In Desperation

49

Las Vegas, Nevada

T illy Martin’s face beamed at Vic Lomax from the big flat-screen

It was followed by the scowling mugs of Ruiz Limon-Rocha and Alfredo Hector Tecaza of the Norte Cartel. Then Carlos Manolo Sanchez, the young one. Then Lyle Galviera stared at him. Then the replay of Salazar and Johnson, the dirty cops murdered in the desert south of Juarez.

And here again was the footage of Cora pleading alongside the FBI.

That stupid fucking bitch.

Lomax had canceled his meeting on wagering trends and revenue-per-room percentages, locking himself away in his glass-wall office overlooking The Strip to replay the latest network news reports on the Phoenix kidnapping.

This new information disturbed him. He watched, tapping one of his business cards on his chin.

Lomax knew the drug trade well and figured the young one, Sanchez, was likely a Norte hit man. This was not good. The heat was increasing, all of it brought on by that fool, Galviera, and his stupid bitch.

Cora.

Never in a million years did Lomax expect to see that skank again.

Then, after all these years, comes this shit with her kid, and her reporter brother comes right to his house.

Right to my goddamn home! I should’ve killed the fucker.

Now the shit keeps piling up and the Norte Cartel has gone into full vengeance mode on Galviera.

And now it’s getting too close to me.

Lomax had his own operations with his own business partners.

But his connection to Cora would cost him. Those Mexican motherfuckers were going to drink Galviera’s blood and cut off the head of anyone remotely linked to him. There are truths in the universe that must never be challenged, and one of them is that you do not rip off the Norte Cartel and expect to live.

No matter what he did, his connection to Cora was a liability. He had to do something to remove the risk.

The best defense is a good offense.

He turned the business card over.

A phone number was penned on the back, a very important phone number that Lomax had paid fifty thousand dollars to obtain.

He had a cell phone on his desk, one he’d taken from his casino’s lost and found. He’d use it to call the number, then have a staff member toss it in the fountains at the Bellagio.

Calling the number was dangerous, but it was Lomax’s only way to get his message to the very highest levels of the Norte Cartel-to its very heart.

Because the information he had exceeded any rip-off.

Lomax knew about Cora, Donnie Cargo and the mystery surrounding the murder of Eduardo Zartosa-little brother of Samson Zartosa, the head of the Norte Cartel.

Whether Lomax’s information was true or not didn’t matter to him.

As long as it’s true enough to save me.

He held the phone steady, checked the card and started pressing numbers on the keypad.