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)
Once I’d gotten dressed and chugged half a bottle of water, I made my way to the door opening.
“Hey, kid.”
I suppressed a sigh and stopped in the doorway to the living room. “What?”
Delgado cleared his throat. “I have a proposal I want you to bring up with your boss.”
I cocked a brow.
“If you’re willing to postpone your Carillo hunt, I can help you locate your missing friends,” he said.
Yeah, that sounded too good to be true.
I folded my arms over my chest.
“Jones isn’t going after Vincente, is he?” he asked.
It was useless to lie. I’d spent all day yesterday demanding to know where Carillo was, so of course he’d puzzled those pieces together. But I didn’t tell Delgado the truth either. I didn’t say a damn thing. He didn’t need to know Vincente was giving us money.
“I can find a way to reach out to Carillo’s lieutenants,” he told me. “So when you come back, let me go. Let me do what I do best. You leave Carillo alone until I’ve gotten closer to Luca, and then you can do whatever you want with Carillo.”
“When would you help me find Shay?” I asked.
“The moment I can move my arms,” he said. “I’ll need my silver laptop—”
“We don’t have it anymore,” I lied. Technically, we had it, but I didn’t. “It would take me at least a couple days to get it back from analysis.”
That irritated him. “Fine. Take me back to my house. There’s a safe—I have a number I can call. It goes to a close relative of a man called Gomez.”
I knew of him. Fuck. I knew of him. Gomez was one of the men who’d picked Carillo’s side in the in-house war. River and Reese were turning San Diego upside down in their quest to find him.
“I’ll talk to my guys,” I muttered. “Later.”
“One more thing,” he said. “Give my warmest regards to Willow.”
I frowned and looked back at him. “Who?”
“That’s your intelligence, isn’t it? Willow Quinn?”
Oh fuck.
Quinn.
Squeezy’s real name was Willow? I wouldn’t fucking know, would I? But I sure knew a couple Quinns in our group.
“A friend of mine in DC headhunted a brilliant young woman from Washington last year,” Delgado said. Mercier? “She’s about your age, I’d believe. Passed every test, was barely vetted because of her relation to a man named Darius Quinn.”
I swallowed hard.
Delgado smiled faintly. “Both Elliott Jones and Darius Quinn were employed at the Hillcroft Group.”
I just left. I couldn’t hear another word. Anger pushed me forward, and I was running before I’d made it to the dirt road. Problem was, now I was pissed with Ryan and the others too. Why the fuck hadn’t they told me? I felt like a fucking dumbass when I had to be lectured about my own rescue team by a goddamn criminal.
Or an FBI agent?
Delgado?
Mercier?
Mercier.
I sped up.
Note to self, don’t say hola to an Italian.
I knew damn well that was Spanish, but I’d been down to my last brain cells when I’d stumbled out of the woods and into the parking lot of a gas station slash rest stop. I was gonna go to the bathroom before I ran back.
“Come on.” I put the phone on speaker and sat down at a picnic table right by the edge of the forest. There was no one around who could hear, so fuck it. I’d chased off the trucker who got offended by my Spanish anyway.
Gramps was making me wait a whole lot, I was just saying. Bad enough that he was still in Nice, and then he’d put me on hold the second I’d relayed all the Mercier updates.
Why was he still in Nice, by the way?
I hadn’t given him any time to explain before I’d launched into my rant about the goddamn Fed we were keeping hostage.
He was a Fed, wasn’t he?
Adrien Mercier?
Fuckin’ Canadians had to come and fuck shit up.
I tapped my knee restlessly and bit at my thumbnail.
Then finally, I heard Ryan’s voice again.
“Okay, I’m back.” He sounded frustrated. “Uh—” He exhaled a laugh-groan. “Intel checks out. I’m waiting for Squeezy to get back to me with a photo, but…yeah, it’s him. Adrien fuckin’ Mercier is a Fed.”
I cursed. Seriously. He was a federal agent! What the fuck!
“Do you think we can trust him?” he asked.
I…
A breath gusted out of me, and I rubbed my forehead. “Honestly? No. We may not fight on different sides, but he needs our target to stay alive.” I went on to tell him a bit more about Delg…Mercier’s plan, and I also passed along the proposal. That Mercier would help us find Gomez, that he’d help us find Blake, Marisa, and Shay—and I was honest. I couldn’t guarantee fuck-all. I didn’t trust Mercier not to put his own agenda first.
“I hear you,” Ryan sighed.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Um, one more thing…? I kinda shot him in the shoulder.”