“Yes.”
My shoes clipped across the tiled floor. “Are you joining us?”
“Not today.”
I whirled around. “Why not?”
“Let’s just say, I’m not feeling up to it.”
I scanned his body. He still looked weak. His skin was pale and dark smudges circled his eyes. He’d left the hospital last night, but only because he refused to stay in there another day.
“Okay. Do you need anything?”
“No, just rest.”
I nodded, then crossed the living room and opened the door to the study. Three men sat in the study across from Emanuel. Two had closely shaved heads and nearly identical white t-shirts and jeans. The man on the right, dressed entirely in black with longish hair, looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
“Emanuel,” I said as I slid into the only remaining chair.
“Ryker, I’ve already given them a brief summary of the mission.” Emanuel replied. He poured coffee from a metal carafe into a clear glass mug. “Do you take your coffee black?”
“Sure. Thanks.” I took a sip of the lukewarm coffee and then placed the mug on a carved wood side table. “Are you going to introduce us?” I asked, tipping my head in the direction of the three men on the leather sofa.
“You’re right.” Emanuel leaned forward in Ignacio’s chair, bracing his elbows on the desk. “Where are my manners?”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. All five men sitting in that study, including me, didn’t give a rat’s ass about manners. I wanted to free Hattie. Emanuel wanted to please Ignacio, and the three men on the sofa wanted a shitload of untraceable money.
Unwilling to listen to Emanuel blow smoke up my ass all day, I stood up, intending to take control of the meeting. “I’m Ryker Vargas. I know Emanuel already knows your history, but go ahead and give me a short summary of your background before I share the details of this particular job.”
“Noah Fiennes,” the man on the right said. “Former US Marine. I spent the last three years in the Middle East doing freelance work. I’ve been in Mexico for four months.”
“Why did you relocate?” Making contacts as a freelance assassin was the hard part of the job. Most people stayed in the same area unless their cover was blown.
“I’m here doing some research that relates to my work in the Middle East. I figured I’d pick up some jobs while I’m here. I’m going back at the end of the year. Maybe sooner. I haven’t decided.”
My eyes narrowed. I knew what he was talking about. There’d been a lot of speculation lately about connections between drug cartels and Muslim extremists. As far as I knew, Ignacio hadn’t allied with one, but at the end of the day, cartels were interested in making money, and with the seizure of oilfields in Iraq, Muslim extremists had a lot of it these days. “You look familiar.”
“Yeah,” he said with a practiced smile. “We met in passing, but you were Ryker Fallon, and I had a different name at that time too—Nazar Fayed.”
I pursed my lips. “Right.” I’d run into Nazar Fayed about three years ago. He was working undercover in some Muslim organization with alleged ties to terrorist groups. Unfortunately, he had ties to the US government. Something I didn’t want for this mission. “So you’re still working for the US government?”
He scoffed. “They’ve hired me a few times, but they’d never claim me. Consider me an equal opportunity consultant without moral hang-ups. I follow the money wherever it leads me. Sometimes that’s the US government. Sometimes it’s a drug cartel in Mexico. Other times, it’s a Russian arms dealer or a fundamentalist organization.”
“So you’re a liability. If the Alvarez Cartel gave you more money, you’d flip sides mid-mission?”
“No,” he spat. “I never quit mid-job. Once I’m in, I’m all in.”
“Ah,” I mocked, raising one eyebrow. “So you do have some morals.”
“No, just a healthy sense of self-preservation. If I develop a reputation for flipping sides, I’d never get another job and I’d have an exponentially shortened life span.”
My eyes narrowed into slits.
“He’s telling the truth,” Emanuel interjected, folding his arms across his chest. “We’ve hired all three of these men before. We’ve never had any problems, and their references check out. Ignacio investigated each one of them himself. I have the files if you want to review them at length.”
I nodded. I believed him. Ignacio never did anything without meticulous planning and due diligence. Noah’s situation was similar to mine when I worked as a fixer. I’d taken whatever job paid the most. Sometimes, I had worked indirectly for the US government or other governments, but I was never entrenched with one entity or person. While the steady work one government could provide was nice, it made a consultant beholden and dependent. Two things I never wanted to be.