Sinclair Justice (Texas Rangers #2)(56)
Ross rounded his desk and rested his hips on the front edge so his knees almost touched Emm’s. Perhaps it was silly, given the way she’d yielded to him body and soul—was it only yesterday?—but she scooted her chair back, not wanting to touch him. His mouth tilted up derisively at the corners, and she could see he thought it was silly, too.
But he only said, “Emm, you’re going to blow this entire investigation and possibly further endanger Yancy and Jennifer if you don’t stop interfering. Not to mention you could be grabbed yourself.”
Emm ground her teeth together, but she managed evenly, “I don’t care. I’ve played nice, trying to follow the rules, and every law enforcement agency I’ve dealt with, including the Texas Rangers, seems too tied up in red tape to make any real progress.” When Ross sucked in an angry breath, Emm scraped her chair back and stood. “Curt Tupperman is involved in all of this, and I’m going to find out how and bring you the evidence you say you need.” She turned for the door, but Ross caught her arm.
He stuck his face into hers and enunciated each word with cold finality. “If you don’t cease and desist, you’ll not be watching anyone or anything except your career swirling down the stainless-steel toilet in the ladies’ jail.”
Emm pushed him back. “Get out of my face. If you try to arrest me, you’ll find out I do know how to be a Rothschild when pressed. Nice turn of phrase, the press . . . I wonder how Curt’s competitors would like a whisper of this story? I can tell you he’s not very popular. I don’t think the Rangers would come off very favorably either. Three women, all taken from the Baltimore area, one dead, the other two about to be.” Emm tapped her fingers against her chin, as if contemplating. “Come to think of it, my grandfather has connections both at the New York Times and the Washington Post.”
Ross and Emm stared each other down. Check, countercheck, stalemate.
Ross took a deep breath and looked at Abby, who nodded infinitesimally.
He backed off and went to another file buried on his desk. He brought it back around, lancing her with those deep blue eyes that now gleamed with a hint of sharpened obsidian. “If you let word of this leave this office, I will have you arrested. This is highly confidential information, but it seems to be the only way I can convince you that we are proceeding as quickly as we can to shut down all of this cartel’s operations, including drug smuggling, human trafficking, and, recently, identity theft. They’re also trying to branch out into Europe, we think, with the Chechens as partners. Prices for their products are as much as triple on the continent. This Chechen connection will be a very lucrative partnership for Los Lobos if it gets finalized, and it will make them even harder to shut down. There are huge Eastern European mob alliances on the East Coast, which we think may be the reason for the Baltimore-Dallas-Amarillo-El Paso trafficking route.”
“So shouldn’t Mexico do all it can to stop them now?” Emm asked hopefully. “Before they finalize this deal?” She slumped back into the chair.
Ross pulled a picture from the file. “About twenty-four hours ago, Jesús Cerritos, a known lieutenant of the man we know as Arturo Cervantes, was found dead in a Dumpster in a bad part of Mexico City. In his pocket was a piece of blue silk, along with another piece of black chiffon studded with rhinestones. The Mexican police found traces of vomit on the blue silk and have sent it to us for full analysis. We can get age, genetic type, and some other information from it, but without a matching sample of DNA we can’t confirm it belonged to either Jennifer or Yancy.”
“Blue is Jennifer’s favorite color,” Emm said dully. Somehow, she knew the swatches of fabric belonged to her sister and niece. She covered her face with her hands, holding back tears. No one had to tell her the unspoken message of two feminine scraps of fabric found in the pocket of a dead man. It was a message. And while on the one hand, if the fabrics had belonged to her niece and sister, that meant until twenty-four hours ago they were in Mexico City and had not disappeared into Europe’s murky underworld, on the other hand, it also meant . . . A distressed sound escaped her clasped hands and she began to cry.
Helplessly, Ross looked at Abby.
Abby put a gentle hand on Emm’s shoulder. “There’s more. I’m sorry, but you asked to be kept in the loop. Please be aware that you cannot share what we’re about to tell you with anyone, for any reason. Agreed?”
With a deep, shuddering breath, Emm lifted her head and wiped away her tears. “I swear.”
“I can’t tell you how,” Abby said, “or all the agencies involved, but our side has had a certain mansion on a hilltop outside Mexico City under surveillance for over a week with the approval of the Mexican government. They’re not happy that the border wars between the various cartels are spilling over into the capital and they want it stopped. They’ve found numerous victims from both the Los Lobos and Knights Templar cartels in the last month, indicating the rivalry is heating up.”
“The assassination MO for Los Lobos is cutting out the heart.” Ross took up the sordid tale when Abby hesitated. “The Knights Templar generally behead their victims.”
The fact that he didn’t mince his words despite her distress was proof enough to Emm that he was angry at her refusal to cease and desist. Emm covered her mouth again, but this time she had to swallow back the acid upwash of her breakfast. After a minute, she angrily dashed her tears away. Then she dropped her hands and looked at both serious faces. “And this Jesús—was his heart cut out?”