“Salut!” Curtis shouted, clinking his shot glass to ours, and we all downed them. The tangy flavor rolled over my tongue and burned its way down the back of my throat. I screwed up my face at the sensation and was thankful when Curtis handed me a slice of lime.
“Let’s dance!” Stella said, and I didn’t eve
n manage to get a word out in reply before she was grabbing my arm and pulling me through the crowds and toward the packed dance floor. She squealed as soon as we found our own little spot and dipped her head down to shout, “This is amazing!” in my ear.
“I know!” I held my arms in the air and swayed my hips left to right, losing myself in the rhythm of the music. The pounding of the bass felt like it was matching the beating of my pulse. Arms wrapped around Stella’s waist, and she spun, coming face to face with Justin. Not two seconds later, Curtis appeared next to me and flashed me a grin.
“Told you it was cool!” His breath hit the sensitive skin of my neck, and I shivered from the contact. The packed bodies in this club made the temperature soar, and I knew I wouldn’t last long with my jacket on.
“I’m hot!” I shouted back to Curtis, fanning my face.
“Take your jacket off and hand it over to coat check,” he shouted next to my ear.
I frowned and looked around at the room, trying to see over the sheer amount of people, but with my five-foot-two height, it was nearly impossible. It didn’t matter that the four-inch boots I’d paired with my black skinny jeans gave me a few extra inches, I still couldn’t see if there was anywhere we could leave our jackets.
“Where is it?” I asked, and Curtis frowned at me and stepped even closer. Almost every part of his body was now touching mine, and my stomach dropped—but not in the good kind of way. “Where is it?” I asked again as I took a step back.
Curtis spun around and pointed toward the doors we’d come in, and I spotted the neon-lit sign next to a small hole in the wall. “I’ll be back!” I told him, and he nodded to let me know he’d heard me. Pushing through the crowd on my own wasn’t as easy as when you had the force that was Stella paving the way. It took me twice as long just to make it to the edge of the crowd, and I paused to catch my breath.
I turned to see if I could still see them on the dance floor, but they’d disappeared in the crowd too. My breathing started to pick up, and all the danger talks my mom and dad had given me came rushing back into my brain. I knew how to defend myself; they’d made sure of that. I could take down any guy who attacked me with my self-defense moves I’d been taught by my uncles. Well, they weren’t really my uncles, but they were family.
The longer I stood on the edge of the crowd, the more I realized I shouldn’t have left the group. There was safety in numbers, but what could really happen in a packed club? It wasn’t like I was on my own in a dark alley. I was surrounded by people who would be witnesses if something happened to me.
My breathing started to slow the more I talked myself down, and I closed my eyes for a second to center myself completely. Once I felt back to my usual self, I spun around, not looking where I was going, and walked face-first into someone’s chest.
“Shit, sorry!”
Hands wrapped around my biceps, righting me. “No worries,” a deep voice replied. I could hear better now that I wasn’t as close to the music, but even if I couldn’t have, I would have known that voice anywhere. It was the voice I’d grown up with, the voice I craved every single day.
I tilted my head back and blinked several times as I looked up at him. He wasn’t staring at me, though. He was too busy looking at whoever stood next to him. I took in every inch of his face, the scruff covering his jaw and his high cheekbones. I was getting my fill, because I hadn’t seen him since before summer, and that was eight months ago.
Finally, he looked down at me, but the only part of his body that signaled he knew me was the slight widening of his eyes. I opened my mouth to say something, but the subtle shake of his head told me not to.
When I went home at Christmas, my dad had told me he was still undercover. Those uncles who taught me self-defense? They were also my dad’s team members. As the head of his DEA office, my dad had put together the best team out there—which included Ford, the man standing in front of me, silently trying to tell me not to break his cover.
I knew better than that, so I cleared my throat, stepped back, and headed right back to the dance floor. I didn’t look over my shoulder to see if he was looking at me, I didn’t do anything but pull my jacket off, tie it around my waist and disappear into the crowd.
* * *
FORD
I followed Eduardo Garza up the stairs and to the VIP area, gritting my teeth and using all of my energy not to look down at the dance floor. I had to keep my wits about me. I was here to do a job—I had been for the last eight months of my life, so I couldn’t concentrate on the girl who had disappeared into the crowd. But fuck if I couldn’t help it. What the hell was she doing here? In the most dangerous club in the state.
The VIP area was half full of people partying, but we walked right past them and to Garza’s cordoned-off area. I hadn’t been in this section often. Only people in his inner circle got to come up here to meet with him. But I’d been brought into his inner workings seven weeks ago. It had taken over six months to gain any kind of trust, and all that could be broken with a couple of words from the girl downstairs. Shit.
My job was to gather as much intel as I could, to collect all the evidence we needed to bring down the great Eduardo Garza, the cartel boss who had been running things for over thirty years. No one had been able to get remotely close to him, but I had. I was working in the dark—no outside contact. I was basically on my own, which meant if things went sideways, no one could help me.
And now all of that was at risk because a wrench in the shape of a girl who should not have stepped foot in this place had been thrown into the middle of my operation.
Garza sat down in his usual seat, and Rory and I took the seats opposite him. This was our regular setup, only we didn’t normally come here on a Friday night. It was too busy for Garza’s liking, but he’d been called here to handle some business, so we had to follow.
“Shipment gets here in three days,” he said, his dark-brown eyes boring into me. “Is everything ready?”
“Yeah.” I leaned back in my seat, trying to act unaffected, but it was proving harder than I thought. I could handle anything that was thrown at me. I’d done things in my life no sane person would even entertain, but I did it for survival. In the world I’d grown up in, if you didn’t shoot first, you could be dead fuckin’ certain your opponent would. It was your life or theirs, and I would always choose mine.
“I want them taken out,” Garza growled. “No one crosses me. There are no second chances.” The slight twang to his accent couldn’t be mistaken for anything but Mexican, and the designer clothes on his back and the guards constantly surrounding him meant people moved out of his way when he was walking.
“You ain’t gotta worry ’bout that,” Rory told him, pouring himself a whiskey. “We got it handled.” Rory had become my partner over the last few months. He wasn’t as new to the cartel as I was, but he’d still had to gain Garza’s trust. He may have gotten his trust, but he’d never have mine. There was only a handful of people I relied on, and even that had taken years to build up.