Page 13 of K-9 Justice

Ivy had been targeted. Not just at her apartment, but possibly by a sociopath sending her a direct message by taking out one of her employees, and there was no way he would sit back and lose her. Not again. They’d fought too hard and for too long to let someone else have a say in their future. Least of all a killer. His fingers tingled with the need to send that message. He checked over his shoulder. For Ivy. But she must’ve remained in the kitchen. Most likely to go through the files they’d built over the past two hours. Carson unpocketed his phone.

Max locked her gaze on him, cocking her head to one side. In judgment.

“You want to go home, don’t you? You want to go back to sleeping in a bed with your mom instead of on the ground with me?” He was more than aware of the ridiculousness of expecting his K-9 to answer back. He was also cognizant of how he was projecting onto his partner his own internal motivations for even considering contacting a man who’d dedicated his entire life toSangre por Sangre. But Sebastian had roots deep into the organization. Twenty years’ worth of experience, loyalty and know-how pertaining to all cartel business. Carson had heard the stories—the legend—of the soldier who had single-handedly undermined the DEA investigators over the years. Didn’t hurt that Sebastian owed him a favor.

The German shepherd licked one side of her mouth.

“That’s what I thought.” He tapped out the message one-handed and hit Send. “Time to pay up, old man.”

The back door protested on dirty tracks, centering Ivy over the threshold. “Thought I might join you for that fresh air.”

Carson slipped his phone back into his pocket, just out of her line of sight. “I’ve had worse company.”

“You’re talking about Max, right?” A smile cracked at the corner of her mouth. Something private and meant only for him. It was her tendency to only reveal bits and pieces of herselfto people she trusted that had first gotten his attention in the FBI. Why he’d requested to become her partner despite his lack of experience and the fact she’d driven most of her previous partners into early retirement. He’d wanted to be one of the few she trusted. Considering their partnership had dipped into a personal relationship, Carson would say he’d succeeded. Until she determined otherwise. Ivy crossed the porch to the railing at the edge of the cement, fingers interlaced as she searched the backyard. He’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life, never seen something more worth fighting for than her. “It’s peaceful out here. I can see why you like it.”

He joined her at the railing. “First time I came here, I was part of a security detail for a lieutenant named Tolenado. Turned out I had the most experience of anyone else on the team. Tolenado noticed. Decided to bring me on as one of his enforcers.”

His pocket vibrated with an incoming message. Sebastian’s response.

“I remember Tolenado. He abducted and tortured a war correspondent for three days. Intended to kill her, too. Right up until my operative Jones Driscoll pulled her out.” She seemed to memorize the layout of the land spanning behind the house. “That correspondent was the one who broke the news a state senator had allowedSangre por Sangreto kill ten US military soldiers to undermine Socorro. He failed, though.”

“That’s because you believe in what you’re doing out there,” Carson said. “From the very beginning, you were willing to do whatever it took to protect the people who couldn’t protect themselves. Including me. I like to think that conviction has rubbed off on me.”

“Except I couldn’t help Nafessa or those other women from getting killed.” Her voice hooked into him. “I went back through the intel you’ve gathered over the past two years along with the locations of the cartel’s safe houses and the names of everySangre por Sangreoperative you encountered. At this point, we’re treading water with no land in sight.”

Carson pulled his phone to his side and read Sebastian’s message. The old man had come through. “Then we start swimming. Right into the belly of the beast.”

CHAPTER SIX

Turned out the belly of the beast Carson had mentioned took the form of a small town she’d never heard of. Aztec, New Mexico, stood as home to an array of natural arches, forgotten ruins and six thousand people at the very top of the state. The town itself sat so close to the border between New Mexico and Colorado, they could practically cross state lines within minutes. Was that whySangre por Sangrehad chosen this location? Or was there anything here at all?

She studied the grid-like design of every street, the homes surrounded by dead lawns and bare earth. Cement driveways had cracked over time, giving up the ghost to overgrown scrub brush and cacti. There was an expansive difference between Albuquerque and towns such as Aztec. While big-box stores and skyscrapers moved in to mask cultural origins and wipe slates clean, places like this went out of their way to protect tradition and the history of their people. She could see it in the architecture. Not forced or inauthentic but preserved. “What makes you think the cartel has any resources here?”

“Rumor has it one of the cartel’s top soldiers survived Socorro’s purge. From what I’ve learned about him in the past, he considers Aztec a safe haven. Someplace no one will come looking for him.” Carson kept his gaze on the road ahead. “I haven’t been able to verify the intel. Honestly, I’m not sure there’s anything for us here, but I figured if we were going to get any information on Dr. Piel’s killer, this could be our best shot.”

A lead. Her stomach fluttered, and for a reason unknown to Ivy, she wanted nothing more in that moment than to unholster her sidearm. “And if this cartel soldier doesn’t want to share what he knows?”

“That’s why we brought Max. She has a way of making people talk.” He flashed her a smile meant to extinguish the nerves funneling through her chest, but Ivy felt nothing but apprehension at the idea they were walking into aSangre por Sangretrap. “There’s an entire arsenal in the cargo area, too.”

“Who is this guy? And why hasn’t he come up before?” The more information she had, the better decision she could make. That was the way this worked. Learning about this lead two days into their investigation didn’t sit right. Though there wasn’t a single bone in her body that believed Carson would put her in the cartel’s crosshairs on purpose. Up to this point, he’d gone out of his way to ensure her safety. Hadn’t he?

“Sebastian was my recruiter when I first joined the cartel. He watched over me, brought me into his circle. Trained me.” There were emotions in those few statements Carson tried to bury, but she’d become an expert at reading him in their partnership. Something wasn’t right here. There was something he wasn’t telling her. “I saved his ass during one of Socorro’s last raids onSangre por Sangre’s headquarters a few weeks ago. Your counterterrorism agent Granger and his partner brought the entire place down on itself by taking out the underground tunnels the cartel was using to continue operations. I kept Sebastian from becoming one of the casualties.”

“So he owes you his life.” Why didn’t that fact make her feel any better? “And you think an active member ofSangre por Sangrewould be willing to turn on the cartel?”

“Sebastian has only one priority—survival. Whoever provides him the ability to do that the best is his friend. And at this point, Ivy, he’s our only chance. No one but the lieutenants andthe founder themselves have been with the cartel as long as this guy,” he said. “If the killer we’re looking for is active again, Sebastian can tell us who he is. For a price.”

She wedged her boots into the floor as Carson maneuvered the SUV onto a barren street along the north edge of town. A beaten sign that was too difficult to read this time of night swung from rusted-out chains with a short burst of wind ahead. “I’ll have to trust you on that.”

He slowed his approach as oversize metal gates materialized through the darkness. A motion sensor–activated spotlight beamed to life, shining directly through the windshield.

Ivy brought her hand up to block the assault. Blind to any threat that might be waiting for them in the darkness.

“We’re here.” Carson shoved the SUV into Park and switched off the ignition. Max maneuvered her head between the front seats as though in an attempt to get the lay of the land before having to exit the safety of the vehicle.

Ivy felt the need to do the same, but the spotlight had yet to relent. She shouldered free of the SUV, her boots sinking into softened dirt. The gates stood as sentinels keeping unwanted visitors out, but the open structure and years of wear allowed her to see past the form-fitted plastic blocking most of her view inside. “Sebastian No-Last-Name lives in a junkyard?”

“A place like this comes with a lot of benefits. It’s off the grid, you have to deal with very few visitors and there’s access to a variety of vehicles in case of emergency.” Carson rounded the head of the vehicle, the SUV’s headlights exposing every strained vein in his forearms. No matter how much he trusted his own intel, there was obviously still a good amount of unknown he hadn’t accepted.

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