Free Shadows and Silk by Liliana Hart Page B

and a growl rumbled in his chest. “ You are so fucked, baby. The minute we get to the hotel. ” He inhaled deeply and took a step back. “ Now tell me about the damned glyphs , and stop distracting me .”
    Her heart thudded in her chest and her pussy was weeping anticipation. Damn him for being able to do that to her. Just a look. Barely a touch. And she was ready to welcome him between her thighs like the Prodigal Son. She braced her hands on the table and pointed to the map .
    “ The resort we’re staying at is here . ” She’d already circled the location in red marker . “And the glyphs were found at the ruins at Bonampak, about an hour or so away. The wording is vague, but I think we’re either looking at Chiapa de Corzo or San Cristobal for their next location . The outer limits of the towns are sparsely populated and there are miles of nothing,
     so it would be very easy to transfer the drug without being seen . Or they might have been seen and no one cares, because those cities are in Ramos
     territory. ”
    “Shane reported in that a body was found in Chiapa de Corzo early this morning,” he said. “I just got off the phone with him a few minutes ago.
     His team is already checking out the area, but they’re lying low so no one suspects
     they’re there. We can’t let Ramos find out we have men in place.”
    A sigh escaped before she could stop it and she dropped her head. “I was hoping I
     could relay the message in time to get someone in place. Before they killed someone else. Too many lives have been lost, and I can’t stop it.”
    “Those deaths lie on Alexander Ramos’s shoulders,” he said. “Not yours. We’ll get
     him. And then we’ll make him pay.”
    “That won’t bring these women back to their families.”
    “No,” he said, running his hand down the back of her hair in a gesture so gentle it
     almost brought tears to her eyes. “But it’ll save the ones he hasn’t gotten to yet. ”
    “ The resort we’re staying at is in a good location . We’ve got the ocean to our backs, and the cities where each of the hieroglyphs were found are no more than a two or three hour drive
     in any direction.”
    “ But we need to find the lab site , not go over old ground ,” she protested. “ They haven’t repeated any of the drop location s and Ramos wouldn’t have his men making the drop s too close to where he has the lab set up . I think I’ve got the lab possibilities narrowed down to two locations . Both within the fifty- mile radius Declan asked for. But it’s impossible to know for sure. Ramos has had four years to build the labs,
     and there hasn’t even been a whisper of suspicious activity for a project of that
     magnitude anywhere in Mexico. ”
    “ The lab won’t be far from where these hits are happening . It takes about twenty hours to drive from one end of his territory to the othe r, but only a couple of hours by plane. Ramos isn’t known for his delegation skills. He likes to know what’s going on in his
     cartel on every level. And visiting the drop locations is exactly what we need to do. It won’t take them
     long before they start noticing how closely we’re tracking the coordinates. Ramos
     will have eyes on us within a couple of days. And then we’ll have fireworks. ”
    Brant traced his fingers across the map—along the routes she’d plotted—and the image
     of how those hands had touched her so skillfully had her biting back a whimper.
    “ Ramos is smart. He’s been patient and he’s kept low. After Carlos and Miguel del Fuego were killed, all the street traces of Rabbit were found and discarded . Or so we thought. We kept our eyes on Colombia, because we knew that’s where the del Fuegos had set up their original labs, and the del Fuegos were enemies of both Mexican cartels , so we knew they wouldn’t have moved their operation into enemy territory.
    “ There were rumblings Ramos had slowly gained control of the cartel, but no solid