Bane: Elite Operatives (Bad Boys of X-Ops Book 4) (4 page)

Barrio Badlands

2300 HOURS.

I met up with Kiki outside the crib, and we hopped into the SUV Storm had designated for our use.

Tried not to stare at Kiki.

My legs were still quaking after the hot
hot
shower we’d shared.

I figured one way or the other—one of us was gonna end up dead this time around. Dead because of lust, or dead-dead because of the mission.

My lips curled as I handled the steering wheel, foot stomping down on the gas, cigarette clamped between my teeth.

She could’ve worn something less appealing. The pants were tighter than skin, the boots hotter than sin, the leather jacket just a fucking short tease to the tits I knew were hidden inside.

Along with a whole lot of weaponry.

“You ready for this, girl?”

She laughed to herself. “Girl?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s how you think of me after the locker room?”

She just had to remind me of
that
when the whole episode had been on reel inside my head ever since.

“Don’t think we should have a repeat.”

“
Don’t
talk much, do you?”

I grunted into the following silence, and Kiki took my cig, placing it between her plump, berry-red lips.

“Thought you didn’t smoke.”

“So did I. Guess we were both wrong.” She took another long slow inhale while I inspected her profile.

“Anyway, nothing much to talk about.” I followed the directions memorized like a map in my mind, sending us deeper and deeper into Mexico City gangland.

“You hate me like the other guys do?”

I glanced at her for all of a second.

Funny. She’d armed herself with guns and blades and that leather holster and the black eyeliner, but I couldn’t forget her scrubbed-clean face. The water running down her bare body in a slick slide.

Kiki wasn’t as hard as she made herself out to be.

Maybe I wasn’t either.

But I had to be. To complete my orders.

Kill her
.

I slid a sole finger from her cheek to her sweet jaw, to her neck where the steady pulse thrummed.

Turning back to the road, I murmured, “No. Don’t hate you.”

Just wrestling with my conscience. What I want. And what I have to do.

“They have it wrong, you know?” She tossed the cigarette out the window. “I might’ve been monitoring coms when Walker’s mission got compromised, but I didn’t do it.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Kiki’s face glowed with determination, and the stubborn tilt of her chin had the hard edge she usually wore like a mask. “I’ll prove it to you.”

Ten minutes later, we came to a halt a couple blocks away from where Walker and I had attempted to set up an exchange with Los Reyes de Guerra last night. The area was controlled by the cartel, not the local LEOs.

The arrival of two crackers in a fully loaded SUV in the middle the cartel’s barrio immediately led to a quiet menacing hum of slurs in Spanish, narrowed eyes, and shiny weapons from pistols to blades to brass knuckles.

I’d left my own fisticuffs back at the crib.

Maybe I should’ve brought them along.

The area was nothing but dim and blinking streetlights, unsavory looking bars, heavily graffitied buildings, and narrow roads filled with the men and women of the hood gathered around gangsta-style cars drinking from forties.

Kiki swung out of the truck after me, and we strolled through the crowd thickening in front of
Día de Muertos bar. It was colder than usual for late November in Mexico City, and I had a feeling it was about to get a hell of a lot frostier.

We had intel the squat stone structure with the faded sugar skull death mask painted on the sign hanging out front was Carlos the Killer’s hangout of choice and, possibly, a front for his gun/snort smuggling business.

The brightly painted door to the place stood half propped open, and we walked right in, kicking off another wave of unveiled suspicion shot in our direction. The stares hardened into menacing glares. The murmurs grew louder. And the crowd didn’t exactly part like the Red Sea.

I quickly scanned the scene—bars on windows, thugs with slicked-back hair sitting in booths, women dressed in a mix of leather and lace shuttling drinks and empties back and forth from the bar.

More guns. More knives.

In the farthest corner of the room? Carlos. He stared straight at me with eyes so dark brown they looked like one-way mirrors to an empty soul.

Maybe that was my soul.

“Let me do the talking,” I muttered to Kiki, not waiting for her acknowledgment before I parted the way between Mexicans mumbling threats–
gueros
seemed to be the most popular insult slung our way.

“
Hola,
Carlos.” I nodded to the man who returned my hooded stare.

Kiki remained behind me as Carlos merely grunted a greeting. He tapped a gun on the surface of the table. The leader of the Los Reyes de Guerra cartel looked nothing like a South American crime lord. He was scrawny as a fucking chicken wing with a thick scar pulling down the whole left side of his face. His gang minions wore regulation leather and black. Not Carlos. He dressed in a three-piece suit in dandy-friggin’-blue complete with a perfectly folded handkerchief in the breast pocket.

Like these were the old Prohibition days and he was the Hispanic Al-fucking-Capone.

His second-in-command sat beside him—no airs for him. He looked just like what he was. A big block of concrete with fists built to kill with one lethal punch.

The same as I’d been.

“You got some cojones,
cabron
, showing up again. Not enough pain last night?” Carlos’s voice was guttural as a bullfrog’s, at odds with his small frame.

“
Bastardo
.” The concrete block lumbered to his feet. “I
keel
him,
si
?”

Carlos wrapped a thin-fingered hand around his henchman’s arm before he could draw a gun on me.

Tension rolled between the three of us, until Kiki—
goddammit
—stepped out from behind me.

My hand fell to the grip of my Sig.

I watched Carlos’s dark eyes move over Kiki, taking stock of her as she stood with a bold smile and a cocked hip.

“Shouldn’t we have drinks before we pull out the guns?” She winked, batting her eyelashes.

Un-fucking-believably, Carlos laughed—the sound as grating as machine gun fire.

The atmosphere cooled rapidly from the suffocating sense of Kiki’s and my imminent doom to the chill zone. All the potential perps breathing down our necks as Kiki and I stood with our backs to the rest of the bar slowly dispersed.

Carlos even motioned for us sit across from him.

Maybe there was something to be said for bringing Baby Spy with me instead of motormouth Walker.

“How many partners you got, gringo?” Carlos asked as we slid into the cracked-leather booth.

“The dude you shot up last night was an associate. Not a partner.”

“What about her.” He shoved his chin in Kiki’s direction.

I glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. “Her? Definitely a partner.”

“
Bueno
. Good choice.” At the lift of his finger, a bottle of tequila arrived with four fresh glasses.

Hulk the Henchman poured, and I was surprised he didn’t shatter the small glasses in his hamfist.

Carlos raised his drink toward Kiki. “
Senorita
Catalina
. It’s been awhile,
no
?”

Catalina?

“Sixteen months, give or take.” She saluted him with her drink then gulped it in one.

I sat, frozen for a second, this new information nothing short of a ball-shocker. As soon as I figured out how to swallow again, I downed my drink and motioned for another shot.

Kiki isn’t using the pussy angle then.

Jesus.

She’d been inside with the cartel before. In what capacity I had no idea, but it suddenly became crystal goddamn clear why she’d been put into play on this mission.

She and Carlos began a fast conversation in fluent Spanish while I remembered to do more than sip my fucking tequila and look like more than a turd in a punchbowl.

Christ.

I cut in whenever possible, adding my own info, but Kiki squeezed my thigh beneath the cover of the table—trying to shut me down or turn me on, I wasn’t sure.

Probably shut me down.

But then her fingers traveled to the northside of strictly professional, copping a feel of my cock that’d grown dangerously hard as soon as she’d touched me.

Scratch that.

As soon as she’d turned Carlos the Killer into Carlos the Kitten.

While I sat, nursing my drink, choking on arousal, Kiki felt me up with very fucking skilled fingers toying with the fat head of my cock all the while she multitasked.

I felt my eyes grow wider and wider when I would’ve preferred to just slump back, open my pants, and get her to blow me.

I couldn’t decide if I was more stunned by her impressive knowledge of Los Reyes cartel’s competitors’ movements, her impressive grasp of the local Spanish lingo, or her
impressive
handling of my cock.

Well, that was a lie. I was all about the cock-handling.

“How’d you hook up with the
guero
?” Carlos asked, stabbing me with his soulless eyes.

“Name’s Griffin.”
Chachi cholo motherfucker.

“I’m the brains. He’s the muscle.” Kiki squeezed my dick in a firm grip.

That’s one way to put it. And she’s definitely using the pussy angle with me.

Didn’t mind, as long as she put out.

Laughs followed. At my expense. Whatever. Better than a hail of bullets raining down on me. Or getting shot in my ass.

“He showed up as soon as we lost our connection with the Blood Legion MC.”
Jefe
continued to talk about me, like I wasn’t sitting at the same damn table.

“Blood who?” I knocked Kiki’s masterful
massaging
hand off my dick. “I don’t run with biker gangs.”

Of course, I’d been present for the
bloody
takedown of the MC in New Orleans in October—the night the Legion had been cutting a deal with the cartel and the terrorist cell they dealt with.

I’d hardly gotten an eyeball on any of the Los Reyes men that night, but just in case they’d seen me, I’d changed my appearance. Scruffy dark-brown stubble covered my jaw, a tight skull cap pulled over my head hid most of the tats on the back of my neck. Leather wrist cuffs instead of my usual huge watch. Mirrored shades over my mismatched eyes.

Oh, and a grim look on my face.

Wasn’t much of a makeover.

Meh.

Fuck ’em.

“Who’d you say is supplying you again?” Skanky Carlos continued to grill me.

“Didn’t.” I gave a sharkish smile. “But if you gotta know, T-Zone Outfitters. Get it?”

I pointed a finger dead center on my forehead and pretended to pull the trigger. The best lie was the one closest to the truth. No one knew about the agency we worked for—Operation T-Zone. It was a shadow organization shrouded in secrecy from the top to the bottom to the freakin’ janitors who cleaned the HQ in DC.

Carlos’s laugh heralded another round of drinks, and I slowly eased the tension from my shoulders when we started cooking up the deal that would bring me one step closer to the haji, and one step closer to Kiki’s demise.

I watched her, my lips hidden behind the glass I held, as she charmed the asswipe with every word spoken.

Edgy.

Ambitious.

Clearly connected in ways Walker, Justice, Storm, and I didn’t have a fucking clue about.

Sexy and smart.

A traitor to T-Zone?

I just couldn’t believe it.

“50 calibers too,” I interrupted their tête-à-tête. “We have a stash to unload. Waiting for the highest bidder.”

We couldn’t outright supply the cunts with WMDs or IEDs or fully armed bombs, but—
hey
—automatic weapons. Why not?

I had to remember this fucking game had an endpoint.

“When do we get the merchandise?” Carlos addressed Kiki.

“Tomorrow night. I’ll text you. Same number?”

With his nod, I nudged Kiki from the booth, muttering with a smirk, “Fuck you very much,
hombre.
”