Page 2 of K-9 Guardians (New Mexico Guard Dogs #4)

She was going to catch hell for this.

Socorro was under scrutiny. Not only because of the past few weeks of media coverage that exposed a senator with a personal vendetta against her and her team but from the towns impacted by a military contractor’s presence. Seemed every move Socorro made to save lives put others in more danger by antagonizing the cartel.

But Scarlett believed in the work. In keeping Sangre por Sangre and organizations like it from swallowing this state whole. It was because of her and her team that the fire hadn’t burned out of control.

Picketers had set up beneath pop-up canopies of varying colors outside of Socorro’s headquarters. She spotted them even this far out, and her grip tightened on the steering wheel as they carved along the one-lane dirt road leading straight home. Protestors wanted Socorro out of New Mexico. Convinced Socorro had brought the cartel straight to their doorstep, but the truth was, Sangre por Sangre had been there all along. Waiting. Preying on the innocent. Biding their time to make their moves from the dark. Socorro had only exposed them for what they really were. A sleeping disease no one could diagnose until it was too late.

Headquarters itself looked as though it’d come from space. All sharp corners, dark windows and mystery. At any moment, a large metal ramp could descend to reveal the alien occupants inside.

“Didn’t realize you guys liked to throw parties.” Agent Elsher—King—leaned forward in the front seat. She’d confirmed his credentials by cloning his phone to hers. Not exactly legal, considering he was a federal agent of the highest order, but she wasn’t going to use the data against him. King Elsher, thirty-eight, served with the DEA for the past six years. Former cop from Seattle. Not a whole lot of activity in recent calls, but there’d been quite a change in his expenses over the past few months. A large increase in spending without anything to show for it. At least, not yet.

Something she’d have to dig into deeper when she had a few minutes to herself. Because that was where it started. Where the cartel liked to add pressure. It’d happened too many times than she wanted to count. Financials were the easiest way to corrupt even the best officers and agents. She once fought to give most people the benefit of the doubt, but she’d been burned one too many times.

“And here I’m just now finding out I wasn’t invited,” he said.

She tried to stop her mouth from hiking at one corner into a smile, but there was no stopping it. Despite her personal suspicions and need to unearth every small detail of a person’s life before she trusted them, King was easy to talk to. Didn’t hurt that they shared that same sarcastic and detached sense of humor, either. Like seeking like, and all that brain science. “Oh, yeah. It’s a rager. Been going for weeks with no end in sight. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you joined. They’ve been recruiting as many as they can into the We Hate Socorro fan club.”

“The people here are really pissed, aren’t they?” King distanced himself away from the window as Scarlett slowed to break through the growing crowd.

“They’re scared. And with good reason. Seems every mission we carry out against Sangre por Sangre is returned tenfold,” she said. “Only we’re not the only ones who reap the consequences.”

The herd had moved to stop her from entering the parking garage. Two operatives—she recognized Jones and Granger—took positions on either side of the entrance to ensure trespassers couldn’t slip in unnoticed. Her teammates faced off with the verbal assaults without so much as responding.

Someone hit their hand against the back window of Scarlett’s SUV. Then another. Each punctured deep through her nervous system and spiked her heart rate.

Posters with crude writing demanded Socorro leave while others threatened individual agents. Since the senator’s accusations two weeks ago, every one of these people had taken up the mantle to protect themselves the best way they could. No matter how illogical their strategy.

“But fear can be far more dangerous than any perceived threat,” Scarlett said.

King didn’t have an answer to that.

Scarlett heaved a sigh of relief as she maneuvered the SUV down into the belly of the garage. Darkness slipped over the windshield, suddenly making the cabin that much more intimate. Without her full vision, her senses picked up on other things. Like how King had set his arm on the center console dividing their seats. Even the slight hint of dirt and cologne she’d gotten a lungful of when he’d fallen on top of her in the morgue seemed more intense. Not entirely unpleasant.

No. Wait. That might be coming from her vest after he tackled her.

“You sure you still want to get involved with Socorro?” She pulled the vehicle in front of the elevators and cut the engine. Shouldering out of the SUV, she hit the pavement and strode to the keypad she had personally upgraded as soon as the picketers set up shop outside. The garage door rolled to a close at the head of the ramp, both of her teammates now inside. “We’re not exactly popular right now. Could kick back onto you and the DEA.”

King met her at the keypad, the tendons linked between his neck and shoulders strung tight. She’d talked with him long enough to understand he was in unknown territory, putting his career on the line. Why else would he turn to Socorro rather than the DEA? “I don’t have any other choice.”

This wasn’t about competing with local law enforcement for jurisdiction over his partner’s investigation. There was something more he wasn’t telling her. Something only she could give him. Hesitation closed in around her throat. She’d been used once before. She wasn’t eager to experience it a second time. Scarlett pressed her hand onto the print reader. The elevators engaged, their polished shiny silver doors parting down the middle. She motioned him inside the car. “After you.”

They took the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped out into a cavern of black. The cameras she’d installed in every corner catalogued more than their faces. Her top-of-the-line security analyzed body heat, a person’s walk and homed in on any weapons they might be carrying. Which, around her, was usually a lot. Ivy Bardot would know they were coming. There wasn’t a single detail that woman missed inside this building or out.

“You have to give me the number of your decorator.” King seemed to be taking everything in but most especially the locations of each of her cameras and which turns they made away from the elevators. Planning for an escape. Just as she would. “I never thought black on black could be so...”

“Absurd? Yeah, me neither. At least not until I moved in here.” Scarlett guided him around one corner and toward the penthouse office at the end of the corridor.

It was odd, having someone to talk to while she walked these halls. Like she’d invited King into her personal space. Every inch of these walls had felt her touch as she ensured nothing could hurt her and her team. She was the only one who preferred to stay in the building, out of sight. It was where she did her best work.

“Operatives live here.” A hint of disbelief crept into his voice, and it was under these too-bright florescent lights that Scarlett finally got a good look at King Elsher. Not encumbered by a possible concussion or the limited view in the SUV.

Lean muscle banded around his neck and sprawled down into his chest. He took care of himself, that much was clear. His T-shirt—far more worn than she would have expected—kept the last few remnants of a design over his heart. But whether he wore it for its personal connection or because he couldn’t afford anything newer, she didn’t know. That was where an audit of his finances would come in handy. Light-colored hair had been closely shaved up the sides of his head, leaving a mop of controlled curls at the top. He’d retained a sense of boyishness in his features, soft in some areas. Around his mouth, for example. But experience had hardened the skin and shape of his eyes.

“Voluntarily?” he asked.

“Makes the most sense for us. My team takes shifts where we’re on call twenty-four-seven. So we each have a bedroom with a connected bathroom, we share a communal kitchen. Though one of my teammates will gut you with a whisk if you try to mess anything up in there and probably smile while doing it. We have a theater room for downtime, an on-call physician in case of emergency, a gym with every machine known to man and a food delivery service. Even a vet who takes care of our K9s. We have everything we need.” Scarlett heard the pride in her own voice. Out of all the places she could’ve ended up after her last tour, Socorro was the only one that’d thrown her a lifeline. For her, this was more than she deserved. “We’re all former military. We like to be ready when we’re needed.”

“So what you’re saying is, you live inside your own end-of-the-world bunker, and you’re preparing to take over the world without ever having to leave.” King nodded in appreciation. “I like it.”

“Stick around long enough, I’ll introduce you to Hans and Gruber.” She shoved through the conference room door, holding it open for him over the threshold.

Confusion warped those handsome features. He lowered his voice. “Is that code for...you know.” He nodded to her chest. “Because I should tell you I’m not really in a position for a relationship right now. My partner was just found murdered, and—”

“Agent Elsher.” Ivy Bardot stepped out from behind the conference room table. “As interesting as your relationship status is, I think there are more important topics we should discuss.”

Granger’s failed attempt to keep his laugh to himself filled the room.

Scarlett couldn’t stop the appreciation for this moment or the deep flush of embarrassment coloring King’s neck and face as he dared a step into the conference room. She was going to remember him. For a long time. She let the door automatically close behind them. “King, meet the founder and CEO of Socorro. Ivy Bardot. And this is Granger Morais, our resident counterterrorism expert.”

“Why do I suddenly feel like I’m being brought into the principal’s office?” King nodded at each in turn instead of extending his hand. He seemed to memorize everything about this room and the people in it.

“Because you know as well as we do, you’re not supposed to be here, are you, Agent Elsher?” Ivy took her position at the head of the table and motioned for King to take a seat. An offer he didn’t accept. “You and your team work cartel cases from a drug standpoint. You don’t get involved in homicide investigations, even those of your agents. Which means the DEA doesn’t know you’re here.”

Scarlett battled the dread pooling at the base of her spine.

“You’re right. My superiors have no idea I’m here,” King said. “I came because I’ve been investigating a Sangre por Sangre lieutenant for the past eight months. Off the record and with DEA resources. Now that investigation has gotten my partner killed.”

H IS CAREER — his whole life and that of his son’s—was suddenly in someone else’s hands. King didn’t like the idea of not being able to choose his own path.

The pressure of those seconds as Socorro’s founder stared back at him, unblinking, felt as though he were right back in the moment when a social worker had showed up on his doorstep and dropped off a ten-year-old kid King hadn’t known existed.

Then again, he’d been the one to bring himself to this point. In both scenarios.

He’d been the one to go home with a woman he barely knew for more than a couple hours a little over a decade ago. It’d been mutual, a way for him and a visiting ATF agent he’d been partnered with during an investigation to blow off some steam, and he hadn’t regretted that choice for a single moment. Until two months ago. Now he had Julien, and he didn’t know how to take care of a kid, but they were trying to make it work. Little by little. Day by day. Fruit snack by fruit snack.

“Will you help me?” Because Socorro was the only thing that could save him now. This group of military contractors who seemed to trust each other more than King even trusted himself. He had nowhere else to go. No one who could justify his actions of the past eight months of looking into Sangre por Sangre unsanctioned. And the minute he was exposed, he’d lose everything. He’d be arrested and charged. His career would be over. The state would take his son.

A burning lodged in his chest at the mere thought. King wasn’t going to let that happen.

Awareness spiked as Scarlett’s warmth seeped into his arm. A trick. Experience told him it was just a game his mind was trying to play on him, a way to connect with the very people who could dismantle his life. But a part of him wanted that sincerity she seemed to put into every word and every expression to be true.

“You want Socorro to corroborate your unsanctioned investigation into the cartel.” Ivy Bardot lived up to her reputation. Smarter than those bureaucrats on Capitol Hill wanted her to be and definitely out of their league. She wasn’t just playing the game. She was calling the shots, and the federal government would only take so many commands before turning to bite the hand that fed them cartels like Sangre por Sangre. “Who is your target?”

Hope jumped in his chest where it had no right to land. “Hernando Munoz.”

“We know the name. Intel says he took a hard leap to the top of the cartel’s hierarchy once the Big Guy’s only son was found with a bullet between the eyes. Making quite a name for himself, too. Violently.” Morais—the counterterrorism agent—set his elbows on the conference table, a quiet intensity churning in the space between them. As though waiting for the perfect time to ambush. “Guy’s a thug. Hangs out with a trusted group of cartel members, but we’ve never been able to link him to any of the drug activity in the area. Any business we suspect he’s involved in is divided between his crew. Totally hands-off. Our team’s got surveillance, but all we’ve managed to gather is he likes takeout almost every night of the week, and he buys his wife a lot of flowers. So I’m curious. What do you have on him?”

“Nothing.” King smothered the hope he’d stupidly allowed himself to feel. “All I’ve got is rumors Munoz is stirring up trouble from within. Getting ready for a takeover. And you’re right. He’s careful, and none of his crew is willing to talk. He makes sure he never touches the money that comes his way from his guys working corners, but I don’t care about the drugs or what kind of pies he’s got his fingers in on the cartel’s behalf. I have reason to believe he ordered the murder of an ATF agent who was getting too close to his operation two months ago. The investigators couldn’t come up with anything conclusive, but I know Munoz is involved. Just like I know he’s responsible for Adam’s murder.” His tongue felt too big for his mouth as his personal life bled into his professional. “She was a good agent. And a good mom.”

“You knew her.” Scarlett’s voice eased through him as slick as chocolate syrup.

There it was again. That uncanny ability she had to practically read his mind. King didn’t have the guts to face her head-on, not trusting his ability to keep his emotions capped right then. “When it comes to Sangre por Sangre, we all know someone who’s been hurt.”

That was starting to look like his own personal motto.

The knot in his gut tightened as Ivy Bardot studied him for a series of breaths. Leaning back in her chair, Socorro’s founder shoved to stand. “Send me your investigation notes. I want to know every detail of your operation, what resources you’ve used and what you have on Munoz. We can’t step on law enforcement’s toes during your partner’s homicide investigation, but if you’re right about the lieutenant’s intentions and what he’s done, we’ll need to put together a strategy. One that makes it look like you’ve been working with Socorro these past two months.”

King barely had the sense to take his next breath.

“Scarlett, get with Agent Elsher and familiarize yourself with the ATF agent’s murder. The case is closed, so you shouldn’t have any pushback from police. Reach out to Chief Halsey from Alpine Valley PD, if needed, and bring me something concrete we can use to reopen the case and connect it with Adam Dunkeld’s,” Ivy said. “Granger, I want up-to-date information from the surveillance team. Patterns, logs, movements, identities of Munoz’s crew and everything you have on the wife. All of it.”

Time seemed to speed up.

“You’re going to corroborate my investigation,” King said. “Why?”

The question seemed to slow down Socorro’s founder. Something he was sure she wasn’t used to. “Because I don’t want it to be true, Agent Elsher. I don’t want to believe that when it comes to Sangre por Sangre and cartels like it that we all know someone who’s been hurt. Because if that’s the case, then Socorro hasn’t been doing its job, and innocent lives have been sacrificed for nothing.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. What to think. To the point, King didn’t even bother getting out of Ivy Bardot’s way as she maneuvered around him and shoved through the conference room doors. “She takes her job seriously, doesn’t she?”

“Operatives like us don’t have a choice, Agent Elsher. There are too many good people counting on us to come through for them. I’m sure you and the DEA know that better than anyone.” Granger Morais got to his feet with a bent manila file folder in one hand. He headed for the door, smacking the file into King’s shoulder on the way out. “Bring us something solid. We’ll have your back.”

“I appreciate that.” It took longer than it should have for the past few minutes to sink in, but King couldn’t let the time slip away too easily. He’d already wasted two months of hard work trying to do this on his own. Now he had an entire team willing to help him bring Munoz to justice. He turned to face Scarlett. “Looks like we’re going to be working together.”

“That ATF agent. The one whose murder you suspect Munoz ordered. Were you partners?” she asked.

King had to swallow the urge to shut down this line of questioning. He’d gotten what he wanted: support in pinning two murders on the son of a bitch who’d ordered the deaths of an ATF agent and now a DEA agent and an entire security firm to corroborate his personal investigation to do so. Scarlett wasn’t asking to dig into his life. She needed the facts of the investigation to connect it all back to Munoz. “We worked a case together a little over ten years ago. She was called in from DC to help my team analyze a device we picked up during a raid on one of the cartel’s safe houses. Before everything got complicated.”

“Complicated.” That single word seemed to answer everything she needed to know, but Scarlett didn’t push it. “Can I assume you believe these two murders are connected based off of MO?”

“Munoz has a pension for making an example out of anyone who gets in his way. A knife through a law enforcement badge gets the point across, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Even so, I’m going to need her name and the complete investigation file.” Scarlett seemed to produce a tablet out of nowhere.

“Her name was Eva Roday.” That last syllable caught in the back of this throat. It’d been months since he’d had the guts to say her name out loud. Especially around Julien. “As for the file, you’ll have it within the hour. Washington DC detectives closed the case three weeks ago. We shouldn’t have any problem getting access.”

Scarlett countered the added distance between them. “I’m sorry. That you’ve had to go through this more than once. Doesn’t seem fair.”

“Fair’s got nothing to do with it.” His response came harder, more bitter, than he meant it to. Because she was right. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that the cartel got away with murder—literally—and left kids and families and partners and wives holding the grief all to themselves. Sangre por Sangre had taken the most important person his son had in the world, and even having known about him for only a short amount of time, there wasn’t anything King wouldn’t do to try to fix it. That was what fathers did, didn’t they? Fix things. “All the cartel has done is make me fight harder. They’re the ones who are going to wish I played fair in the end.”

“I’m going to have to be careful then.” Scarlett brushed past him, wrenching the swinging glass door wide open. Long hair caught against the shoulder of her vest, and King suddenly found himself wanting to untangle it. She leveraged her foot against the bottom and held the door open for him.

One step. One leap of faith was all it would take to bring him into her world. The DEA didn’t play small, but Socorro? Private military contractors like Scarlett operated on a whole new level. And she wanted him to come along. “Why’s that?”

Her mouth flattened into a thin line. “Seems anyone who partners up with you ends up dead.”