Every time we turn around and do a fucking raid on these guys, we end up with more questions and a list of more suspects who are involved. They’re all fucking retired from the service, too, which really fucking pisses me off,” Detective Ben Corbotta said to them.