Chapter 33

LEO

“Gustavo Escobar,” I said to Blair and Luca as we stood by the car parked on the side of a road that went through Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, that we’d been searching through for days for any sign of Ella.

“She said that he is a rival to Martinez, and that is all.”

They looked at me blankly.

“I know it’s not much, but it’s somewhere to start, and somebody has to know something about him,” I continued. “And if he hates Martinez even half as much as I do, he will help us find him and, in due course, my luna.”

“I suppose he’s gotta be pretty powerful if he’s a rival to Martinez,” Blair said. “The police might have something.”

“The police are corrupt, and this man will be paying them off. They aren’t going to tell us shit,” I replied, running my hand through my hair.

“It’s worth a try, Alpha,” Luca insisted. “You don’t usually have issues getting information out of people.”

Blair shrugged. “We’ve got to try.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

An hour later, we were in the main police station in Caracas.

“Dónde está tu jefe?” I asked, striding up to the front desk.

The man looked up at me from his low chair behind the desk, and I stepped closer, resting my arms on the desk, and raised my eyebrow.

“Where is your boss?!” I repeated.

He meagerly pointed to a door that led into a hallway.

“Gracias,” I replied, already marching toward it, Blair and Luca following me.

“Señor!” the man called as I walked through the door.

There was a sign in Spanish translating to “authorized personnel only,” but I held up my hand to the receptionist who was now frantically following us and immediately silenced him.

It wasn’t long until we found the police chief’s office. He looked up at us as we came in, and confusion spread over his face. He was a stony-looking man with hard creases in his face and a square haircut.

“What are you doing in my office, gringos?” he asked. “You have to have permission.”

“I need information on a man named Gustavo Escobar,” I said, ignoring him.

“And you are…?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “The DEA?”

“Leonardo Loren,” I replied with a sarcastic smile before holding out my hand.

His eyes shifted at the mention of my name, and he straightened his tie. He was human, but his reaction told me that he knew exactly who I was.

“So I assume from your question referring to the DEA, you know who Mr. Escobar is?” I asked.

“I’ve never heard the name,” he replied with a shrug.

“How much is he paying you to turn a blind eye?” I asked.

“You might like to take your questions elsewhere, Mr. Loren,” he said. “I know nothing.”

I sighed and exchanged irritated looks with Blair. I had a feeling this would happen. I gestured to Luca, and he locked the door to the office and stood blocking the only exit.

“Mr.…?” I began.

“Perez,” he finished, looking between the three of us nervously.

“Mr. Perez,” I began again.

“You know who I am, and you know what I am. You know that I can hear your every heartbeat, and you know that I know you are lying to me. So, let’s skip the bullshit, what do you know about Gustavo Escobar?”

He stayed silent as I stared him down. I spotted his hand slowly inching toward the phone on his desk and slammed my hand onto it before he could reach it and crushed the dial pad.

After glancing down at the bent and crumbled metal of the phone, he slowly looked back up to my eyes.

“Preferably before you piss me off,” I added, taking a deep breath.

He leaned back in his chair, clearly feigning confidence and smiled.

“You are right, Alpha,” Mr. Perez said. “He is paying me to ‘turn a blind eye’…to take no notice, to keep no files, and to have no information.”

“And what if someone offered a higher price?” I asked. “Does it magically materialize?”

“Depends how much you’re offering,” he said.

My face hardened. I was done playing nice.

I seized him by the collar of his shirt and dragged him across the desk.

“Where do you keep it?” I growled.

I then noticed a pair of keys on the desk and threw them to Blair.

“Check the filing cabinet,” I ordered.

“You won’t find it there,” he replied, struggling to breathe from how tightly I was gripping his shirt around his neck.

“Then where?” I snarled.

“He’ll hunt me down and kill me for telling you.”

“And I will kill you right here and now if you don’t,” I hissed. “And do you want to know why I need this information?

“Not because I want to challenge him or kill him, but because Andrea Martinez has my luna and is threatening to murder and do terrible things to her.

“His biggest rival, Gustavo Escobar, is my best shot of getting her back alive, and I will not let anything stand in my way.”

Still gasping for air, he finally agreed. “I’ll show you.”

I released him and wiped the sweat off my brow.

“Now would be great,” I said as he rearranged his clothing and stopped to catch his breath.

He nodded frantically and picked up a different set of keys from his drawer and headed to the door that Luca was still guarding.

“Follow me,” he said, approaching Luca who reluctantly moved aside and let him out in response to a reassuring nod from me.

“Make sure no one follows us,” I whispered in his ear as we passed, and he nodded.

Blair and I followed Mr. Perez down to a basement as Luca stayed back at the top of the stairs, once again guarding the entrance. After he unlocked a few doors, we were soon in a tiny filing room with many boxes.

“The box at the top on the left,” he said, pointing to the highest shelf that only I stood a chance of reaching.

The light was dim, and I could only just make out that it was labeled with the name Gustavo Escobar.

“You don’t happen to have anything on Martinez while we’re here? We’ve tried before but never got this far,” Blair said.

“No one has information on Martinez,” Mr. Perez said gravely.

This time he wasn’t lying.

“But you are right in thinking Escobar is your best shot in getting some,” he added as I looked inside the box to find envelopes of photos, sheets of coordinates, legal papers, and a whole host of other files on him.

“The most recent location we were able to track him to was a house in Peru,” Mr. Perez said, pointing to one of the coordinates. “That was last week.”

“Gracias,” I said, taking out a pen and circling it. “And sorry for…nearly strangling you.”

“Werewolves care about their mates. I get it,” he replied. “Now go. Find her.”

“Adiós,” I said, and Blair nodded before we marched out of the police station with the box, picking up Luca along the way.