Death, Taxes, and Cheap Sunglasses (A Tara Holloway Novel Book 8) (2 page)

Ohmigod.

My hand, still clutching my cell phone, flew involuntarily to my chest. A soft crunch told me the sunglasses in my breast pocket were DOA. Nick, too, could end up DOA if he worked on this case.

From previous conversations with Christina, I knew the DEA had been after the Sinaloa cartel for years. Known previously as
La Alianza de Sangre,
or Blood Alliance, the cartel worked with other drug-trafficking organizations in a loose federation that extended upward all the way from Argentina to the northernmost parts of the United States. Not only did the cartel supply drugs to distributors in Latin and North America, it also supplied parts of Asia and Europe.

Though the cartel often bought its way into power via bribes and threats, its members were not above kidnapping, torture, and murder to achieve their aims. In recent years, the cartel clashed violently with the Ju
á
rez cartel in Ciudad Ju
á
rez, a Mexican city just across the border from El Paso, Texas. The battle for power left thousands of innocent residents dead, along with untold numbers of rival cartels members. The cartel had kidnapped numerous people and held them for ransom, including at least one high school student. The cartel had also kidnapped reporters in Mexico in an attempt to force them to spread criminal communications, and gone so far as to invade a wedding being held by purported members of another drug ring. They’d kidnapped the groom, his brother, and uncle, and left their tortured, lifeless bodies in the back of a pickup truck that was found days later. A fourth person was killed at the wedding. Men with ties to the cartel were responsible for the execution-style murders of seventeen people at a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico. When one of their own lost hundreds of pounds of marijuana in a drug seizure by law enforcement, the cartel beat the man to death and severed his hands above the wrists, placing them on his chest and dumping his body on a Ju
á
rez street as a reminder to others within the cartel to carefully tend to their business.

Things had become so bad the U.S. State Department had issued travel warnings for people considering visits to Mexico. Texans who had previously flocked to Mexican border towns and beaches for vacation were now thinking twice before heading south.

Of course the violence didn’t stop at the border. Not only did it spill over into Texas border towns like El Paso and Laredo, but it headed farther north as well. The cartel had hired thugs from MS-13, a gang founded by former members of the El Salvador military who fled to Los Angeles in the 1980s following the civil war in their country. In St. Paul, Minnesota, the gang members kidnapped and tortured two teenagers whom they’d suspected—
wrongfully
—of stealing drugs and money from the cartel.

Forbes
magazine had estimated the fortune of the cartel’s leader, Joaqu
í
n Guzm
á
n Loera, known as El Chapo, or “Shorty,” at $1 billion, making him the wealthiest drug lord of all time. He’d escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 and later evaded apprehension at his home in Culiac
á
n by escaping into a secret tunnel system through a hidden hatch under a bathtub. Finally, in early 2014, he was captured by Mexican marines in a predawn raid in Mazatl
á
n.

The arrest of El Chapo had left a power void within the cartel. As those who remained vied for control, the violence had escalated even further. The instability posed not only further threats to security in Mexico, but also provided a unique opportunity for law enforcement to go after the cartel while it was vulnerable.

My stomach flooded with acid and my mind went fuzzy from fear. When it cleared, I knew one thing for certain.
The only way Nick would be going undercover inside a violent drug cartel would be over my dead body.

I grabbed the handle and threw the door open. It banged against the wall with a resounding
BAM
that rattled the window behind Nick’s desk.

Nick, dressed in his customary white business shirt, navy Dockers, and cowboy boots, stood from his desk, his tall, broad-shouldered form blocking some of the light streaming in the window. He cocked a dark brow in question.

“No!” I shrieked. I turned rage-filled eyes on Christina and Lu before returning my focus to Nick. “You are not going to work on this case. You’ll get killed!”

Lu leaped from her seat and closed the door behind me. “Tara! Keep your voice down!”

“No!” I cried again, shaking my head so violently it’s a wonder my brains didn’t rattle. “No. NO. NO!”

Nick sent me a pointed look, his amber-colored eyes on fire. “Get a grip, Tara.”

Oh, I’d like to get a grip all right. I’d like to grip him by the ears and shake some sense into him!

“Were you listening in the hall?” Lu demanded.

“Yes,” I spat, “and if you’re expecting an apology you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Well, now.” Lu pursed her lips. “If you’re expecting me not to note this unprofessional outburst in your performance report, you, too, are mistaken.”

My boss had probably hoped her threat would bring me to my senses, but frankly it only added fuel to the fire, making me more upset.

“This is a big case, Tara,” Nick said, a defensive tone in his voice. “This type of opportunity doesn’t come along every day.”

“Opportunity?”
I was flabbergasted. “This isn’t an opportunity. This is a suicide mission!”

Nick crossed his muscular arms over his muscular chest. “Call it what you want but I’ve been waiting my entire career for a case like this.”

Looked like I’d get nowhere with him. After all, he could be just as stubborn as me. Fueled by terror and rage, I turned to,
and on,
Christina. “You’ve told me how dangerous the Sinaloa cartel is. How could you drag Nick into this?”

She knew how I felt about Nick.
I loved the guy, dammit!
What kind of friend was she to involve him in this case?

Christina gave me a look that was both pointed and apologetic. “You know why, Tara.” She gestured at Nick. “He’s got the perfect set of skills for this case.”

I could understand why the DEA would want Nick on the case. He’d lived in Mexico for three years and was virtually fluent in the language. Of course the time he’d spent there was in forced exile after his cover had been blown in an earlier undercover investigation. Nevertheless, he knew more about the language and culture than any other special agent in the Dallas office.

Nick was also especially equipped to handle cases calling for physical intimidation and defensive skills. Not only had he been a linebacker on his high school football team, he’d been raised on a farm and engaged in physical labor that had further developed his muscles and stamina. Thanks to time at the shooting range with me, his aim had improved vastly. He’d never match my sharpshooting skills, of course, but he was nonetheless one of the best shots in the office.

Despite Christina’s undeniable logic, I wasn’t about to surrender. “How can you call yourself my friend?”

Lu intervened. “This is
business,
Tara. It’s not personal. Besides, putting Nick on the case was
my
call, not Christina’s.”

I turned on Lu now. It took every bit of my restraint not to rip off her false eyelashes and beat her with them. “There’s gotta be someone else,” I said. “Another special agent who could handle this. What about…”

I racked my brain. There was my usual partner, Eddie Bardin, of course, but he had two young girls and a wife to think about. No way could I suggest him as a replacement for Nick. The new guy, William Dorsey, was smart and capable but he, too, was a family man. Josh Schmidt would also be a poor choice. Though his cybersleuthing skills were top-notch, he was a total wimp when it came to the physical aspects of our job. Hell, he’d probably wet himself if he just heard the name El Cuchillo.

“Me,”
I said finally. “Put
me
on the case instead.”

“Tara,” Nick said in a tone probably meant to be soothing but which instead struck me as patronizing. “Come on.”

“I mean it.” My gunmetal-gray eyes locked on his whiskey-colored ones. “You’re an only child and your mother is already a widow. If something happened to me my parents still have each other and my brothers.” I turned back to Lu. “Please, Lu,” I pleaded. “
Please.
Assign me instead.”

Lu offered no acquiescence, only a feeble smile rimmed in bright orange lipstick. “Nick’s a big boy, Tara. He can take care of himself.”

“Not always,” I spat. “He was getting the shit beat out of him at Guys and Dolls until I showed up and saved his ass.”

Nick, Christina, and I had worked undercover together on a previous prostitution and drug case at the strip club. Three of the club’s bouncers had attacked Nick and, despite his impressive efforts to fight the trio off, he’d been seriously injured. If I hadn’t shown up and shot each of the bouncers in the foot, who knows if he would have survived the ordeal.

Nick scowled, his eyes aflame now. “Hell, Tara, why don’t you just kick me in the balls? What went down at Guys and Dolls wasn’t a fair fight and you know it.”

I slammed my fists down on his desk and leaned over it to stare him directly in the eye. “And you expect drug lords to fight fair?”

Without taking his eyes off mine, Nick addressed Lu and Christina. “Could you two excuse me and Tara for a moment?”

Lu nodded. “We’ll be in my office.”

With that, she and Christina stood from their seats and headed to the door.

Christina turned in the doorway and looked back at me. “For what it’s worth, Tara. I’m sorry to have to involve
anyone
in this.”

The sincerity in her words and expression cut right through me, taking my emotions down several notches.

“For what it’s worth,” I replied, my voice quavering. “I hate that
you
have to be involved in this, too.”

She offered me a feeble smile and left.

Once we were alone, Nick and I stared at each other for a long moment. The flame in his eyes flickered out and cooled. He walked around his desk and enveloped me in his strong arms, wrapping a warm hand around my head to tuck my face against his chest. He gave me a soft kiss on the top of my head. “I’ve got to do this, Tara.”

I let out a long sigh, grabbed fistfuls of his white dress shirt, and turned to bury my face between his rock-hard pecs. “I know.”

Fighting bad guys was our job, after all. We’d willingly signed up for this. Still, the fact that we’d volunteered to put our safety at risk didn’t mean it didn’t suck sometimes. Besides, this separation was coming at a bad time. Nick and I had just gone through a rough patch in our relationship when I became all starry-eyed over a country-western singer I’d been assigned to pursue. We’d only just patched things up, and were still enjoying make-up sex. I’d hoped to parlay the make-up sex into a make-up changing of the air filters in my town house. I tended to neglect the darn things and the dust always made me sneeze when I replaced them. Looked like I’d just have to tough it out.

Nick reached down and put a finger under my chin, lifting my face to his. “I love you, Tara.”

Tears pooled in my eyes. “I know that, too.”

I was glad he loved me, but a fat lot of good that love would do me if he was killed. I clung to him for a moment longer, then finally mustered the courage to extricate myself from his embrace. Time to man up. Or, in my case,
woman
up.

He chuckled. “You made a mess of my shirt.”

I glanced back to note a smear of Plum Perfect gloss on his chest, along with a smudge of beige foundation. “That’s nothing compared to what a knife could do.”

chapter two

A
rt … Or Not?

After the incident in Nick’s office, I went to my office, fished my broken sunglasses out of the breast pocket of my blazer, and tossed them into my trash can.

Thunk.

Plunking myself into my chair, I logged on to my computer and Googled the words “El Cuchillo” and “Sinaloa
.”
Many of the Web sites that came up were in Spanish, which I could not
comprender.
Stupid me. I’d taken French in high school. Growing up so close to the Louisiana border, I’d thought it was a
bon
idea at the time. Besides, several of
mes amies
had signed up for French, too. We’d planned to one day take a trip together and go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The closest we’d come was the time we’d climbed the windmill in Junior Huffnagle’s parents’ cow pasture.

The sites that were in English offered gruesome details. Until recently, El Cuchillo often worked with a man known as Motosierra, or “Chain saw.” The two were suspects in dozens of brutal murders in Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. They had split ways due to disruptions caused by the arrest of El Chapo. Police suspected that each had taken control of an arm of the Sinaloa cartel, thus moving up in the ranks.

There was only one photo of El Cuchillo online and it caused my sphincter to clench so tight I’d need a triple dose of Ex-Lax to compensate. The man’s dark hair was shorn to the scalp in an extreme, military-style cut. His face was a roadmap of scars earned in knife fights. He looked directly into the camera with eyes as hard and cold as a glacier as he licked a victim’s blood from his blade.

“Oh, God,” I whispered. “Oh, dear God!”

I slammed my laptop closed and shut my eyes. I willed my mind to erase the image, but it was seared into my brain as if branded there.

There was only one thing that could take my mind off what I’d just seen.

Kittens.

Cute, cuddly ones.

And lots of them.

I opened my laptop and hurriedly went to YouTube, pulling up video after video of adorable, playful kittens romping in a yard, batting a ball of yarn, licking the camera lens. My sphincter relaxed a little. Maybe a mere double dose of Ex-Lax would do me now.