Beneath the Secrets Part 3(8)

“Sweet Jesus, woman, I swear I want to beat your ass way too often. Fine, you can back me up. Keep your hand on your gun and fire the damn thing if you have to.” She was already getting out of the truck and Blake cursed. He couldn’t function at one hundred percent when he was afraid he’d get more than himself killed. When he was afraid he’d get her killed.

Blake exited the truck, meeting Kara at the hood, scanning the deserted parking lot at the same time. “You take the passenger side of their car,” he ordered Kara, his hand sliding under his leather jacket to feel the cold steel comfort of his weapon.

“Copy that,” Kara said, and Blake noted that her purse was strapped cross-body to free her hands, one of which was inside it, no doubt, closed over her weapon as well. She knew what she was doing. He wanted that to be comforting. Instead, it told him that getting her out of this wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d wanted it to be.

Blake started walking briskly and he assumed with Kara’s skills, she’d automatically keep pace. She did, cutting over on the opposite side of the cars from him so that she was aligned with her target. Once the sedan was in view, Blake and Kara exchanged a look, pulled their weapons, and charged forward, both aiming at the front window and slowly moving to the side windows.

“Roll it down or I’ll shoot it out,” Blake shouted.

The window came down and Eduardo, the manager of the restaurant they had just been to, was revealed. “What’s this about?” he demanded.

Blake quickly assessed the car to find only one other man he didn’t recognize inside. “Other window down,” he ordered, not about to let Kara stand outside, unable to see what the guy was doing.

The man didn't move. Blake held the gun between Eduardo’s eyes and Eduardo grunted and said, “Roll it down, Juan.”

Blake kept the gun on Eduardo’s head, aware of Kara shoving her weapon into Juan’s face. “And here I thought you only knew how to grill burgers,” Blake observed. “Seems your job duties are much more vast.”

“Ignacio is going to kill you for interfering. You and the bitch over here who ran off with two of our women.”

“One of them was wired from the feds,” Kara hissed. “I saved your piece of shit ass by getting them away from you.”

Blake was impressed with her big fat white lie and ran with it. “In other words, she saved you from bringing the heat on the rest of the operation over some sideline profit gig you’re running on Mendez’s clock.”

“He knows you, pinche white boy.”

“Now, that doesn’t sound nice,” Blake said. “I might have to wash your mouth out with soap, but first I’ll call Mendez and chat first. He might not think it’s worth cleaning up.” Blake reached for his phone, wondering why the hell Mendez wouldn’t tell him about a sideline operation, not overly surprised when the man answered on the first ring.

“This better be important,” Mendez growled, his tone as biting as Blake’s gun in Eduardo’s forehead.

“Are you running some sort of slave trade operation on the side you didn’t tell me about?”

“Why is this important?”

That would be a “yes”. Mendez knew about the women and just didn't tell him. He’d analyze why that felt so off later. “It’s important,” Blake replied, “because one of the girls told Kara she’d been contacted by the feds and that she was wearing a wire tonight. You all but got taken down. She saved everyone’s asses.”

“Kara,” he said flatly. “My secretary.”

“That’s right. The same one holding a gun to one of your men’s heads right now for being a pinche Mexican who almost destroyed you. We need to talk, Mendez. I’m going to deal with the problem this woman was about to cause and make her go away. Saving you from complete annihilation covers my contract. I won’t operate with half the facts. We re-negotiate or I’m done.”

Silence. “We should talk in person.”

Blake ground his teeth. “Let me think about that while I save your ass. I’ll get back to you.” Blake hung up, but didn’t drop his gun. “Mendez might know what you’re doing, but he has no patience for stupidity like what happened with these two women. I’m handling them. You go think about how you’re going to convince Mendez you should stay alive.” He let his gun drop and stepped back from the car. The windows of both sides of the car rolled up a moment before it pulled away.

Blake joined Kara to walk side by side toward the truck. “The son of a bitch knew about the women and didn’t tell me. He wants me to find out who’s skimming drugs from him by playing head of security and he tells me half the story.”

“I gathered that,” she said, “but we have another problem.”

“Of course we do.” They stopped at the hood of the truck.

“Juan works in the finance department at the corporate office. He’d have the means to doctor the reports Mendez gets on product moving in and out of the restaurants.”

“But you caught discrepancies. Wouldn’t he stop that from happening?”

“I intercepted the reports before they went to finance. My guess is I caught what he hadn’t had time to fix.”

“And you know what?” Blake asked. “The only reason this matters to me is that it means you’re a target. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass who's stealing from the cartel unless it helps us find the women they kidnapped, and Alvarez. When my brothers get here, we’ll have resources we don’t have now.”