Punching the last few numbers, I turned my phone around and held it to his face. “I’m saying she’s past Reynosa and heading up Highway 2. They’re going back to Texas.”
Hitting a speed dial number, I paced the room—the knowledge that Eden was alive and on the move, spurring a fire in me.
“Who are you calling?”
“Reinforcements. I know where she’s headed, but we need someone with connections to track down where they’ll eventually hold her to prepare for the possible trap we’ll be walking into.”
* * *
“What the fuckdo you mean, you took her to Mexico?”
“Just what I said,” I repeated, reminding myself I needed his help and not to lose my shit on the assistant district attorney. “I had to go. She wanted to go with me, so I took her.”
“Jesus…no one has heard from her! We thought…we thought…goddamn it, you know what we thought, Carrera! I thought Muñoz had gotten to her, too. Her whole family is missing, for Christ’s sake! I mean…damn, man…”
When Brody Harcourt’s jerky speech and subject jumping connected in my disjointed brain, I growled deep within my stomach, and slammed my fist into the wall. “You fucking know Manual Muñoz, don’t you?” Brody grunted, yet offered no further explanation. Cursing, I hit the wall again. “Goddamn it, Harcourt! Come clean or I swear to God, I’ll blow the lid off everything for you. One call to the newspaper and your life will be over.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Carrera? My life is over regardless of what you do.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” What bullshit could the ADA have to compare to sending the only woman I’d ever loved into the hands of a sadistic killer?
Even more sadistic than me.
A resigned sigh crossed the line. “Manual Muñoz came to me two months ago and threatened my sister’s life. Man, she’s only twenty-one and still in college. He swore he’d kill her if I didn’t agree to find some way to get a tracking device on you.”
Eden’s St. Michael medallion.
Shit.
“What does Nash Lachey have to do with all of this?” And just because it’d been bothering the hell out of me, I added, “And how do you know Eden?”
“The guy I was putting pressure on to turn on you ended up flipping out on me. I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. They killed Eden’s brother to show him they could get to anyone at any time.” He paused, his voice cracking as if unsure about delivering the rest. “Only the man freaked out and ran.”
“And Eden?”
“Man, we used to fuck, all right? It meant nothing. Cherry never let it mean anything. I guess being frat brothers with her ex-husband ruined anything we could’ve had.”
Fire filled my chest as my breathing came faster and harder. Images of Brody Harcourt in bed with Eden clouded my vision and a compulsive need to break every bone in his body took hold of me.
“You have nothing with Eden. Do you understand me, Harcourt? You never fucking touch her again.”
“Fine, yes. Now, give me the access code to the app that’s tracking her GPS.”
Focusing on saving Eden, I gave him the information. “One thing I don’t understand,” I said, a thought hitting me. “Old man Lachey was supposed to get a permanent reminder from the Carreras to pay his debt. I never authorized a murder. How did Manuel Muñoz know what was happening that night at Caliente?”
Silence filled the line for more than a few heartbeats before he finally answered. “You didn’t turn your phone off, Val. You called me that day to threaten me to divulge info about Nando Fuentes’ involvement with the DEA. I heard your whole conversation about roughing up Lachey. I passed along the info to help save my sister.”
I could feel the muscles in my neck cording with unleashed tension. “So, during our whole conversation, you’d already flipped, you asshole?”
“He threatened my sister, Val. Surely, you can relate to family being targeted.”
I knew what he was doing. The attorney in him tried to appeal to my human side, but with Eden gone, I no longer had one. “Yeah? Well, now he’s going to rape and kill Eden.
“Man, don’t say that.”
“Was the run for the DA seat worth it, Brody?”
“Fuck you, Carrera. You don’t live the kind of life you live and get to judge me. It doesn’t work that way.”
