Jamie looks at me. Shrugs. Looks away down the street. He turns a cocktail stick over and over between his teeth. Neither one of us have worn our MC cuts into town; we’re both in jeans and t-shirts, baseball caps turned backward on our head, sneakers on our feet. We’re just two guys in our late twenties. Or we would be if we weren’t covered in so many tattoos. Military tattoos. Club tattoos. Things that your average civilian might not recognize, but a cop definitely would.
We wait for a while. We don’t speak. We’ve been friends for so long now that we don’t need to open our mouths to communicate. I know what he’s thinking from the way his forehead creases, or the way his eyes seem to flash occasionally, transmitting information and his mood in a way that few people can pick up on. He says the same of me. He knows if I’m pissed or happy by the nervous energy that pours off me. According to him, the air around me might as well be sparking with electricity when I’m about to go nuclear on someone. Regardless of the fact that I might seem perfectly calm to anyone else, Jamie always knows when to grab me by the collar and drag me away from a fight before it can start.
After about fifteen minutes, a black sedan with tinted windows slowly rolls down the high street, only the driver visible as the vehicle approaches. Jamie slides off the bench and gets to his feet. “Here we go,” he says under his breath.
“Here we go,” I agree. I think I see a bright glance of light flash off one of the upstairs windows across the street, but when I look up they’re all still closed up, the curtains still at the glass. Jamie’s gaze flickers up there at the same time as mine, however, so I know I’m not imagining things. The sedan comes to a stop alongside us, and rear door closest to us.
Hector Ramirez climbs out.
He’s wearing a dark navy shirt, almost black, shot through with purple pin stripes, and his pants are long, heavy looking things that make me want to sweat just from looking at them. Hector isn’t sweating, though. He looks cool and refreshed, like summer isn’t kicking his ass the same way it is everyone else.
“Gentlemen.” He dips his chin, lowering his head in a curt nod. “So wonderful to see you, as always.”
Beside me, Jamie’s hackles are up already. I can tell by the way the muscles in his jaw are jumping, flexing, as he locks Ramirez in his gaze. “Hector.” He offers out his hand, and I can imagine how much the gesture costs him. Jamie’s a good guy. He’s a good guy until you do something to piss him off, or fuck him over in any way. When that happens, you quickly realize he can be decidedly bad when he wants to be. Ramirez knows that all too well. Maybe that’s why he wears a painfully smug smile as he accepts Jamie’s hand and shakes.
“I can only imagine why you would have chosen such a place to meet,” Ramirez says, smiling, flashing his teeth. “But I can assure you, you would have been perfectly welcome and perfectly…” He pauses, eyes skirting down and to the left, as though he’s trying to assess if we’re being watched. Or listened to as the case may well be. “Safe,” he finishes. He turns that shit eating grin on me next and I have to fight down the overwhelming urge to plant my fucking fist in his face. “Mr. Preston, you look a little upset. Would you like a tea? Coffee? I’m about to send Alfonso across the street to grab me something. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind collecting something for you, too.”
As he says this, a broad, barrel chested guy climbs out of the sedan’s front passenger seat, his face mottled purple and blue, his left eye swollen shut, burn blisters under his eye. I recognize him instantly—easily done, since I beat the living shit out of him not too long ago. He gives me a look that could sour milk. “I think I’ll be okay without,” I say. I smile, grin in fact, as Alfonso backs away, staring at me with hate in his eyes as he goes to grab his master’s coffee.
I know without a doubt that he’d be dead if he were working under Maria Rosa’s employ. She wouldn’t tolerate any of her men giving away her secrets, no matter how hard they were punched repeatedly in the face. Ramirez doesn’t strike me as the kind of cartel boss who would let something like that slide, but chances are he’s waiting to serve Alfonso’s punishment to him when he least expects it. The shitty part is Alfonso probably knows his boss is going to put a bullet in the back of his head one night soon, and there’s nothing he can do about it.