by KB Winters
“I don’t know, man. I didn’t find anything on Reed. Other than a few protests against wars and animal testing and drug laws, the dude is ridiculously clean.”
“Shit.” Cross grimaced and let out another frustrated breath.
“I know what you mean. Come on. No point in worrying until we have a reason to. Right?”
“Yeah I guess,” he grumbled and followed me back into the main room which we cleared out in under three minutes and with minimal protests. When everyone was gathered, Cross turned to my girl with a grin. “Okay, Vivi. What did you find?”
She smiled and let out a deep breath, swiping a hand over a mass of messy pink curls. “A lot, actually. First, Marisol. I found two in Reno but one of them is a fifty year old widow. The other one, Marisol Luna, is twenty-six years old and lives in an apartment paid for by Carlito Esteban.” She blew out a breath and looked around the room. “I guess none of you have ever heard of him?”
Everyone, including me shook their heads and she nodded. “Okay. Well Carlito Esteban is the head of the Salinas Cartel and has been for the past fifteen years. His uncle, Cadre, sat at the top of the cartel for more than three decades before dying in a mysterious accident, which is widely believed to be caused by Carlito, who was just sixteen at the time.”
Savior let out a low whistle. “Fuck.”
“Shit, Stitch never does trouble halfway, does he?” Lasso’s words added levity to the atmosphere but he wasn’t wrong. Not this time, anyway.
“That’s not all,” Vivi said, her voice growing wary. “Since Carlito took over, Salinas has become one of the deadliest cartels on the planet thanks to pequeño diablo, which is what the Mexican papers call him. Little Devil. They peddle in drugs including pot, heroin and their biggest money maker, synthetic drugs, but they also do well in human trafficking and illegal gun sales, with earnings estimated by the FBI to be in excess of a billion dollars.”
Cross smacked one hand against the metal table, his anger palpable. “Why the fuck don’t we know this guy?”
“’Cause we don’t fuck with the cartels, man,” I answered back.
Cross asked, “So what are we up against, Vivi?”
“Truth? A big ol’ fuck fest. These guys aren’t just deadly, they’re reckless. Last year they were responsible—reportedly—for more than fifteen hundred murders.”
“Fuck. How in the hell are we supposed to find them?” Cross’s frustration was building by the second but Vivi, to her credit didn’t look bothered. At all.
“Well the good news, if you can call it that, is that I have photos of El Jefe and his number two, Guapo, who acts as one of the Salinas enforcers. If Carlito is up here in the states, I’d be surprised.”
She picked up her laptop and squinted at the screen from about three inches away, frowning at whatever held her attention. “It looks like they might be related but I won’t be able to tell until I have a specialist take a look at these documents.”
Mexico was notorious for their shoddy recordkeeping so I could only imagine what she was staring at.
“I’ll keep digging for confirmation on that, but I do have Marisol’s address.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Cross mumbled, pulling out his buzzing phone and frowning at the screen. “Thanks, Vivi.”
He was distracted and spoke quickly and quietly into the phone before turning back to us.
She nodded and took the hint, grabbing her laptop before doing a sexy little finger wave to the crowd. “No problem. Good luck, bros.” Then she was gone and Cross stood in her place, a dark scowl on his face.
“I wish your girl could’ve given us better news, Jag.” Cross let out a harsh laugh and shook his head. “But at least now we know what we’re up against. Savior and I will ride up to Reno, see what we can find from this Marisol chick.” He issued the rest of his orders, which mostly consisted of sticking close to the clubhouse and making sure all the women and children were accounted for. Regularly.
As soon as the meeting broke up, I strode out of the clubhouse and across the parking lot to Vivi’s camper. I opened the door and listened for movement but there was none so I stepped inside and called out. “Hey Vivi, have I told you how sexy it is when you get all tech nerd on me?” She was smart as hell, confident in her skills and most of all, my girl had no qualms about showing me how she felt.
“Not in the past five minutes,” she called out from the bedroom. “Come closer and tell me again.”
I heard the laughter in her voice and made my way to the back of the camper, stopping in the doorway at the sight of my woman stretched out on the bed, wrapped up in black lace that showed off more than it covered. Not that I was complaining. “Fuck, babe. You look good enough to eat.”
She licked her lips like I was her favorite meal as her breath hitched at my words, her gaze was black with desire. Arousal. “Then eat me.” Vivi’s legs fell open, the tiny strip of fabric barely covering the pussy lips I couldn’t wait to put my mouth on.
Her fingers slid between her legs and my grin widened as my cock turned to steel. My girl was a lot of things, but she was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. “You want me to taste you, Vivi?”
She shook her head and propped her body up on her elbows. “No Jag, I want you to devour me.”
With those words, how could I do anything else? My shirt came off and went straight to the floor as I leaned forward, half my body hanging off the bed. My shoulders kept her legs open but I palmed her thighs and widened her even more so I could look. Stare. Watch as that pretty pink pussy pulsed for me, glistening and swollen because she wanted me so fucking bad. “Damn you got such a pretty pussy.” She pulsed again at my words and I growled a half a second before I put my mouth on her, licking and sucking her until she whimpered.
My Vivi, fucking whimpering with need. Grinding against my face as she arched into me. She was slick and sweet, legs wrapped around me tight like she was afraid I might get up and walk away, as if I ever would. Not when she let out those husky cries and urged me to lick her harder, to suck her clit. “Fuck me with your tongue, Jag.”
My dirty fucking girl. I loved it when she talked dirty and I gave her exactly what she wanted, nearly coming in my pants at the way she held my head and looked at me while my tongue disappeared inside her creamy cunt. I moaned against her and she trembled and then vibrated against me.
So fucking close.
With a smack of her ass, I flipped us so she was on top, pussy flush against my lips while her clit nudged my nose with every swirl of her hips. “Oh fuck, Jag. Yes!” She didn’t just grind against me, she fucked my face, back and forth she slid against me, up and down until her walls pulsed on my tongue. “Yes! Oh!” I surprised her, slipping my middle finger between her fine ass cheeks and into that tight little rosette. “Shit, yeah! Jag,” she cried out as her orgasm started in her toes but her body never stopped moving, never stopped chasing her pleasure.
She was close, bucking against me but unable to get away. A move forward and she was impaled on my tongue, a move back and my finger slid deeper into her ass. It was too many sensations and I was sure I would come right along with her. Then Vivi froze and slid down my body, hands moving frantically to open my pants and tug them down and as soon as they were, she was there, sliding down the length of my cock until her tight, hot pussy engulfed me. “Oh, fuck.”
“Jag,” she grunted as her body shook violently with pleasure, squeezing the fuck out of me and pulling the fastest orgasm ever out of me. “Damn, I love you.”
“Love you more,” I grunted as she continued to pulse around me, shivering with the aftershocks of pleasure. When her tongue licked up the side of my neck and ended with her teeth sinking into my earlobe, I was ready to go again.
Forever.
Chapter Fifteen – Cross
The ride up to Reno was quiet and somber, Savior was content to keep a respectable distance between us with minimal conversation. Both of us were too lost in our own thoughts to do anything more t
han enjoy the scenery and hope like hell our brothers were still breathing. We’d left just before dawn and beat most of the traffic, arriving a little after noon to the address Vivi had given us.
“So this is it, huh? Looks like a fucking roach motel.” Savior’s words mirrored my own thoughts as we stood in front of a shitty little apartment complex that looked like it used to be a roadside motel.
“This is the address Vivi sent to my phone.” And even if I thought she was a little strange, I knew she was a genius when it came to hacking into shit that people didn’t want found. The fact that Carlito owned the building had been buried behind layers of shell corporations, and probably meant he didn’t want anyone to know about her, either. “How in the fuck did Stitch get mixed up with a cartel mistress in the fucking ghetto”
Savior let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head because he didn’t have any answers either. “Fuck if I know. I wanted to believe Reed was involved because the coincidence is too strong, but it had to be dumb fucking luck. He probably met her on all those trips up here to set up the deal with Reed.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.” It would’ve been easier if Reed was involved but Jag had done more than enough digging and found nothing. Less than fucking nothing. I let out a long breath and looked at the cement steps, stained with gum, graffiti and piss. This was a place people went when they had nothing else to do. Nowhere else to go. “He’s got all that money and he keeps his girl here?” This place wouldn’t see repairs unless they were absolutely necessary.
Savior shrugged his shoulders and dropped them with a weary sigh. “We going up or do we need hazmat suits first?”
“We’re going up.” There was no point in delaying the inevitable, but the lack of police cars and yellow tape gave me hope.
“Lead the way, Prez.” His tone sounded about as hopeful as I felt which is to say, not very.
The painted green doors were chipped all over and, in some places, a number or two was missing and hadn’t been replaced. “This place is a fucking dump.” But we were here now and we needed to find Stitch and Gunnar so I put my hand on the door and Savior stopped me. “What?”
“Be careful.” He nodded in the direction of the door, closed but the shitty lock gave way with a flick of his hand.
“Fuck!” I pushed it open without thinking and froze at the sight of the shitty little apartment. “What the fuck?” The blue-gray carpet looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned since the seventies and the cheap coffee table was broken in shards, like someone had fallen on it. Or been thrown.
“Something went down here.”
“Yeah, looks like it.” He was right but as I looked around at all the evidence of the struggle that had taken place here, my hope began to fade. A large pool of blood was already dry in one corner of the living room. Too much blood to belong to someone who was still breathing. “Shit. I hope to God that blood doesn’t belong to one of ours.”
Savior nodded grimly and bent down behind the sofa. “Check this out.” He rose with a bloody knife in his hand. A familiar blade with a gold and pearl handle, given to Gunnar by his old man before he split. He carried that damn thing with him everywhere, from the small blue collar town he grew up in to the deserts of the Middle East and back. “At least we know they were here.”
“You think this was a setup?” It didn’t make any fucking sense. A guy with billions of dollars putting his side piece up in this shithole.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Savior didn’t elaborate and I didn’t need him to because it didn’t matter. He’d heard the same info I did from Vivi’s mouth and knew this Carlito asshole was dangerous and crazy, a lethal combination for sure.
“We need to figure out where they are first and then what the fuck this asshole wants, because if he wanted them dead, I figure we’d have found their bodies already.” It was a gruesome thought but one I hadn’t stopped thinking about since I got Reed’s call.
“Fuck,” Savior sighed. “You’re right.”
“I know Vivi and Jag are on this but I’m gonna talk to Dodds.”
“The cop?” Savior said it like the man hadn’t saved Moon from his crooked partner which I could never forget. “You must be more worried than you look.”
“Goddamn right I am. Did you not hear the deadliest cartel on the planet part of what Vivi said? Because I can’t stop thinking about it. And they’ve got my men.” I let out a long breath. I knew Dodds was just doing his job but that didn’t mean I wasn’t appreciative. “Dodds has to have some information that could be useful.”
Skepticism was written all over Savior’s face but I didn’t give a damn. If the Salinas Cartel had Gunnar and Stitch, I’d use all the resources at my disposal. I would fucking destroy them. “So who called to put that frown on your face?”
“Gabe, Prez for Sons of Sin MC. I reached out to see if they had any dealings with Salinas.”
“And? Don’t leave me in fucking suspense, man.” Savior continued looking around the tiny shitty apartment.
“And all he had to say was he’d gone up against a few lackeys in the Salinas Cartel when they were trying to find Ripcord’s sister and lost a few brothers before it was all over. Long story short, these guys are bad fucking news.”
Savior sighed, the sound was as exhausted as I felt. “Fuck man, I was really hoping for a holiday filled with peace and quiet, Mandy’s sweet treats and her sexy little body.”
“Yeah, no fucking kidding.” I’d hoped for a quiet holiday with Moon and Beau, but this was our life. Chaos and death and imminent fucking war at all times.
We finished looking around the little apartment, noting that Marisol was nowhere to be found but the closet and drawers were still filled with her clothes, shoes and toiletries. Everything said she’d planned to come back at some point. If she left of her own free will. “Stay here a few hours and see if she returns.”
He nodded even though he was unhappy with the assignment. “And what are you gonna do?”
“Talk to Dodds and then see if Vivi and Jag came up with anything else we could use.” I didn’t know shit about the cartel up here in Reno, but I would reach out to every fucking person I knew to find out more. “Wait a few hours and if she doesn’t show, get back to Mayhem.”
“Be careful and don’t tell that cop too much.”
“Thanks, man.” We both walked back to the parking lot. I got on my bike while Savior moved his to a spot in the back so he could watch the apartment without being seen. “Later.”
I hauled ass on the seven-hour ride home, eager to hook up with Dodds. When I was close to Mayhem, I pulled over to a gas station and gave him a call before it got too late. Asked him to meet me somewhere away from prying eyes. Forty minutes later he pulled up in his unmarked burgundy Crown Vic and parked beside my bike. I chose a spot at the east end of town away from all the shops and restaurants just to make sure we could speak in private. “Detective.”
His lips tightened into a smile at the greeting and he nodded. “Cross. What can I do for you?”
“Max said you came in asking questions about a cartel. Did you have a specific one in mind or were you just fishing?”
His posture went stiff and I knew he would go on the defensive because, well, cops. “I already told Max I wasn’t trying to jam you up.”
I sighed and took a deep breath. “I didn’t come here to fight, Dodds. I just want some information. Did you have a specific cartel in mind?” He shook his head and I felt a little more hope fade away. “Gunnar and Stitch are missing and we have reason to believe the Salinas Cartel has them.”
Dodds whistled, his eyes wide with disbelief. “How did you get mixed up with those guys? They’re crazy as hell.”
“We didn’t,” I admitted with a frustrated groan. “As far as I can tell, this started over a woman.”
Dodds barked out a laugh. “Isn’t it always over a woman?” He shook his head again and scrubbed a hand down his face, looking every inch like the overworked law enforcem
ent officer he was. “Salinas don’t fuck around Cross. They kidnap kids and sell them to the highest bidder. Adoptions, sex trade or worse. The ones they can’t sell, they turn them out and put them on the streets of cities around Mexico and the U.S. until they overdose or get killed.”
“That’s basically what my source said, too.” Only with a lot less detail which I made a note to myself to thank Vivi for later. “But that’s not their bread and butter, right?”
“Hell no. Drugs. Pot used to be their cash cow but with all the border states but Texas legalizing it, they diversified.” He said the last word with a snort. “Heroin is always a good money maker, but the South American cartels have that sewn up pretty tight. So they started manufacturing and selling synthetic drugs. Ecstasy, speed, Oxy. A lot of money and a lot of deaths, both from drug overdose and murder.”
“Shit.” Vivi had definitely sanitized the picture for our benefit and while I appreciated it, now I couldn’t stop thinking about what my guys were going through. “Do you know where they operate out of?”
“Mexico mostly but I suspect they have connections in more than a few American cities.” He eyed me carefully, weighing if I was about to do something really fucking stupid that would make his life harder. “What are you planning?”
I pulled the lone cigarette I kept on me since I quit from behind my ear and lit it, inhaling deeply, ignoring the pang of conscience at what Moon would say when she inevitably smelled it on me. I’d worry about that later though because this little stick of nicotine was the only thing keeping me sane in the moment. “You know the answer to that. I’ll do what I have to do to get my guys back.”
He nodded, unhappy about my words but resigned to my decision. “Be careful, Cross. Salinas combines all the worst of the groups. They rape for punishment, kill for sport and do it in the most gruesome ways possible. Look up what happened to the former Mayor of Mexico City.”
“I will, and thanks Dodds.”
“No problem.” I turned to my bike, thinking that was another fucking thing to come at the club. I was sure after the shit that went down last year with Detective Haynes and Pacheco that we’d have a year or two of goddamn peace. “Hey Cross?”