Page 34 of Guarding The Phoenix: Vol. 2

“We will tonight. But Santos knows where we are, which means we can’t stay long.”

“How did he find us?” It was the question that plagued me.

“That’s what I’m going to discover before we leave San Diego. You and Chase are going shopping. Axel and I are going to work on figuring out how they found us. And Mateo’s going to install a security system. One much higher tech than what’s already on board.”

“I should make breakfast before we get started.” If we had such a long day ahead of us, we needed fuel.

“No need. Axel went and grabbed us breakfast burritos from a restaurant at the end of the dock. And he even grabbed a coffee for you with cream in it.”

Bless him. I sighed. I loved that man to distraction. And before I lost consciousness last night, I came to a startling conclusion—I loved them all. “Sounds great.”

“Want to go eat and get yourself ready to go shopping?”

“In a minute. Would you hold me a little bit longer? I’m not ready for you to let me go.”

He pressed a sweet kiss against my forehead. “With pleasure, babe.”

Chapter twelve

Tracked

Gideon

ThemomentChasedroveoff with Kylie the rest of us got to work. It gnawed at me. The way Santos found us with such ease. We each took a level and scoured it. Mateo met a command center van with all the equipment he requested, including a new phone for Kylie and a few GPS bug detectors to see if there was a tracker placed on board by Santos team before we arrived at Kylie’s place.

When I finished the main deck sweep and didn’t locate a bug, I donned the scuba suit. They could have placed it somewhere on the external hull. I checked the oxygen tanks first before I shouldered them on.

“Found one.” Mateo’s voice came through the walkie.

Motherfucker. I cursed myself. This was my failure. It never occurred to me that they would bug the yacht. And I should have. It made me a piss poor agent. We almost died, Kylie almost died, because of me. I had been so focused on my anger over Grant’s death that I failed to conduct a sweep of the damn boat. “Where?”

“Engine room.”

I glanced skyward. We were lucky it was only a bug. I’d done a sweep for explosive devices the first day at Kylie’s and had come up empty. “Don’t destroy it. If that signal is what Santos and his men used to track our ship, then we need to use it to our advantage. I have an idea how.”

“Will do.”

“I’m still gonna check the hull. Make sure we didn’t miss one.” Because if it were me, and I planted tracking bugs on a yacht, I would install more than one.

“Understood. Check in once you resurface. If you’re not out in an hour, one of us will come in after you.”

“Shouldn’t take me that long. Keep searching just in case they doubled up.”

“Agreed.”

“I’ll check in, in thirty minutes.”

“Good hunting.”

“Hooyah.” I set the walkie down. Affixed the scuba mask with headlamp.

I hopped in off the back and plunged into the sea. The shock of the water temperature, even with the body heat regulated suit, was still a shock. It took me a hot minute to adjust and gain my bearings.

I turned the headlamp on. Then with the submersible bug detector I swam beneath the hull. I started on the starboard side and conducted a full sweep. Then progressed to the port side and did the same.

The hull was sound and intact. Somehow, we pulled through that battle without any damage. At least that was working in our favor. Because from the start everything had gone wrong with this case.

Not that I expected it to be easy. Santos wasn’t an everyday run of the mill criminal. The fucker was a criminal mastermind who had outsmarted the CIA for the past decade. Although theories abounded that his organization had been behind cartel crime for much longer, but had been ascribed to another mafia don.

---