I’m calm until I enter my office and shut the door. Then I kick over both of the chairs in front of me. My chest is heaving, my warrior blood warring with the white man inside, telling me instead to keep calm, to do my job. Do what I can to find her and trust that Drummer’s instinct is right, that she was tricked in some way. The alternative that she was tortured is too terrible to consider. In frustration, I pull the tie holding my hair back, allowing my long hair to flow free. Shaking with frustration that I don’t have an enemy in front of me.
What did they do to Mariana to get her to betray Drew’s address?Nah, Mouse, don’t go there. Focus.
Mariana had nothing except her purse with her when she was arrested, Drew brought nothing but clothes and what few bits a teenage boy thought he needed. My suspicions are there’s probably a wealth of information stored in that trailer. Reports, letters, shit that would divulge all manner of information, such as the school he attends. Maybe the football club he goes to.Maybe more, I don’t know. I doubt if the kid does either, moms take care of that shit.
Mariana wouldn’t have willingly given him away. Even Drew knows that. I know it intuitively. She was scared to go back, I don’t for one second believe that her father’s turned loving. The shit we’ve dug up on him points to him being anything but. Mariana’s only a means for him to get hold of his son.
Is she hurt?My palms grasp either side of my head as I try to suppress my roar of frustration.I don’t know what’s happening to her.Even whether she’s still alive.
I inhale a deep breath and hold it, then slowly let it out. And repeat. My heart rate starts to return to normal, my brain begins to work. Going around the other side of my desk, I sink into my seat and pick up the phone while simultaneously getting a search running.
Devil agrees to investigate any ofEl Procurador’s links to the US. I can’t blame him for not immediately knowing, but I just wish we had some answers for once. The next couple of hours I spend trawling the darkest depths of the web, but nowhere can I find a link between Los Zetas, the Herreras, andEl Procurador. In truth, I hadn’t expected to find one, suspecting it more likely they’re in competition with each other. I hardly expect cartels to meet up and exchange working practices. But Drummer was right to ask me to make sure. We need to know what we’re up against, and if we can’t find that, at least who we’re not. If the crime family or the cartel had their sights on Drew it would be a different ball game. Hopefully we’re only dealing with a couple of men.
Just as I’ve reached that conclusion, whoever it is is acting alone, Devil calls back to tell me he’s found the same. His contacts in the CIA and FBI were unable to find anything that showed Los Zetas or the Herreras were linked withEl Procurador.
When I tell him we’re planning to use Drew as bait, he wants to be involved. Prez won’t mind the invitation I extended for him to come to the compound, he’s been here often enough before.
After I’ve updated Drummer with Devil’s involvement he calls an emergency church for that evening. Having sharpened up everything on the envelope, I now know it was posted from Villavicencio, the capital of the Meta department. It doesn’t narrow anything down, being a huge area of over thirty-three thousand square miles. By the time I’ve looked everything up and am thoroughly despondent, members are passing my door heading into church. I go to join them.
Having flown up from San Diego, Devil’s already arrived and has taken the spare seat that’s been placed alongside Joker. Prez starts the meeting. When the scarred man waggles his fingers, Drummer nods for him to speak.
“I suspect Mariana’s been tricked,” he addresses himself to me. “It’s notoriously difficult to send a letter in Colombia, let alone one going to a foreign country. It’s not unheard of to be asked to provide two forms of identity for the slightest thing. If she wrote to Drew, she’d need help sending the letter. It’s not a case of putting it in a post box. In fact, there are virtually none of those at all.”
“So she trusted the wrong person? Her letter was intercepted?”
“That makes sense to me. She’ll want to contact Drew, to let him know what’s going on and where she is. She obviously can’t get access to a phone, so maybe tried snail mail instead.”
“Or,” I put in. “She could have been tortured.”
No one contradicts me. We can’t rule it out.
“El Procuradorseems fixated on finding his son. I may know the reason for that.” Devil’s got everyone’s attention. “He’svisited a specialist. Seems he’s being treated for cancer. It may have reminded him of his mortality.”
“Dying?” I ask, hopefully.
“Seems not,” the man from England replies, his accent sounding odd around our table. “It’s in an early stage and odds are it’s treatable, but it may make grooming his son, presumably to take over, more of a priority. He won’t want to waste time that, if the treatment doesn’t work, he may not have.”
“Can we track him from his medical records?” I ask. I hadn’t found those.
“No. He went to Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. Received treatment and listed his hotel address as his residence.”
Rapping the gavel, Drummer takes the floor, and updates everyone on the man, or men, who were following Drew, and the proposed plan to turn the tables on them.
Dollar removes his glasses and polishes them on his shirt. “Have you considered they might be plain old debt collectors?”
I raise my chin. “Unlikely. Why trash the TV and not take it? And Drew seems pretty certain it’s not, and I believe him. Mariana did everything by the book. Never took out loans or bought things on credit.”
“I’m taking this seriously.” Devil leans forward with his elbows on the table. “It’s worth a shot. If they areEl Procurador’s men, they may have information we can squeeze out of them.” One side of his face turns up, I suspect the other would, but the scar keeps it in place. “I’d prefer the Satan’s Devils handled it, and not just because you’ve got what they want. Nowadays the FBI has to be more, shall we say, circumspect, on how they get information.”
A chuckle goes around the table.
“There won’t be much left,” Drummer promises.
No, there won’t. That’s my kid they’re after.My kid?It’s at that point I realise just exactly how much I’m invested inMariana’s brother, as well as the woman herself. It prompts me to say, “The priority is keeping Drew safe.”
“We’ll all be there, Brother,” Drummer promises with a snarl. His expression questioning why I should think anything less.
Receiving chin lifts from all my brothers, silent promises of support, I start to feel more positive.We will pull this off.“When?”
