I’ve never really wanted to hit a woman before I met Agent Denise Lowell. A part of me still cringes away from the idea, the southern gentleman in me skirting away from the concept of planting a right hook squarely into the jaw of a five-foot-five blonde, but when I see her getting out of a black sedan on the other side of the compound fence, I find my fingers curling in on themselves, forming fists.
She’s wearing aviators and a pale grey pant suit that screams power, her tailored white shirt tucked in at the waist. A tall, cookie-cutter generic dude gets out of the passenger seat, also wearing sunglasses, also suited, but nothing about him screams power. There’s no time to let Jamie know we have guests. I send Carnie a warning glance, carefully suggesting with my eyes that he should run up to the cabin immediately and let our boss know what’s going down. I, on the other hand, walk slowly toward the gate with my hands shoved into my pockets, all evidence of my terrible mood hidden from sight while I feign indifference over the fact that the DEA are on our fucking doorstep.
Lowell’s already got her badge out and is holding it up for me to see, sunlight glinting off the polished metal. “Hello, Mr. Preston. Glad we finally get to meet properly.”
I think she wants me to be impressed that she knows who I am. Like maybe I should be intimidated or something. I was stationed in Kabul and Helmand Province though, so this bitch had better try harder. “Dee Dee. I wish I could say the feeling was mutual. It isn’t, though. What can I do for you?”
“I need to speak with Rebel. Is he here?” She’s pressed her mouth into a pinched line, the edges of her lips turning white. I don’t think she liked the whole Dee Dee thing.
“I don’t know where he is. We don’t keep a tracking collar on him. I’m sure you’d like to, though, right?”
Lowell flips her aviators up, resting them on top of her head. Squinting, she looks off over her shoulder into the flat, dry, dustiness of the desert, her face in profile as she muses over my words. She’d be a pretty attractive woman if only she wasn’t such a raging bitch. “I’m fully aware that your club isn’t happy about my presence here in Freemantle, Cade. I’m also aware that you and your friend Jamie have some serious problems with authority. The Widow Makers run guns. You guys run drugs, too. You’re the least of my concerns, though. I’m more worried about the outside influences you’ve attracted into town, and what it is they might be up to here. I need Hector Ramirez in jail or back in fucking Mexico. Either way, I can’t accomplish this without evidence, and with no one willing to give up information they have on him, that’s making my job really hard.”
“Mmm. I don’t really know many people that would want to make your job easy for you, Dee Dee. You don’t exactly ingratiate yourself with folks. Not as far as I can tell anyways.”
She sends a withering look my way. I’m sure she’s had dudes’ balls retracting inside their bodies with that look. “I’m not in the business of making friends. I’m in the business of ensuring that the streets of this country are safe. If I have to rub a few undesirables up the wrong way in order to achieve that, then I say all the better.”
“Jamie’s not going to help you. He doesn’t have anything that can put Ramirez away. If he did, he would have brought it to you a long time ago.” This is the absolute God’s honest truth. I snagged the camera footage of Sophia being dragged into the side street by Raphael last year, but that’s literally all it shows. She’s on the street one minute, Ryan appears the next, and then Raphael is having both of them dragged kicking and screaming into the alleyway after that. Maybe that’s enough to arrest Hector with, but he’s a smart motherfucker. He wasn’t actually there when Ryan was murdered.
The only real evidence Jamie has against Ramirez is a person—Sophia—and there’s no way he’s willing to put her at risk. Not now. He was all for it back when we bought her from Julio, but now that they’re an item it’s pretty much impossible. He knows how unsafe it would be for her and her family.
There are plenty of files sitting in Jamie’s office that contain incriminating information about the Mexican cartel boss, but there’s nothing damaging enough to put him away. Ramirez always has other people to do his dirty work for him. Lowell shrugs her shoulders, pouting a little. “Well, I’d like to hear that from his mouth.”
“And like I said, I don’t know where he is.”
Lowell arranges her face into an ugly smile. She points over my shoulder, behind me. “Funny that. I believe I can see him heading this way even as we speak.”
I turn and see that she’s right. Jamie’s heading down the hill from his cabin, bee-lining for us at a frightening speed. He looks seriously pissed off. Carnie’s hot on his heels, following after him.
I grin back at Lowell. “Good luck, lady.” I take three large steps back to make room for Rebel as he pitches up in front of the compound gate, breathing heavily. “I didn’t think the DEA paid social visits,” he says.