Finally Mendez spoke. “You’ve caught the attention of my boss, Mr. Wright. He’d like you to meet with him this evening, and since Kara has proven so effective by your side, she’s to attend as well. You’re to be at the docks at nine o’clock. A boat will be there to pick you up. The location, as you can imagine, will be undisclosed. Please dress appropriately. My boss is a very powerful man. He deserves to be treated as such.”
By the time Mendez shut his big yap, Blake had enough adrenaline pumping through him to fuel a jet liner. He was a hair from Alvarez, so close he could taste him, but he had to play this cool. “My time is money,” Blake said. “Why would I attend this meeting? What’s in it for me?”
“More money and more opportunity than you ever dreamed possible, Mr. Wright.” His phone buzzed and Evelyn said, “Your lunch appointment is here.”
“Send her in,” Mendez replied, pushing to his feet, and addressing Blake and Kara again. “Nine o’clock. Be there.” The door opened. “And now, if you’ll please be on your way. I have another meeting.”
Blake pushed off the desk. “Maybe your boss will shoot straight with me.”
Mendez’s lips twitched. “He definitely shoots straight, Mr. Wright.”
Unease slid through Blake at the subtle threat beneath the words he couldn’t let go. “I guess that’s why he’s had a long and prosperous life.” Blake turned away from Mendez, ending the conversation, following Kara toward the door. A twenty-something blonde in a red dress, with deep cle**age, entered before they could depart, sashaying toward them, a “come and get me” look in her eyes. Apparently Mendez’s lunch didn’t involve food.
Blake and Kara exited the office and headed toward the lobby. When they entered the elevator neither of them spoke. Blake stood there, thinking of how close he was to killing Alvarez and he expected the hunger for vengeance to expand and grow inside him, but it didn’t. This meeting with Alvarez that should be a long desired victory was a bittersweet triumph for one reason and one reason only. Kara. Everything he’d been living for the past two years, everything he’d thought he wanted, had transformed. Those things had become her. He wouldn’t lose her to Alvarez. He couldn’t let her go to this meeting.
Once they were inside the truck, Blake knew he had one shot to get her to agree to stay behind. Staring straight ahead, unable to look at Kara and control the emotions the past created, he said, “Her name was Whitney. We were on a task force together targeting Alvarez. Word came that Alvarez wanted a trilingual translator and there were only a handful of agents that met the criteria, and only one of those was available.”
“Whitney,” she whispered.
“Yes.” He forced himself to look at her. “She was a new agent and scared, but brave. So damn brave. She’d seen the horror that was Alvarez and she wanted him to go down.” He leaned against the door. “Once she was inside the cartel, Alvarez was taken with her, too much so, and…I try not to think about what she might have done to stay alive.” He glanced up at the ceiling, thinking about how many times he’d lain awake wondering if Whitney was in Alvarez’s bed. “She traveled everywhere with him.” He drew a deep breath and leveled his gaze back on Kara to find tears streaming down her face. She knew what was coming. Of course she knew. “About six months into her cover, Whitney was sure she had something big that would take Alvarez down. I was meeting her to pick up the data, but we got word her cover was blown before I got here. I tried to call her and get her to run but she didn’t answer. I arrived at the hotel where we were meeting at and…and her throat was sliced and she was bleeding out. She…” He squeezed his eyes shut. “She died in my arms.”
“Oh God. I…” She moved across the seat and cradled his face in her hands. “I don’t know what to say. I know sorry doesn’t make it better. I know that so damn well.”
“Say you won’t go to this meeting. Say you’ll stay behind and you’ll let me handle this.”
“No,” she whispered. “No.” She shook her head. “I can’t do that, Blake. Remember. I have your back and you have mine.”
Emotion burned in his chest. “I didn’t have her back, Kara. I let her die. I let her live the hell of having her throat sliced open, and drowning in her own blood. I let that happen.”
“You didn’t let her die. She did her job. And you’re right. She was brave. And damn it, we’ll take down Alvarez. We will. We’ll let her rest in peace. But we have to do it together. We need each other.”
She was right. He needed her. That’s why this time, he really was going to make her hate him because he was going to do whatever it took to keep her off that boat.
Chapter Seven
With only an hour until they headed to the docks, Kara paced the new hotel room she and Blake had rented close to her apartment, waiting for his return. After seeing the girls off to the Oakland airport and New York, where Walker headquarters was, they’d both agreed they didn’t dare risk going back to her place, or his hotel—even for clothes. By the time they’d returned to San Francisco and shopped, it had been six o’clock, three hours until they were to meet at the docks. Blake had gone to meet Kyle and his brothers to show them certain surveillance points. She’d called him twice and he assured her he was headed back soon, but she was getting nervous. He’d been withdrawn ever since she’d insisted she had to go with him tonight. Had he left without her? Surely he knew she’d show up at nine at the docks on her own.