Page 18 of Tango

“He wanted to know if I heard from you.” There was a sudden lightness to his voice. “I got to get in his face and demand my money back. That felt damn good.”

“I bet.” I chuckled darkly. “How’d he take it?”

“He backed down only because he could tell I had no idea what was going on.”

“Good.”

“Eric, what happened?”

“We got ambushed.”

“By who?”

“No idea. I’m still not ruling out Castillo.”

“Smart.”

“We got away, but then she was shot. I barely got out alive myself.”

“What? Is the girl dead?”

“Yeah.” I hung my head and rubbed my neck. “Look, Chili, things got messy. Alejandro heard me calling in to headquarters. I’m watching him on the feed now. He knows who I really—” I saw Filippo rush through the front door of the house, and Alejandro dragged him into my office.

“Eric?”

“One sec.” I tapped the screen to the office camera and turned up the volume.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Ale screamed in his face.

“Can you hear this?” I asked Chili.

“Yeah. Is that Filippo?”

“He just showed up. He’s with Ale.” I went quiet so we could hear their conversation.

“Look, man,” Filippo sounded scared, “I just managed to get my ass back here after being shot at all night. Where’s Eric?”

“I need to tell you something, something big—”

“Should we be here, in his fucking office? What if he comes home? What if there’s cameras?”

“He’s not, and he’s too paranoid to put cameras in here.” He pushed Filippo into a seat and sat on the table to stare at him.

“We are in big-ass fucking trouble!” Ale shouted. “Like strip us naked, jam needles into our mouths, saw off our heads fucking trouble!”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Filippo started to catch Ale’s mood.

“The girl’s dead, the deal’s off, and worst of all, Eric’s working with fucking Blackstone!” I watched as Filippo’s eyes bulged out of his head. “Yeah, I walked up on him while he was talking to someone, used the same call signs as Blackstone does. Shit, maybe he is Blackstone. When he saw me behind him, it was written all over his face. He knew I caught him.”

“What’d you do?” Filippo was in shock.

“I,” he stumbled, “well, I ran. What else could I do? What if the feds suddenly showed up?”

“Coward,” I muttered and heard Chili huff.

“We need to tell Castillo!” Filippo jumped up, and I saw Ale slam him back down.

“And how will that look? That our boss is an undercover fuckin’ agent. We’d be tortured for information we don’t even have!” he screamed. “No, this shit stays right here. Not a single person can know.” He gave Filippo a hard tap on the face. “Which means if Castillo walks through this door right now, all we know is our boss and that bitch are missing. We haven’t seen either of ’em. Got it?”

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