Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
What the fresh fuck was he talking about?
He yawned. “I was born nine months later.”
Oh.
He was lying, right?
“I’m a Habs fan, despite I only spent my first three years in Montreal,” he said. “We moved to DC. My mother went back to school and got her law degree. My father became a janitor at my future elementary school.” He smiled a little to himself, which was a disturbing sight. In so much visible pain, he appeared to be utterly lost in a memory that was fond to him. “All his life, he had people—friends, family, coworkers—who said he had the potential to be much more. He was so smart and thrifty, they said. So ambitious about hobbies, creative and well-read. But you know what? He fucking loved being a janitor.”
Yeah, I had to stop listening. This Delgado fucker was a good storyteller.
“My mother understood him, though,” he went on. “When everyone else got on his case, she’d curse them out and tell them to mind their own business. He didn’t care what people said. He was happy.” He winced again as he stretched out his legs. “He told me to be whoever I wanted, and I wanted to join the FBI.”
I suppressed a sigh.
“I did a brief stint in the Navy first. Wasn’t for me. So I went to college and got a degree in criminal justice.” He peered down at his gunshot wound. I’d cut up his pullover a little, mainly because I wanted to keep an eye on the bandage, in case it bled through. So far, so good. “I graduated Quantico in 2001. I was twenty-six. The towers came down a few months later, and the world changed.”
I clenched my jaw at the mention of 9/11. I’d only been seven, or just about to turn, but I wasn’t exactly gonna forget the day we’d lost three family members. Two uncles and an aunt of my dad. That’d been the year the Finlays had gone from being a family of firefighters and cops to Marines. Everyone of age had enlisted.
Delgado turned to me. “You couldn’t have been old back then. Do you remember that day?”
I didn’t answer. It was becoming increasingly difficult to see him as a cartel freelancer who didn’t mind a little human trafficking on the side of his drug business. He was painting this whole fucking story of a completely different person, and he was doing it too well.
“By tomorrow afternoon, you will’ve confirmed this,” he told me. “I doubt you’ll find me anywhere in public searches, but you can find my father’s address in Los Feliz in LA. Last name Mercier. He relocated to be closer to me after my mother died two years ago.”
So Delgado allegedly lived in LA?
Delgado. Mercier.
My head was so fucked.
But if all this was a fantastic ruse, there might be a way to break through the façade. I just had to throw a bunch of questions at him to see if he had answers for everything.
“How big is your family?” I opened a new note on my phone to type things down.
“Medium.”
“When did you move to LA?”
“In 2015, when my cousin and his wife died in a car accident,” he replied. “You wanna look him up too? Federico Santos. His wife’s name was Lily. They were both teachers.”
“And why did this prompt your transfer across the country?”
“Because they left behind a three-year-old boy.”
I looked up from my phone. If he was lying, he was digging himself into a hole he couldn’t get out of. A dive into public news archives would definitely let me know if this accident had taken place. And the little boy? Was Delgado inferring he had a kid now?
“I was his godfather,” he stated. “It goes without saying I honored my responsibility.”
“How does that work with your supposed job as an undercover FBI agent?”
“It fucking doesn’t,” he snapped. “I’d come to terms with the fact that I’d never bring down the Blanco Family, but then that son of a bitch escaped from prison, and I had to go back in. My son’s gonna come home from summer camp in a few weeks to hear I’ve chosen work over him again—unless I can get the fuck out of here and do my goddamn job.”
I didn’t let his emotional outburst get to me. This shit was good. I wanted him to keep talking.
“You started working on some sort of Blanco case after you’d become the boy’s guardian, correct?” At least, that was my math. He’d mentioned four years.
He huffed out a breath and groaned in pain. “I’ll go back to the beginning so you don’t get any more confused.”
Thanks, asshole.
“My cousin and his wife—their deaths were the result of a drug-related conflict,” he said gruffly. “He had to veer off the road to prevent a collision with a car that stopped abruptly on the fucking freeway—perfect spot for a shootout between two rival cartels.”