The Perfect Stranger (LOS SANTOS Cartel Story #2)

by Melissa Jane

  “I’ve told you before, I can’t help you,” she said adamantly.

  Gabriel was having none it, and knowing her expertise was in Criminal Division, Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering, it would take some convincing that her skills weren’t up to scratch.

  She warned him of the risk of transferring large sums.

  He already had backup. A Singaporean bank exempt from the FATCA agreement.

  She was playing her cards. Stalling, just like I’d asked, but he’d done his research.

  “Now, from your account you need to send through a request to the Cuban National Bank for the transfer of funds,” Gabriel urged.

  Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, eyes finding mine for the briefest moment.

  “No need to stall, hermosa,” Gabriel growled. “This will happen whether you cooperate or not. It just comes down to how much pain you can bear.”

  Every time he threatened her, I came up with a new method of torture he would experience before I ended him. Nina entered her username and password and waited. Her chest was coloring which told me she was nervous. I watched, teeth clenched tight as Gabriel stroked her neck.

  Access denied.

  Gabriel saw red and Nina, was left genuinely flustered.

  “Do it again,” he demanded.

  She did so, and we all waited, all on edge.

  “Fuck!” Gabriel bellowed when seeing the same message.

  Nina, confused why she had been locked out of the FBI portal, apologized. Yet it fell on deaf ears.

  He turned his hate to Nina. A hand wrapped around her throat forcing her and the chair backward to the floor before delivering a backhand across the face. I reached for my Glock ready to explode the fucker’s head but a hand on my arm stopped me.

  Felix understood what was transpiring, even if he didn’t know the full history.

  He also knew Gabriel needed Nina.

  Pulling his cell from his pocket, Felix stood and addressed Gabriel, effectively distracting him from further violence.

  “She’s telling the truth. Here,” he said, holding it high for Gabriel to read the article on the screen. These words seemed to tame his wrath.

  “Well, well, well. Looks like you were telling the truth.” He smiled, loud and obnoxious. “Turns out you’re America’s most wanted.”

  They’d pinned everything on Nina. The media was just as ruthless as the cartels involved. The convenience store footage had been doctored showing an image of her Glock pointed at one of the men. Quotes from angered middle-aged hotel owners labeling her a menace and a troublemaker.

  Her own agency wanted her in connection to Garcia’s death.

  She was devastated.

  Confused.

  In the hours that followed, under coercion, Nina hacked into Garcia’s account to have the money transferred.

  She did it, knowing her career was over.

  But there was some hope.

  She could never be a criminal, even if her life depended on it.

  Nina Cross, a framed FBI agent who had lost everyone she’d ever loved to the hands of criminals, had now fooled South America’s leading cartel drug lords.

  She’s done what so many had failed to do.

  What Gabriel didn’t know was she was using a coded sequence that would allow masked funds to appear in someone’s account only to vanish shortly after.

  For now, they would celebrate a win.

  They would celebrate the Florez cartel profits and gloat in the wake of the Baja cartel demise.

  Nina’s job was complete and yet Luis Santos was nowhere to be seen.

  “You’re treading on thin ice,” Felix warned, his voice low, careful to not be heard.

  I watched while he cleaned his disassembled Glock.

  “I don’t know what you’ve got planned, and for that I’m glad, but you need to reign it in.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Tell me it isn’t.”

  “I’m going to check on her.”

  Felix started to piece the gun back together. “She’s not there.” He stopped what he was doing, his eyes telling me all I needed to know.

  My blood ran cold and yet I felt burning rage.

  That night Gabriel had indeed taken to celebrating his success.

  When I thought Nina was resting in her room, she had been in his. And not by her own accord.

  I was already on my feet when I heard Felix.

  “Good timing,” was all he muttered keeping his hands busy, head low, and turned down the hallway to see Nina hurriedly exiting Gabriel’s room. She was flustered, close to tears and wearing a fresh bruise on her left cheek. Her eyes met mine while silently bypassing me and she disappeared into the bedroom.

  “Don’t fuck up whatever you have going,” Felix warned.

  Something told me it was too late for that.

  “Cariña, what happened to you?” I asked, stepping over the threshold.

  Nina held her index finger over her lips and gestured around the room.

  I shook my head and walked to the side table and opened the drawer. She glanced inside to the see the four bugs I had found earlier carefully planted around her room. Closing the drawer, I sat her on the bed.

  “Gabriel,” Nina said quietly looking away, her voice shaky with both rage and hurt. “Where were you?” She said it like the accusation it was.

  I stepped close, my thumb caressing her cheek as I repeated my apology.

  “What did he do to you?”

  The answer only layered the guilt. Guilt I deserved.

  She had been given a provocative, skin revealing dress to wear just for him.

  He had attempted to rape her, almost succeeding.

  When he attacked, she was able to stop him with an ultimatum—one wrong digit tomorrow finalizing the transaction and the game was up.

  For the rest of the night, I held Nina close. She wanted comfort and wanted me to give it to her. She asked questions, needing the pieces of the puzzle to fit together finally. I told her of La Balsa and what had happened. I told her more about why I needed my revenge. Her arms tightened around me, offering her own form of comfort. When conversation ceased, I breathed Nina in and stroked her arm until she fell asleep.

  I stayed awake, cautious that we were still in Gabriel’s house and his rules still applied. I didn’t want to be caught off guard in the event he went on one his tirades.

  Our battle with the Santos cartel was not yet over.

  It had only just begun.

  Luis Santos was everything I expected him to be.

  Well dressed in designer clothes with a head of thick white hair and a beard to match. He also carried an air of arrogance that had kept him alive this long.

  He’d stepped out of his helicopter and walked toward both Gabriel and I with a casual gait that seemed incongruous to the situation. There was nothing casual about what was happening. There was nothing casual about having an FBI agent abducted across the border. And there certainly was nothing casual about the transfer of millions of US dollars from an FBI frozen account.

  But this was Luis Santos, and this was the first time in two years he’d bothered to grace us with his presence.

  And now reality and expectation collided.

  It had been the first time I’d ever seen him.

  This was the man who destroyed an entire town.

  This was the man who ordered the rape, pillage, and murders of the La Balsa people.

  This was the man who ordered the death of my father.

  And he saw through me like I didn’t exist to him. Like he would never consider me to be his killer.

  At the time, I reasoned that to be a good thing.

  Luis Santos would never see it coming.

  He taunted.

  He lured her into his dark world.

  He worked her up until she was red in the face, tears of anger prickling her cheeks.

  He brought up a piece of her past that would always cut deep.

  Her fat
her.

  “You killed someone’s husband, someone’s father. My father!” Nina yelled when he admitted to be being responsible for her father’s murder.

  “And he killed hundreds of children, husbands, and wives. He helped drive a wedge between families.”

  “And what of your role? You don’t feel as though you should claim responsibility for it since you produce it?”

  “I lost my conscience a long time ago, my dear,” he replied, indifferent.

  “That’s your excuse? That’s your motherfucking excuse?”

  “This is business, and this is how business works.”

  And that was as far as the explanation went.

  Nina and I had both lost our fathers at the hands of this man.

  Nina, the woman I cared about, didn’t just share the same grief as me. She shared the same desire for vengeance.

  “Who brought this bitch here?” Luis Santos looked around the room at all the men who averted eye contact.

  “Our man, Hunter,” Gabriel said with a knowing smile.

  “Show me.”

  Gabriel pulled my shirt neckline over my shoulder where the tattoo of the Virgin Mary sat tarnishing my skin.

  “Well then, Hunter. Perhaps you should end all this, and I will give you your cut, and you can get the fuck out of my house.”

  Nina’s eyes widened in horror.

  “You talk?” Santos barked when I didn’t respond. He pulled a gold revolver from his waistband and slid it across the table toward me.

  “Answer me, boy.” Santos appeared on his last nerve.

  “I hear you,” was all I replied. Our hardened stares met, a challenge had been set. I picked up the gun and pointed it at Nina.

  “Kneel,” I ordered, cold and heartless. She was waiting for a cue. A cue to tell her it wasn’t really going to happen. I didn’t give her one.

  “Hunter?” she whispered, body trembling.

  “Get on the fucking ground!”

  “Please. Don’t do this.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I spat angrily, determined to be believed. I met her eyes and I softened. “I’m sorry, cariña.”

  “No! Ple—”

  I had never anticipated I would be forced to draw a gun on Nina.

  When I fired, it was at the foot soldier behind her.

  When I fired, I had chosen to save Nina, sealing my fate and Luis’s.

  The man slipped down the wall, lifeless eyes staring ahead. And then it started. The room erupted into chaos while I pushed Nina to safety. Bullets struck the mahogany table we sought shelter behind and shattered the drywall at the rear of us.

  We were vulnerable sitting ducks.

  Luis Santos had already made his escape.

  Two years of infiltrating a cartel, killing for them, becoming them, and the opportunity to kill him slipped through my fingers. But reality told a different story. I had been outnumbered. We would never have made it out alive if I’d taken aim at Santos. We would now be dead, and he would still be alive to walk this earth terrorizing others.

  The opportunity had gone.

  My allegiance had been exposed as mere smoke and mirrors.

  I was back to square one.

  We barely made it out of Mexico.

  I had gotten us out alive, but Nina had saved us both from death. After a lengthy and bloody battle with Gabriel that ended on a long stretch of highway, his body lay seemingly lifeless in the desert dirt.

  “Hunter!” Nina yelled. She was bleeding and bruised, trying to keep my eyes from closing. Slumped against the battered car, I was hurting everywhere, blood endlessly oozing from my body.

  “Stay with me,” she demanded, tears falling down her beautiful, dirty face. She looked every bit the angel who had crashed to earth.

  She cared for me. Her heart broke for me.

  I didn’t deserve Nina, but she gave me every piece of her.

  And then she faded to black.

  We found ourselves in ICU in a Mexican hospital.

  We were safe. Relatively.

  I had questions.

  Where was Luis Santos?

  Was Gabriel’s body still lying in the desert?

  Would Nina ever forgive me?

  I had plenty of time in recovery to recount how the battle unfolded.

  “I always knew you were a snake,” Gabriel had spat back at the ranch while holding us at gunpoint. “Fucking her the whole time, and fucking us over while you were at it. And you call yourself a Santos?”

  But that wasn’t the only thing playing on my mind.

  The night before Nina had told me what Gabriel had said.

  A promise.

  If she made it out alive, he would hunt her down.

  And that’s exactly what he did.

  I left Nina in the hospital. The nurses had ensured me she was due to wake at any time and was in good health. I left because I feared the danger that still lurked would catch up to us. I left because I needed to know if Gabriel was still alive, or if he truly had died under the heat of the desert sun.

  If he had died, Luis Santos would still be close.

  I couldn’t let it all be for nothing.

  The machines beeped as I leaned over her. She looked so peaceful, so beautiful. My knuckles grazed her cheek, but she didn’t wake. She had suffered a traumatic blow to the skull when she fell on the road signaling for help. She had been shot, a severe loss of blood causing her to faint. Gently kissing her lips, I whispered in her ear that I would see her soon.

  That I would make up for all the wrongs I had done against her.

  That I loved her.

  The stretch of road where the final assault occurred was long and deserted. Heat radiated off the tar along the horizon, and no other car could be seen behind or in front. Except for two.

  I pulled over to the side, stones flicking against the paneling.

  Two abandoned vehicles with bullet holes for scars sat on blood-soaked earth.

  No one had escaped the crossfire, and as I rounded the car I had used to escape the battle at the ranch, my gut twisted. My decision to leave Nina alone at the hospital was now shrouded in question.

  The side of the road was a crime scene, except there was no body.

  Gabriel was gone.

  That didn’t mean someone hadn’t just picked up his corpse.

  It didn’t mean that his men had found him and taken him back for a proper burial.

  It could all mean that he was still alive.

  Still alive, and with a vendetta.

  But while the hunt for Gabriel and Luis Santos continued, across the border another war was brewing. This time with a furious FBI agent, Chief Delacroix.

  “I’ll ask you one last time, Cross. Where the fuck is your friend? And don’t fucking lie to me!” a vaguely familiar voice could be heard yelling inside Nina’s apartment. Chief Delacroix. Nina’s boss.

  I had spent a few days looking for Gabriel and Luis Santos and had come up empty. The media had been quiet on cartel news, reporting nothing of a kingpin fatality. The ranch was long deserted, and a feeling of dread had warned me to find Nina.

  Delacroix was just as dangerous as Los Santos, and now he was alone with her.

  Opening the door, I saw Delacroix standing over the top of Nina who had her hand protecting her face, a Glock pointed straight at her.

  “Where the fuck is he?”

  “I’m right here.”

  Delacroix, turned, facing me. His brows knitted together as he tried to place my face. “You!” he said finally in recognition.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t piece it all together.” Closing the door, I took a further step inside.

  Delacroix gave a know-it-all chuckle. “I had my suspicions.”

  “The game’s over. So how about you get the hell off her so we can end this once and for all?”

  “Did he send you?” he asked, eyes narrowed, voice laced with contempt.

  “I had my own debt to settle with Los Santos. You just happened to b
e tangled in their web. Now get the fuck off Nina.”

  “Why don’t you leave, so I have a chance to settle my debt?” It wasn’t so much a question more a demand.

  “No can do.” Raising my Glock I fired, hitting Delacroix below his shoulder. Nina rolled to her right while he rolled to the left.

  “Cariña,” I murmured, pulling her up by my side. It was the first time I’d seen Nina since the hospital. Her wounds were healing nicely, and her smile that was meant only for me, caused a reaction I’d never felt before.

  “Hunter,” she replied breathily. The moment was broken by the asshole still in the room.

  Nina turned to Delacroix who was muttering a string of vulgar curses. “You were supposed to be the good guy, Chief.”

  He scoffed, his hand over his wounded arm doing little to stop the blood from gushing out. “Good guys always finish last.”

  Nina held my hand. “Not in this case.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Cross!” He almost laughed. “This is still all on you. Every bit of it. Garcia’s death, the convenience store massacre, assaulting a federal agent. And now, thanks to your admittance, defrauding the government.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  A snide smirk twisted his face. “Oh, I do.”

  Nina left my side and retrieved her smart phone and held it up so her boss could see the screen.

  She had recorded everything.

  Delacroix paled.

  “I will be honest and say that I wasn’t sure how this was going to pan out. I wanted to believe you weren’t corrupt. But I was wrong. It’s all been recorded, every last word,” Nina admitted.

  Despite what had gone down, I was smiling, proud of Nina.

  “That’s not going to mean shit,” Delacroix snapped.

  “Won’t it? You just don’t get it do you, Delacroix? You’re responsible for all that’s happened. Whether you were behind the gun or the computer, you’re the one who snowballed this whole operation. Garcia is dead, because of you. I lost my father, because of you. I have become a suspect in my own partner’s murder, because of you. And it’s all on here.” She waved her phone as a reminder.