The Vargas Cartel Trilogy (Vargas Cartel #1-3)(71)

I exhaled loudly, hanging my head in my hands. “Maybe she should come clean and explain her situation. It might be the only option. I’m not going to break into a house on that island. I wouldn’t walk out of there alive. Neither of us would. It would be a death march.”

Isla Mujeres was a four-mile island located off the coast of Cancun, Mexico. Smuggling someone from that island would be a logistical nightmare. There wasn’t a quick getaway plan.

Rever punched the wall. It echoed through my apartment like a gunshot, and drywall dust coated his knuckles. “We have to try. I’m not going to abandon her and my unborn child.”

I chuckled even as my blood boiled. I didn’t owe Rever shit. I already saved him from himself once. I didn’t need to do it again. I sympathized with Anna. I wished the reality of the situation were different. “This is your mess. I don’t have time for this right now.”

Rever rose to his full height, squared his shoulders, and cocked his head. “If we don’t help her, they’ll kill her. Are you okay with them killing your unborn niece or nephew?”

“Now you want to claim me as part of your family?” My voice dripped with derision. I raked my hand across my chest. “You have some f*cking nerve pulling the family card now.” As kids, Rever never missed an opportunity to tell me I wasn’t part of his family. That I’d never be part of his real family. According to him, we shared blood, but nothing else.

“You’re all I have.” He had this hopeless, hollow look in his eyes full of fear, fear of the unknown, and fear of the known. I knew that look. That’s how I felt when I threw Hattie out of my life and back into Evan’s open arms. I f*cking hated that prick.

Gritting my teeth, I clenched my hand around my beer bottle so hard my knuckles whitened. My phone—the one reserved strictly for business of Ryker Vargas, not Ry Fallon—rang, saving me from answering. Only past and potential clients had the number. I slipped the phone out of my pocket. “I need to take this call.”

Rever briefly closed his eyes, then he rolled his shoulders back and retreated to my guest bedroom. I couldn’t get him away from me and out of my life fast enough.

“Ryker Vargas,” I said, my voice clipped.

“It’s Senator Deveron.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. I had no intention of doing jobs for him anymore, but refusing a job from him wouldn’t be easy.

“How can I help you?”

Labored breathing hummed in my ear. “We have a problem.”

“Really? How do you figure?”

“Hattie broke off the engagement with Evan.”

My heart stalled in my chest, and then it started beating riotously. Thank God. “Sounds like Evan has a problem, not me. I completed the job. I’ve been paid. We’re done.”

“Hm.” Papers rustled in the background and then he sighed. “I heard Rever slipped back into the U.S. In fact, all the evidence suggests he’s hiding out in D.C. I don’t have his exact location, but it’s only a matter of time.”

Dammit. I should’ve shown my brother to the door the minute I saw him in my apartment. Better yet, I should’ve called Ignacio and asked him to forcibly drag his ass back to Mexico. Senator Deveron had all the leverage he needed to involve me in a new scheme. For some reason, the Senator had continued nosing around the Vargas Cartel and me, both as Ryker and Ry. It was making me uneasy. Hell, everything was making me uneasy these days.

I was playing with fire. I had enough experience with backroom deals and shady undertakings to know something bad was going to happen, but I didn’t know if there was a damned thing I could do to stop it.

“That’s news to me,” I lied as a thousand curses poured like liquid through my mind.

Strained seconds passed, each one more intense than the previous one.

“I wouldn’t want Rever to be picked up by the FBI or immigration. We’d be right back where we started. Rever in jail. Evan and Hattie separated,” Senator Deveron said.

I took a long draw of my beer. “I don’t give a f*ck about the status of Evan and Hattie’s relationship. It sounds like Evan can’t seal the deal. Maybe you should be calling him instead of me.”

“You should care.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, even though my experience told me I shouldn’t say a thing. Asking questions gave the appearance I cared. It was a sign of weakness.

“It’s common knowledge the Alvarez and Vargas cartels are at war right now.”

“What’s your point? A cartel war is hardly a novel event. Over a hundred thousand people have died in the last decade as a result of cartel-related violence in Mexico.”

“Yet, the Vargas Cartel has been largely immune from all the death and destruction. Have you ever wondered why?”

“Please enlighten me,” I quipped.

He chuckled. “Over the last five years, U.S. enforcement agencies have protected the Vargas Cartel in exchange for information about rival drug gangs. We’ve provided weapons. We helped him launder money, and we turned a blind eye to his smuggling activities.”

“And in exchange, the Vargas Cartel opened its war chest and funded all your campaigns. You basically made the U.S. government an accessory to all sorts of criminal behavior.” I had gleaned most of this information from undercover operatives and Ignacio, but I couldn’t believe Senator Deveron openly admitted the connection. Even after the Fast and Furious scandal revealed the ATF had sold guns to drug cartels, the media ignored the U.S. government’s symbiotic relationship with Mexican drug cartels.