Danger Close (A Breed Thriller Book 1) by Cameron Curtis

Author:Cameron Curtis [Curtis, Cameron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkubator Books
Published: 2021-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

27

Salem, 2130 Hrs Wednesday

I stare at Mirasol. “I am going to Juarez. I want you to come with me.”

Mirasol jerks as though slapped. “Are you crazy?”

“No. Can you leave the country?”

Mirasol stiffens. Her face is ghastly pale in the glow of the laptop’s screen. “Do you think I am illegal?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I don’t mean any offense.”

The sexual tension from a moment ago is gone. Mirasol radiates anger. “I have a green card, Breed.”

“All right.”

Mirasol is young to have a green card. The waiting list is twenty years long. The only way I know to beat it is to win a lottery. I’m conscious of Stein’s offer to trade information about Mirasol. Is Mirasol using forged documents?

“When are you planning to go?” Mirasol asks.

“Right away.”

“You are crazy.” Mirasol shakes her head. “Do you have any idea what it is like over there?”

I drifted through Fort Bliss. Visited my friends in El Paso. But—I’d never been to Juarez. “I reckon I’ll find out.”

“There is no law in Juarez.” Mirasol’s voice bears a hard edge. “The cartels, police and army kill each other. For control of drugs and women. There is so much money in the drugs, the cartels bribe everybody. Those they cannot bribe, they kill. The army murder everybody, including the police. It is a war—you do not know whose side anybody is on.”

Mirasol pauses. Runs her hands through her hair.

“Why do the army murder police?”

Mirasol shrugs, a gesture of futility. “Because the police are corrupt. Because the army is corrupt. Police can increase their income five times working for the cartels. Put it this way. If a policeman has a reasonable income, three-quarters to eighty percent of his compensation comes from moonlighting. That means he is paid to be a bodyguard, contract killer, drug mule, or to look the other way.”

“All right,” I say. “I’ll go alone.”

We are quiet for a long time.

Exasperated, Mirasol says, “You don’t know your way around.”

“You do?”

Mirasol swallows. “Yes. Breed, why do you want to go to Juarez?”

“La Cueva. I have to be sure.”

“Sure of the tunnel?”

“I need to be sure Keller’s murderers are there.”

Mirasol twists in her chair, puts her hand on my forearm. I am overwhelmed by her touch. “What then, Breed? You give them to Stein and Garrick?”

I haven’t thought about what I’m going to do. Autopilot carried me this far. I’ve never articulated my plans to myself or anyone. Now I think there was never a question, never a choice. At a primal level, I have always known what I have to do.

I shake my head. “Stein and Garrick can do nothing in Mexico.”

“I promise you the Mexican authorities will do nothing.”

“I don’t expect them to.”

Mirasol’s eyes widen. Hard enough to bruise, her grip tightens. “You can’t.”

I stand and pace. “Those animals killed a mother and an eight-year-old boy. Cut their heads off. You think I’m going to have them put in jail? So they can work out all day and bitch about not getting their ice cream? Think again.

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