Chapter 20
Olivia
I threw myself into work after breakfast. Anything to take my mind off Colt. I let my hair back down out of its ponytail and tossed it off to one side, still self-conscious of the marks I had on my neck. I was fortunate enough to find a blouse in the back of my car I had forgotten to unpack when I arrived at the motel a few days ago. So, I wasn’t wearing quite the same outfit I had been yesterday. With paying attention to work and being self-conscious about what I looked like, it worked in my favor.
It took my mind off Colt.
“Where are you headed in such a hurry?” Sheriff Barnes asked.
“I’m headed down to the archives. I’ve found something in the Black Hornet’s file that seems a little odd. I want to dig around some old files and see if I can’t find anything that matches up,” I said.
“Anything I should know about?”
“Nothing but theories right now, Sheriff. Once I can prove something, you’ll be the first to know.”
Honestly, it wasn’t even anything I had found in their collective file. It was what I had found in Dean’s file. Their President’s file. Apparently, about a decade or so ago, there were drugs being funneled into the area. From the sounds of it, another cartel had set up in the area, and I was curious as to what the police had on file from around that time frame. Dean had been incarcerated for an incident. His testimony that eventually got him off the hook suggested a cartel was at work in the area. Funneling drugs into the arena of Redding and straight into the hands of children.
Children like his daughter, Brynn.
I made my way down the stairs and underneath the precinct. I flashed my badge and pulled out my driver’s license so they could clock my coming and going. In the grand scheme of things, their archives weren’t all that protected. No cameras to survey anything. Only one overweight guard at the entrance to the room. And it was unkempt. Dusty. Dark. Lights flickered and bulbs looked as if they had been out for years.
But, that didn’t stop me from pressing on.
I found two file boxes of information that was drug-related from around that time period, so I checked them out. Something in my gut told me that this was the reason the Black Hornets were going so hard in on the cartel. Because, at one point, their President had helped push another cartel out of the area. I lugged the boxes back upstairs and slammed them down onto my desk. Then, one by one, I pulled them out and began reading them.
Some things didn’t matter. Small-time drug dealing arrests. Scaring the shit out of teenagers peddling it to their friends in high school. But, there were a few things I came across that I took note of. Major dealings that happened. Massive busts in airports. Large hauls of drugs taken out of unmarked vans and multiple people arrested. Cocaine, specifically.
The same drug we were dealing with now.
I flipped back to the current folders and jotted down information. Anything that seemed remotely similar to the drug infiltration that had happened years ago in the same city. That involved the same crew trying to push them out. Because it was obvious that it was that the Black Hornets that did it the first time. They successfully wiped out the drugs within their circle. There were newspaper clippings of several things they had done as favors to the police department. Guarding of the high-traffic high schools. Patrols late at night with official reports back to the police. Dean’s name was all over them. And a few of them had Colt’s name as well.
The details that lined up were uncanny.
Where the drugs were being funneled into. Where they came from. The theories on how they got in. Even the places the police had busted small-time dealers was the same. It was like the same cartel had come in and set up shop again after a decade of staying silent.
Was it possible they never left?
Was it possible the Roja Diablos came in and never fully left Redding?
It was the only thing that made sense. As I looked at the information sprawled out in front of me, the only thing that made sense was that the Roja Diablos did this the first time. And when everyone thought they had been chased out, the only thing that happened was that the group went silent. Everything I looked at proved my theory. The information the police had already gathered on local drug operations. All of them, linked back to the cartel without a whiff of how to trace it back. The only way the police knew the cartel was involved in the first place was a signature that was sometimes found spray-painted onto the territories that had been abandoned or taken down. Probably as a warning sign to new blood coming into the town to try and take people’s places.
‘AreDee’.
‘R.D.’.
‘Roja Diablos’.
I poured through the files. I came across a few names of players that had been fed to me by my boss over the last few months. Alejandro, the man who supposedly controlled the entire West Coast of the operations. Dropped off the map. Gone missing, along with the rest of his family. His wife. His daughters. Diego, one of the drug lords in the area. One of the slimiest, grimiest men I’d ever encountered. He was good. He knew how to cover his tracks and keep himself covered from attacks. And there was something about the way Colt got squeamish when referencing the shootout that made me think it wasn’t successful.
Was it possible Diego had been their specific target?
There wasn’t another target in the area the DEA knew about that made sense. Then again, it was possible they knew of targets we didn’t. But, Diego was a major player. According to the DEA chatter, he was the player to snag in the area. With Alejandro in the wind, they assumed he was long gone by now, and Diego was the head. And for him to become as familiar with the area and the people as he had become, he would have had to have lived here under some sort of false identity. He would have needed to blend in with the population of Redding.
Which supported my original theory.
There wasn’t enough to charge him. The only thing the Redding P.D. had was a name, one blurry picture of a face, and less than basic information. It was half a page of nothing but theories as to where he would be and what he could be doing. The DEA had more on this asshole than they did. But for men like Diego, it only took one thing to bring him down. One thing to trip his trigger and force him to mess up.
I hunched over my desk and scribbled notes down as fast as I could.
As I finished up the last of my predictions and mapping, my phone vibrated on my hip. I was almost tempted to ignore it, since I was in the office. If anyone needed me, all they had to do was knock. Then again, it could have been Aaron. Wanting some sort of an update.
And I had a hell of an update to give him.
“This is Olivia,” I said.
“Hey.”
I froze at the sound of his voice as my eyes slowly rose to the closed door of my office.
“Colt?” I asked.
“The one and only,” he said.
“What are you doing calling me?”
“Aren’t we supposed to be doing regular check ins?”
“I saw you a few hours ago,” I said.
“Consider this my next check in? So, I don’t have to roll myself out of bed just to place a phone call?”
“Sure. That’s fine. Remember your deadline, though. You’ve got until—.”
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Or, we could do it now,” I said.
“Whenever you’re free, but the sooner, the better.”
“Any reason for the urgency?”
“It’s a pretty urgent situation we’re in,” he said.
“Are you in trouble?”
There was a pause, and I knew that he was analyzing my voice. The way it sounded as those words rolled off my lips. I closed my eyes and silently cursed myself for sounding so worried. I cleared my throat and tried to steady the sound of my voice.
“I mean, just… where do you want to talk?” I asked.
“The only place I’m comfortable talking is my place,” Colt said.
“Your place.”
“Yep. It’s the only place I’ll know we aren’t being watched or listened to.”
“Okay, Mr. Paranoid. I’m not bringing anyone with me,” I said.
“Not talking about you,” he said.
I furrowed my brow at his statement.
“Fine. Your place. But, we go nowhere but the living room,” I said.
“Trust me, I wasn’t planning on it.”
I wasn’t sure why his words stung, but they did.
“See you in a couple of hours,” I said.
“You can’t come sooner than that?” he asked.
“No, because—believe it or not—I’m in the middle of working. See you in a couple of hours when I can take my lunch break.”
And then, I hung up the phone without giving him a chance to respond.