Ravished (The Teplo Trilogy #1) (21 page)

She sighed softly.

They stayed that way for a long time, both lulled to the edge of exhaustion, both satisfied.

Chapter Fourteen

"Beautiful?" Tristan murmured when his cell vibrated in his pocket, pulling him from sleep.

The movie had gone off at some point while they'd dozed, the DVD player cycling back to the menu screen and then shutting itself down. Strains of music drifted through the house, slipping through cracks in strange pulses and hums.

Another night at
Teplo
had officially begun. Tristan couldn't bring himself to care. Lillian was curled into his chest, sleeping peacefully. He liked the way she'd molded her body to his as if she was made to fit there.

His cell vibrated again.

She didn't stir as he shifted around, fishing for the phone.

Jason's name flashed across the display. Tristan frowned, not sure he wanted to answer it. He was half asleep, content, and anything Jason said would surely ruin that in about five seconds flat.

"Yeah?" he said anyway, reluctantly accepting the call. He spoke softly so as not to wake Lillian.

Jason didn't waste time with unnecessary small-talk, instead getting right to the point. "You at Lillian's?"

"Yes."

"Does she have a back door?"

"Yeah. Why?" Tristan sat up a little straighter, bringing Lillian with him.

She mumbled incoherently and shifted against him, but didn't wake.

"We have a problem."

Son of a bitch.

"What kind of problem?" Tristan asked, suddenly tired all the way into his bones.

"The big kind. Motherfuckers…. Christ, I'll explain when I get there. Unlock the back door for me."

The line went dead.

Tristan stared at the phone for a long moment, a hard knot of dread in his stomach.

"Where's Lillian?" Jason asked as soon as he crossed the threshold fifteen minutes later, his expression twisted with suppressed rage. Something dark and volatile gleamed in his eyes. He didn't wait for a response before slipping an envelope from his back pocket and tossing it down on the kitchen table.

The envelope slid to a stop between the salt and pepper grinders.

"Asleep," Tristan said, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that Lillian hadn't woken when he carried her to her bed. She'd whispered his name as he laid her down, but quickly settled, too exhausted to open her eyes. His quick shower hadn't woken her either.

"Good. We've got a situation."

"Another victim?" He tensed, a parade of images running through his mind… chalky gray skin, stiff, cold limbs, and row upon row of stainless steel freezer doors, each with a name he recognized. They were images he should have been used to, but they hit him like a Mack truck every time anyway.

"Not yet." Jason prowled around the kitchen, his hands clenched into tight fists. "Look in the envelope."

Tristan gazed at the innocuous envelope before snagging it off the table with a soft curse.

"Sit the fuck down before you open it," Jason tossed over his shoulder, still pacing like a caged lion.

Tristan lowered himself into a chair with a grunt before turning the envelope upside down. A picture, face-down, and a folded sheet of paper with little distorted black smears fell out onto the table.

"A fax?" he asked, arching a brow.

"Look at it," Jason answered.

Tristan left the picture where it fell and unfolded the fax, barely daring to breathe.

A wanted poster from Sinaloa, Mexico took shape as he flattened the paper. Pedro Francisco's black eyes stared up from the black and white photo, hatred blazing in those dark blotches. A laundry list of crimes marched across the bottom half of the fax in two columns of tiny print.

The fingers of dread dancing up Tristan's spine dug their claws in deeper.

Francisco ran the most violent drug cartel in Mexico. His crew had kidnapped, raped, pillaged, maimed, and murdered their way through fifteen different Mexican states… and walked away with one of the most valuable trafficking routes into California and then on into Canada. If Mexican drug cartels were DEA Enemy
Numero Uno
, Pedro Francisco was at the top of that list.

Tristan eyed the picture on the table, fear tasting like ash in his mouth.

He dropped the fax and flipped over the photo. Paulo Vetrov and Pedro Francisco stood in front of a Mercedes, hands clasped, with a whole hell of a lot of Mexican muscle standing guard around them.

"How long ago?" he asked, fighting hard to stay in the chair. If he didn't, he'd break something, and he really didn't want to explain to Lillian right now that the shit had officially just hit the fucking fan.

"It crossed my desk two and a half hours ago. The team on detail in Tijuana snapped it at 14:38 hours today. They couldn't identify Paulo, so they put it in the system to see if they could shake anything loose." Jason stopped pacing and cursed violently.

Tristan stared at the picture, his mind racing. He picked out tiny details in the photo, focused on them. The Sig-Sauer holstered at Francisco's hip. The AK-47 the beefy motherfucker behind him held like a true soldier of the streets. The cocky, satisfied smile on Paulo's face. A tiny speck of puffy cloud in the upper left corner. Part of a tattooed arm resting on the sleek, silver Mercedes.

"When did Paulo leave Seattle?"

"He flew out of Sea-Tac at 6:20 yesterday morning and arrived at TIJ at 21:50 hours last night. TSA didn't send the flag through until 15:07 hours today, and it didn't make it off of Portman's desk until I went down and got the damned report myself," Jason said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Shit."

"The team in Tijuana was doing routine surveillance on Francisco when they took the photograph. We're checking credit card records, but as of now, Vetrov was off the grid from the time he left TIJ last night until he appeared in that photo today. He's booked on a return flight tomorrow at 8:35am."

"How long did he and Francisco meet?"

"They left the hotel together at 15:00 hours today, had an early dinner at
Cien Años
in the city and were driven back to the hotel at 19:06 by one of Francisco's men. They separated from there. Tijuana put a tail on Vetrov, but they lost him in a traffic jam right outside the airport. I talked to Guzman, the S.A.C. in the area, and he's going to have Vetrov's flight watched tomorrow to make sure he gets on it, but…." Jason trailed off with a grimace.

But the bastard had already met with
el
motherfucking
Cártel de Francisco
. But the damage was already done. But they were already screwed. Didn't matter how Jason might have ended that sentence, it meant the same thing: shit had just gotten a whole lot worse.

Tristan took a deep breath and then another, pushing back the haze of red hot rage threatening to erupt. "Is Vetrov buying or selling?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say he's shopping for someone to export this shit."

"Dammit."

Francisco was an opportunistic bastard. He'd jump on board with Anton Vetrov and open his trafficking routes the minute the Vetrov family's manufacturing venture proved successful. And as soon as that happened, their drug would hit international markets in a matter of days.

"Any word from Francisco's street dealers?"

"Not yet." Jason strolled over to the table and collapsed into a chair. "I've already yanked Kincaid out of the Planning Office. He's hitting up his sources as we speak."

"Good."

Michael Kincaid had more gang ties than any other agent in the Pacific Northwest. If there was a murmur to be heard, he'd hear it days before anyone else.

"There's no way Francisco will walk away from the money here," Jason said. "If the Vetrov family cooperates, they might survive. If they don't-"

If they didn't, Tristan wouldn't have to worry about bringing the murdering bastards down. Francisco had his boys working the streets up and down the West Coast. They'd gun down the entire Vetrov clan in a minute, and they wouldn't hesitate to take out any civilian standing in the way, either.

"How long?" he asked.

"A month to finish the product and lay the groundwork for export. Maybe another two weeks for Francisco to set up a distribution point and prep his boys to run it. Chances are they'll try to sail the shit out of Seattle. If we don't clean house by then, it's going to get nasty," Jason answered, his tone grim. "We can hit the port hard with cargo checks, but Francisco's boys will carry it into Canada and then ship it out to Europe and Asia from one of the ports there if we don't wipe out their supply first."

Fucking hell.

Tristan's mind raced through possibilities, scenarios, and plans and came up with fuck all that didn't include dragging Lillian into a war far beyond anything Seattle had ever seen before. Francisco and his ilk had killed thousands in Mexico for less than they stood to make here. Tristan didn't for a minute believe Francisco wouldn't tear Seattle up from the floor up if they gained control of the Vetrov supply.

"Judge Iverson still refuses to give us a warrant?" he asked, not even caring how desperate he sounded.

"We can't risk it even if he would sign it now. We either haul them all in on murder charges and raze their lab to the ground at the same time, or Francisco gains a foothold we can't let him have," Jason said, his leg bouncing in obvious irritation. His eyes snapped up to Tristan's. "You've got to find that fucking lab."

"Yeah," Tristan murmured, his hand closing around the photograph. He crumbled it, his eyes trained on the doorway leading into the living room and beyond to Lillian's room. "I know."

He should have told her no when he had the chance, because now it was far too late to let her walk away, and way too fucking real to let her stay. Screwing around with Anton Vetrov was bad enough. But the Francisco Cartel?

They were something else altogether.

Memories of violent, black and white crime scene photographs rushed to the surface of his mind. Men, women, and children laid out face down across a porch… all massacred without a care. Shot to death where they lay for no real reason. Mass graves covered Francisco's territory, each one a warning to the authorities and the already terrorized citizens cowering in his district.

No one was safe from Francisco.

American tourists were beheaded and sent back across the border in duffle bags because Francisco didn't like the U.S. meddling in Mexican affairs. Mexican citizens were gunned down and left to rot in some macabre reminder that they lived under Francisco's thumb.

Any one of those could be Lillian.

Tristan leaped up from the table before he'd even realized he'd done it. His heart raced, rage coursing through him until he wanted to roar just to release the pressure building at the thought of the Francisco Cartel getting anywhere near the ballerina.

"Tristan, if I'd known, I never would have asked her-" Jason started, his voice grave and apologetic.

He never would have what? Asked her to do this? Put her life at risk? Signed her fucking death warrant?

An image of her inside a body bag slammed into Tristan, her beautiful eyes staring blindly up, her mouth opened in a final, soundless scream.

Oh,
Christ.

He felt caged, the walls closing in on his as he fought to breathe through the effects of that image ripping through him. He ground the palms of his hands into his eyes, trying to force it out, but it hovered there, stuck. He had to get out. Now. Do… something. Anything but sit there and think.

"Tristan-"

"Don't," he warned Jason. He shook his head, gripping strands of his hair in his hands. "Just don't fucking say anything, Jase."

Jesus, why couldn't he breathe?

"Go," Jason said, reading him before he ever said the words.

"Watch her," he demanded. Blood pumped through his veins so hard, his eyes actually felt as if they pulsed beneath the force.

"You have three hours." Jason met his gaze. "Three hours, and then I'm sending S.P.D. after your ass if I have to. We clear?"

Tristan nodded, already headed for the door.

"And if you beat the hell out of your informants, I'll break your jaw," Jason added. "I need you here and so does she. We can't afford to have you suspended right now. You're on this case until it's done."