The gears inside my skull were working in overdrive. What business did Vivian have calling my brother? What kind of trouble was she up to?
“Stay here and rest,” I ordered.
Lance lay down on the couch, rubbing at his temples. “Trust me. I don’t think I’m going anywhere for a while.”
I put my brother on speaker the second I got behind the wheel.
He answered grumpily. “It’sSunday. Even God took a day off, Jesse.”
“I have a missing vehicle,” I said. “I need you to track it down for me.”
“Am I being paid overtime?”
“I’ll pay you with a swift kick in the ass, how about that?”
“Fine, fine. Whose car got swiped? Pickerton? I bet it was Pickerton. Airhead always forgets where he put his keys.”
“It’s Lance’s, actually. Vivian stole his keys while he was, uh… incapacitated.”
“Vivian?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“She called me earlier. Asked me to decrypt some files for her. She’s really bossy when she wants to be.”
“Files? What—” Everything clicked into place. When she went back to Blue Cloud Financial, she must have downloaded the files she needed to incriminate the cartel. “You should have told me,” I snapped at him. “She could be in serious danger!”
“I didn’t realize, alright? She didn’t exactly tell me the whole story.”
“Shit. Do you have a location yet?”
“Still loading.”
“I thought you said the trackers we installed were top of the line.”
“Theyare. Excuse me if GPS technology needs a second to orient itself.”
“Devin, I swear to God—”
“I got it, I got it. The car’s parked on the corner of Hastings and Milden. Right in front ofEl Ronso, a Columbian restaurant.”
I sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth as I floored it, slamming on the gas and shoving my way into traffic. I earned several loud honks and a less than polite gesture from a few of the cars behind me. I didn’t care. Vivian was in danger.
“Hastings and Milden…” I grumbled. “That’s smack in the middle of the Azure Cartel’s territory. What the fuck was she thinking?”
“Ooh, shit,” Devin piped up.
“What? What is it?”
“I ran those files she gave me through a program I wrote. It just finished loading.”
“And?”
“Jesus. She’s got years’ worth of financial records that link the Azure Cartel directly to Blue Cloud Financial. It looks like they’ve been investing on the cartel’s behalf and Blue Cloud’s been cleaning their money. Is this the reason she was placed in your care in the first place?”
I sped straight through a red light, nearly clipping a car through the intersection. “Devin, send the files to the police and call for backup to my location.”
“You’re not going to charge in, are you—”