Chapter Ten
“We’re through waiting.”
Less than four hours had passed and Miguel Osuna was once again in Peter’s office, his ugly bodyguard in his usual position behind him. Miguel leaned back in his chair and pulled out a cigar, his thick fingers caressing it as if it were a woman’s body. He never smoked them anymore, but holding them and stroking them seemed to give him enormous satisfaction.
“You were just here.” Peter wanted to throttle the man, but he knew what that would cause. “You’ve barely had time to leave and come back. Don’t you think I’d have called you if something showed up? Why don’t you just stay in Sarasota and I’ll keep you updated?”
“Because so far you haven’t had anything to update us with. Perhaps you need more incentive. El jefe is getting very perturbed and impatient.”
Peter’s stomach knotted at the threat implied in the statement.
“She’s dumb,” Peter insisted. “I keep telling you that. And far from resourceful. She’s just been lucky, is all.”
Miguel’s mouth twisted in a sly smile. “You know Esai, and I wonder, Pedro, if she’s really missing at all.”
“What do you mean?” He stared at the man. “Of course she’s missing. We saw her leave.”
“Maybe you and she have a little plot going behind our backs. She pretends to steal the flash drive, you give her the codes, she empties the bank accounts, and the two of you fly off somewhere with the cartel funds.”
Peter felt himself turn pale, and sweat beaded on his forehead. “Surely, no one really thinks that. It would be suicide on my part.”
Osuna nodded. “More than that. You’d certainly never live to spend any of it. Neither of you would live long enough.” He uncrossed his thick legs and leaned across the desk.
“That’s ridiculous.” Peter placed his hands flat on the desk to conceal their trembling. Screwing the cartel was a quick trip to hell. “You have nothing to fear on that count. I assure you.”
“In any event, we’re making some more changes. I’ve just finished a long telephone conversation with my brother, and we’ve made some decisions. That’s why I’m here again today. To tell you in person.”
“What decisions?” Oh, God, now what?
“It’s time for you to get your ass out of the office. Take that magic computer of yours and start backtracking every place she’s been. Spread some of that money around the way you’re always bragging you do and see who talks. If money doesn’t work, a little muscle might.”
“But—”
“And check all the people already on our payroll. You have a copy of that list, right? In one of your special files?”
“Of course.”
Another reason to get that flash drive back before anyone could crack the codes.
“Someone somewhere has gotten a hint of her. I feel it. Go back to the beginning. Do whatever it takes to get that information.”
“You want me to leave here?” Peter stared at him. “And go where? And what about the law firm?”
“Stupido. Until we get that flash drive back, the law firm can’t afford to operate as usual and put ourselves under possible scrutiny. We have to close the doors. Which makes the head of operations very unhappy.”
“Close the firm?” Peter still couldn’t get his mind around it. “What the hell for?
“Aren’t you listening to me? So we don’t draw unwanted attention to ourselves. We can’t do anything for fear we’ve somehow been compromised. Everything is at risk.”
“But—”
“Call it a paid vacation for everyone and send them home. We’ll have someone taking calls in case a stranger dials in by accident. Do it today. Then get on a plane for Los Angeles and start your hunt from there.”
Peter had to swallow the urge to scream. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“Esai is sending you a list of all our contacts from Texas to California,” Miguel went on, as if Peter hadn’t spoken at all. “Once you get to L.A., get with the locals on one of your special secure phones, have them meet you at the terminal and start asking questions. Find out what the hell is going on. Get me that puta.”
He stopped as he reached the door and turned around.
“Oh, and by the way. Since you don’t seem to take me too seriously, from now on you’ll be reporting to Esai. And el jefe. So don’t make any mistakes.” He pushed himself from the chair and nodded to his bodyguard. “I want that bitch. You hear me? That’s your number one priority.”
The door closed softly behind him.
****
Peter wondered if it wouldn’t just be easier to cut his throat now and get it over with. He was getting sick of it the whole thing. Being yanked out of his comfortable position in Florida. Flying across the country on a wild goose chase. Having Esai Osuna calling him on his cell every half hour.
And whose stupid idea was it to start at the Los Angeles bus terminal and try to pick up leads? The woman was gone from there for four days. There wouldn’t be a soul who even remembered her. The ticket clerks barely knew each other. Esai and Miguel thought there might still be a way to trace her there, a starting point, but they’d never set foot in this place filled with masses of teeming humanity.
For two men who ran a billion-dollar, complex drug cartel, they didn’t seem to have a lot of brains.
But they really aren’t the ones who run it. And that person isn’t someone you want to argue with.
Not many people knew that the Osuna brothers weren’t the real heads of the cartel. The true identity would shock a lot of people. And it wasn’t a person Peter was eager to get on the bad side of.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Show her picture around,” Esai said when Peter got hold of him, trying to point out the uselessness of the whole exercise. “The boss has ordered it. Then check all the buses that left within an hour of the time our idiots took the wrong female. See where they went. Call your contacts in those places. This is a direct order from the boss.”
Trying to get a little ahead of things, he’d called everyone, all the people who sucked money out of the Osunas, anyone who might be able to tell him anything. Calculating how far or fast she might travel in a day, he’d hit their people in ten states. A fucking pain in the ass, he grumbled to himself. Complaining to anyone else did no good. They’d simply point out it was his mess he was cleaning up. Whatever, no one knew anything or no one was talking, an unhappy state of affairs either way.
So here he was, in the L.A. bus terminal with two more idiots that Esai had sent to help him, on an impossible task.
He bought a cold drink from a vending machine and rolled the icy can across his forehead, trying to stave off the familiar headache. So far they’d wasted two hours here, no one knew anything, and he was sure he’d caught at least ten different diseases from the people gathered in the big waiting area. Rubbing elbows with the great unwashed wasn’t his idea of the best way to spend an afternoon.
And then, against all odds, they caught a slight break.
“Pedro?” Diego Salazar moved up beside him. Thin and swarthy, he had the ability to blend in anyplace and possessed a skill with a knife second to none. Too bad he couldn’t think.
“Find out anything?” Peter asked.
He pointed to the man with him. “Mickey did.”
Mickey Salado was Salazar’s physical opposite, big and with his mother’s fair coloring. And an intimidating presence that loosened a lot of tongues.
“I finally got a ticket clerk to admit he thinks he remembers her. Maybe. He thought. Said he only noticed her because she was acting so weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Nervous,” Mickey explained. “Edgy.”
“Maybe?” Peter let his sarcasm show. He hated working with these men. “He thought?”
“It’s more than we had before,” Diego pointed out. “At least we know she was definitely here.”
“Maybe,” Peter repeated. “And we already figured that since she cashed the second check at the bank across the street. Just like in North Carolina. It still tells us nothing. For all we know she flushed herself down the toilet.”
“But—”
“Never mind. Anything else?”
Mickey looked at the tiny notebook in his big hand. “Four busses left about the time the men took the wrong woman that day,” he reported. “Albuquerque, Denver, Seattle and Jackson Hole.”
Peter pressed the can harder against his throbbing head. How to decide which bus the bitch had taken? This was a fool’s errand, and he’d tried to tell Esai.
“What if she’s not taking buses anymore?” Diego suggested.
Peter’s eyes popped open. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if two close calls at bus stations were enough for her. You said she got all that cash. Maybe she bought a car with some of that money she pulled out of her account.”
Peter was about to curse him for the idiocy of his idea when he realized the man might actually be onto something. Kathryn might be dumb, but she wasn’t entirely stupid. If she’d figured out buses no longer gave her the anonymity she wanted, she might make other choices.
“Okay. She wouldn’t buy from a regular dealership,” he mused, trying to make his aching head function. “Too much paperwork and she might not have the ID they’d require. Also, she’d probably be stingy with her money. So, a junk shop. And one pretty close to here.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and gestured toward Mickey. “Get the car and bring it around to the front. We’ll start a canvass in a tight circle. This isn’t the best neighborhood in the world. There have to be plenty of used car places who don’t care about anything but cash.”
And please let us find it soon. I want a motel room, a thick steak, and a bottle of bourbon. And maybe not even in that order.
Traffic was heavy, as it always was in L.A., and the constant stop and start and honking of horns did little to soothe Peter’s nerves. Nor did the fact his cell rang five minutes after they got into the car. When he saw the number, he cursed under his breath.
“Yes, Esai.” Can’t the asshole leave me alone for an hour?
“So. Any results?”
“We’re working on it. We have an idea.” He looked at the two men with him. “Actually, it was Diego’s.”
He explained to Esai what they were doing and waited through a long silence.
“Not bad,” the man said at last. “Call Nobo and have him pick up the bus station canvass. You keep on this track. You may just be onto something.”
Please, Lord, let it happen.
“Fine. I’ll call him right now.” His disconnected the call before Esai could spew forth any other orders. The call to Nobo Ortega was brief and unpleasant. The man thought the bus station idea just as stupid as Peter did, but he also liked breathing through his nose instead of a slit in his throat.
“All right. I’ll get my people, and we’ll check those locations. Also up and down the line to each location.” He sighed. “What a fucking pain in the ass. By the time we find this bitch we’ll be fighting over who gets to have at her first.”
An hour later Peter was sure L.A. had more cheap car lots than any place else on the planet, and none of them would give him the information he was looking for.
And then they stopped at Highway Harry’s.
Harry took a tad bit of convincing, but like Miguel had said, a little muscle or a little money and you got results. Peter left there with the license number of the car Harry had sold to a woman on the day they mentioned, a woman who “looks something like that. But she used a different name.”
Which eventually he was only too happy to provide them with.
“I need to go back to the motel,” he told Mickey, who was driving. “I need a wireless connection so I can boot up my laptop.”
Get ready, Kathryn. I’m coming after you.