“Well it’s obvious. You can’t do either.”
I drop my head into my hands, groaning. There was no persuading Sophia that she needs to speak out against Los Oscuros. She wouldn’t even listen. She locked herself in the bathroom, and I took the opportunity to leave the cabin, locking the door behind me, too pissed off to try any further. The clubhouse is packed full of Widowers, just like it is every night, but tonight’s different. Tonight they know not to approach the quiet table in the corner of the bar that Cade and I occupy when shit is hitting the fan. If they could see the black bag sitting on the bench in between my second and me they might have tried, though.
“You can’t involve yourself with the DEA, man. And there’s no way the club will pass running Maria Rosa’s blow and dope all over the country for her. She tried to strong arm us into that the last time we got caught up in her shit, remember?”
“I do remember. But it was almost worth the risk back then. We had no other leverage. I thought this time she’d agree just for the sake of fucking with Hector.”
Cade stares grimly down into the bottom of his rocks glass. I know he’s not seeing the burned amber of the whiskey in the bottom, though. He’s thinking about Laura. Laura, my best friend. Laura, Cade’s sister. Laura, who went missing from my father’s estate years ago, never to be seen again. That’s what started this whole fucking thing—the MC, the gun running, the small time weed operation the Widowers sometimes dabble in.
I couldn’t accept Laura was gone. I left home, set up out here, started up the club. Cade came out later. We decided we would try and find her. Made enough mob contacts that we could submerse ourselves into the seedy underworld of skin trading without being suspected as cops. There were rumors about American girls being sold down in Central America. Mexico. Colombia. We tried Mexico first. A skeevy motherfucker in a bar, selling his own sister out of the back of his van, told us he’d seen Laura, yes, but she wasn’t in the country anymore. She’d been purchased by the Desolladors and they’d taken her back to Colombia.
So naturally, that was our next stop. I rolled up on Rico and cut his face open. Cade and I were detained by a very intrigued Maria Rosa for nearly two weeks, during which time she managed to show us that she didn’t have anything to do with Laura’s disappearance, and also convince herself that she was in love with Cade.
When she said we were free to leave, Cade declined Maria Rosa’s invitation to stay behind and be her sex toy, which did not go down well.
Our exodus from Colombia was a rushed one, complete with threats on our lives and absolutely no sign of Laura.
She was in the wind. There were no more leads regarding her whereabouts, no matter which country we asked in or who we asked. Just like that, Laura was gone.
Now, neither of us like talking about her much.
I grind my teeth together, growing more and more restless by the moment. “So what, then? We go after Ramirez on our own?”
“Yeah, sure. If you want to commit suicide and get the rest of us killed, why not? How many Widow Makers are there? Twenty-one? Hectors got forty people around him at all times. And then there are the hundreds of people he has working on the streets. We go against him without support and we’re all dead.”
“Then we do nothing. We forget all about him killing Ryan. I let him get away with it?”
Cade slugs back his whiskey and slams his glass down on the table. “Plan B, man. Use the girl. Get her to stand up.”
I take my own drink in my hands, rolling the glass between my palms. Sometimes alcohol makes me think clearly, can give me a better perspective when I’m trying to solve a problem. Not right now, though. It’s making my head muzzy. “Not an option. Dela Vega told Sophia he’s going after her family. He told her he was gonna rape her fucking sister. She says there’s no way for him to find them if she doesn’t testify.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does if she’s lying about her name, and she’d be stupid not to. I’m sure Raphael doesn’t know her real name, either.”
“Is Danny working on finding out who she really is, then?”
I nod, catching sight of our hacker in the corner, laughing with some brunette I’ve seen him with a couple of times before. He’s the best. If anyone’s going to figure out who this woman is, it’s Danny.
“Okay, well in the meantime you just need to tell her we’ll put a detail on her family,” Cade says. “Promise her that we won’t let anything happen to them.”