I growled and slammed my free fist onto the bed. “I will bring your entire operation to the ground, and your time undercover will be over, Sunny! Do not f**k with me on this one! We had a deal!”
He didn’t say anything for a long while, and I lay there, my breathing rapid as I waited for something . . . anything.
Sitting up, I looked over at my gun sitting on the nightstand. My next words were dark and full of promise. “This is my future wife’s life you’re screwing with. If you don’t tell me what you f**king know, your so-called crew will start turning up dead one at a goddamn time, and the only one who will have a clue will be you. Leaders come up dead all the time, Sunny, and if I’m using guns from your own house, no one will ever know once you’re gone.”
“Jesus, Kash.” He didn’t sound worried about my threat. He sounded disappointed. “Fuck, you’re so far gone. Man, you need to pull back, you can’t let this change you into this.”
I was about to lose it. I was so close to breaking from all this, and as the days went by, I was getting desperate. Having Sunny tease me with information was sure to push me over the edge. “No. What I need is my girl back. I told you before, I’d do anything to get her back.”
After a few silent moments, Sunny finally said, “He has a house.”
My eyebrows slammed down and I blinked slowly. “Who has a house?”
“Juarez.”
“Yeah, and I already checked it. It’s still vacant from when we did the bust in it.”
“Uh-uh.” Sunny clicked his tongue three times. “He has another house. Ya feel?”
“House . . . do you have the address? But that still doesn’t make sense. Who would take her, the department has interviewed everyone!”
“Kash, listen.” He paused for a few moments before repeating, “Juarez has another house.”
“He has another operation?”
“Not exactly. Where you were, was the other operation. This other place—”
“Home base,” I guessed.
“Smart man.”
“Holy shit, how did Mason and I not know? There was never any talk, no word about another house.”
Sunny made some sort of affirmative noise. “From what my men could gather, no one knows about this place. One of them knows a guy, that knows a guy, that’s f**king this chick, who belongs to Juarez. She’s been to both places; she’s the one that spilled about the other house. Said something about not knowing why she couldn’t live at the main op while he was locked up, but that Juarez was locking it down so no one could get in or out. Locking down a house from prison . . . now if that doesn’t sound like a man hiding something—or someone—I don’t know what does.”
I was already out of bed and grabbing at the nearest clothes I could find.
“So we brought the girl to our place, got her high, and waited for her to start talking. Looks like the reason no one knows about this place is because if they’ve been privileged to learn about it, they can live there. But if they’ve been told about it, they don’t ever make it out of the crew to tell about it.”
“Where is it, Sunny? Did she tell you where it is?”
“She did, but I’m going to tell you to cool your ass, because you’re not going in right now.”
I straightened from grabbing a shirt and pulled it over my head. “Why the hell not?”
“I told you, they’re locked down, which means they’re waiting for you or the department to show. And this isn’t just some house, it’s a warehouse turned into a fully functioning house and office for his business. Juarez’s princess looked like the type that was well taken care of, and she wanted to live there. So it’s not going to be as simple as busting down the door and running out with her. It’s going to be big, they’re going to be waiting for you, and it’s going to probably be locked up good. You need to go do some surveillance, sit on it for a while, and make sure you know what you’re doing first.”
My head dropped back and I groaned. I hated it when Sunny was right.
“Hey, K-money.”
“What?”
“I’m not taking offense to what you said, because I’d probably be in the same state you’re in now. But I’m telling you . . . don’t let this change you into that person. It’s one thing when you’re on assignment, it’s another when it’s just you. Ya feel?”
“I’m sorry, man. I just—fuck. I don’t even know.” I didn’t know how I felt about the fact that I’d just threatened an entire crew, but I hated that I’d just threatened another officer . . . especially one putting his career and life on the line to help me.
“I’d go in with you if I could, but you know I can’t. Don’t go in it alone. And make sure no one at the department is watching you, because if they are, you know they’ll stop you before you can take action.”
“Got it.”
Sunny rattled off an address and grunted in confirmation when I repeated it back to him. “Be safe, go get your bitch.”
I huffed lamely and sucked hard on my lip ring. “Hey, uh, thanks, man. I really do appreciate everything you did for me on this. I’d send you an invite to the wedding whenever I get her back, but I know you wouldn’t show.”
He laughed, and suddenly the Street Sunny was gone, and the Cop Sunny was there. “Just love her man, take care of her. And maybe send me a picture of you two on the day so I can feel like I was there, yeah?”