Page 5 of K-9 Guardians

Scarlett couldn’t stop the appreciation for this moment or the deep flush of embarrassment coloring King’s neck and face as he dared a step into the conference room. She was going to remember him. For a long time. She let the door automatically close behind them. “King, meet the founder and CEO of Socorro. Ivy Bardot. And this is Granger Morais, our resident counterterrorism expert.”

“Why do I suddenly feel like I’m being brought into the principal’s office?” King nodded at each in turn instead of extending his hand. He seemed to memorize everything about this room and the people in it.

“Because you know as well as we do, you’re not supposed to be here, are you, Agent Elsher?” Ivy took her position at the head of the table and motioned for King to take a seat. An offer he didn’t accept. “You and your team work cartel cases from a drug standpoint. You don’t get involved in homicide investigations, even those of your agents. Which means the DEA doesn’t know you’re here.”

Scarlett battled the dread pooling at the base of her spine.

“You’re right. My superiors have no idea I’m here,” King said. “I came because I’ve been investigating a Sangre por Sangre lieutenant for the past eight months. Off the record and with DEA resources. Now that investigation has gotten my partner killed.”

HISCAREER—his whole life and that of his son’s—was suddenly in someone else’s hands. King didn’t like the idea of not being able to choose his own path.

The pressure of those seconds as Socorro’s founder stared back at him, unblinking, felt as though he were right back in the moment when a social worker had showed up on his doorstep and dropped off a ten-year-old kid King hadn’t known existed.

Then again, he’d been the one to bring himself to this point. In both scenarios.

He’d been the one to go home with a woman he barely knew for more than a couple hours a little over a decade ago. It’d been mutual, a way for him and a visiting ATF agent he’d been partnered with during an investigation to blow off some steam, and he hadn’t regretted that choice for a single moment. Until two months ago. Now he had Julien, and he didn’t know how to take care of a kid, but they were trying to make it work. Little by little. Day by day. Fruit snack by fruit snack.

“Will you help me?” Because Socorro was the only thing that could save him now. This group of military contractors who seemed to trust each other more than King even trusted himself. He had nowhere else to go. No one who could justify his actions of the past eight months of looking into Sangre por Sangre unsanctioned. And the minute he was exposed, he’d lose everything. He’d be arrested and charged. His career would be over. The state would take his son.

A burning lodged in his chest at the mere thought. King wasn’t going to let that happen.

Awareness spiked as Scarlett’s warmth seeped into his arm. A trick. Experience told him it was just a game his mind was trying to play on him, a way to connect with the very people who could dismantle his life. But a part of him wanted that sincerity she seemed to put into every word and every expression to be true.

“You want Socorro to corroborate your unsanctioned investigation into the cartel.” Ivy Bardot lived up to her reputation. Smarter than those bureaucrats on Capitol Hill wanted her to be and definitely out of their league. She wasn’t just playing the game. She was calling the shots, and the federal government would only take so many commands before turning to bite the hand that fed them cartels like Sangre por Sangre. “Who is your target?”

Hope jumped in his chest where it had no right to land. “Hernando Muñoz.”

“We know the name. Intel says he took a hard leap to the top of the cartel’s hierarchy once the Big Guy’s only son was found with a bullet between the eyes. Making quite a name for himself, too. Violently.” Morais—the counterterrorism agent—set his elbows on the conference table, a quiet intensity churning in the space between them. As though waiting for the perfect time to ambush. “Guy’s a thug. Hangs out with a trusted group of cartel members, but we’ve never been able to link him to any of the drug activity in the area. Any business we suspect he’s involved in is divided between his crew. Totally hands-off. Our team’s got surveillance, but all we’ve managed to gather is he likes takeout almost every night of the week, and he buys his wife a lot of flowers. So I’m curious. What do you have on him?”

“Nothing.” King smothered the hope he’d stupidly allowed himself to feel. “All I’ve got is rumors Muñoz is stirring up trouble from within. Getting ready for a takeover. And you’re right. He’s careful, and none of his crew is willing to talk. He makes sure he never touches the money that comes his way from his guys working corners, but I don’t care about the drugs or what kind of pies he’s got his fingers in on the cartel’s behalf. I have reason to believe he ordered the murder of an ATF agent who was getting too close to his operation two months ago. The investigators couldn’t come up with anything conclusive, but I know Muñoz is involved. Just like I know he’s responsible for Adam’s murder.” His tongue felt too big for his mouth as his personal life bled into his professional. “She was a good agent. And a good mom.”

“You knew her.” Scarlett’s voice eased through him as slick as chocolate syrup.

There it was again. That uncanny ability she had to practically read his mind. King didn’t have the guts to face her head-on, not trusting his ability to keep his emotions capped right then. “When it comes to Sangre por Sangre, we all know someone who’s been hurt.”

That was starting to look like his own personal motto.

The knot in his gut tightened as Ivy Bardot studied him for a series of breaths. Leaning back in her chair, Socorro’s founder shoved to stand. “Send me your investigation notes. I want to know every detail of your operation, what resources you’ve used and what you have on Muñoz. We can’t step on law enforcement’s toes during your partner’s homicide investigation, but if you’re right about the lieutenant’s intentions and what he’s done, we’ll need to put together a strategy. One that makes it look like you’ve been working with Socorro these past two months.”

King barely had the sense to take his next breath.

“Scarlett, get with Agent Elsher and familiarize yourself with the ATF agent’s murder. The case is closed, so you shouldn’t have any pushback from police. Reach out to Chief Halsey from Alpine Valley PD, if needed, and bring me something concrete we can use to reopen the case and connect it with Adam Dunkeld’s,” Ivy said. “Granger, I want up-to-date information from the surveillance team. Patterns, logs, movements, identities of Muñoz’s crew and everything you have on the wife. All of it.”

Time seemed to speed up.

“You’re going to corroborate my investigation,” King said. “Why?”

The question seemed to slow down Socorro’s founder. Something he was sure she wasn’t used to. “Because I don’t want it to be true, Agent Elsher. I don’t want to believe that when it comes to Sangre por Sangre and cartels like it that we all know someone who’s been hurt. Because if that’s the case, then Socorro hasn’t been doing its job, and innocent lives have been sacrificed for nothing.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. What to think. To the point, King didn’t even bother getting out of Ivy Bardot’s way as she maneuvered around him and shoved through the conference room doors. “She takes her job seriously, doesn’t she?”

“Operatives like us don’t have a choice, Agent Elsher. There are too many good people counting on us to come through for them. I’m sure you and the DEA know that better than anyone.” Granger Morais got to his feet with a bent manila file folder in one hand. He headed for the door, smacking the file into King’s shoulder on the way out. “Bring us something solid. We’ll have your back.”

“I appreciate that.” It took longer than it should have for the past few minutes to sink in, but King couldn’t let the time slip away too easily. He’d already wasted two months of hard work trying to do this on his own. Now he had an entire team willing to help him bring Muñoz to justice. He turned to face Scarlett. “Looks like we’re going to be working together.”

“That ATF agent. The one whose murder you suspect Muñoz ordered. Were you partners?” she asked.

King had to swallow the urge to shut down this line of questioning. He’d gotten what he wanted: support in pinning two murders on the son of a bitch who’d ordered the deaths of an ATF agent and now a DEA agent and an entire security firm to corroborate his personal investigation to do so. Scarlett wasn’t asking to dig into his life. She needed the facts of the investigation to connect it all back to Muñoz. “We worked a case together a little over ten years ago. She was called in from DC to help my team analyze a device we picked up during a raid on one of the cartel’s safe houses. Before everything got complicated.”

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