Page 22 of Emerald

Brooks frowns and Sophie glares at me. Not my fault if Brooks might be picturing me in a bikini.

“Have you dealt with the cartel before?” Sophie asks.

“Over the years I have, but I’ll be honest, I haven’t done much work in Mexico,” I tell them. I’m not foolish enough to think I can go in there, guns blazing like I can in Europe.

“You need help, see,” Sophie exclaims triumphantly as my words have proven her right.

“You don’t have a lot of faith in me, do you?” I ask her.

Sophie pauses and looks up at me with those bright blue eyes and stares me down. “I have faith in you. I don’t think there is a situation you couldn’t get yourself out of. You’re part of ateam now, being a Clark sister. And that means you’re not alone anymore,” she tells me sternly.

Oh.

That wasn’t at all what I was expecting her to say. It’s almost nice.

“I’m not taking Mackenzie,” I add quickly.

Sophie rears back and shakes her head. “She’d be a liability,” she states with a small smile on her face, probably imagining Mackenzie being in the field. Interesting concept but one that would get her killed.

“One of my old military buddies lives down in Mexico, Tulum funnily enough. He bought a beach bar there when he left the service,” Brooks adds.

“And you think he is going to be able to protect me?” I ask with my hands on my hips.

“Fuck no. You’ll probably end up saving his ass in a fight. But he knowseveryone.There isn’t anything that goes on down on the Yucatán Peninsula that he doesn’t know about,” Brooks explains to me.

He does sound like he could be the one to help me. That kind of local knowledge is invaluable and if he knows the Dominguez family even better, he is going to be my in with that crew.

“And you trust him?”

“With my life on a number of occasions,” Brooks says seriously.

“Okay, sort it out. I want to be out of here today,” I tell them.

They both still. “What about Max and Grace?” Sophie asks.

“Leave them in the dark. Let them enjoy their honeymoon, this doesn’t concern them. After everything they have been through, I want them to have their happily ever after,” I tell her.

“Agreed,” Sophie says with a nod.

I leave them to organize the transport while I work out the best way to get in with the cartel.

8

NASH

“Hey, your phone is ringing,” the feminine voice moans beside me before she puts an elbow in my side.

“Ouch, what the fuck?” I curse, trying and pull myself from the dead-ass sleep I was in. Reaching out, I try a couple of times to grab my phone from the bedside table. “Someone better be fucking dying if you’re calling me at this time.”

“Nash, it’s Brooks,” his booming voice says through the darkness.

Shit.

I sit up quickly and am now wide awake. Brooks does not call me in the middle of the night to shoot the shit.

“What the hell are you doing calling me at …” my eyes narrow and try to read the bedside table clock, “… at almost four in the morning?”

“You alone?”

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