Tenderloin (Abby Kane FBI Thriller) (16 page)

“The other scientist, Elan, has disappeared.”

“You said earlier that everything was under control.”

“Yes, well—”

“Silence!”

Zapata knew better than to challenge and bit his tongue.

“What has become of the drug?” El Monstruo continued, his voice no longer elevated.

“We have a small supply, and we have the recipe, but so does Ortega. With him on the run, there’s no telling what he might do with it. We can’t let it get into the hands of the other cartels. My ears tell me that he has gone to Bogotá. My men will find him. Do not worry.”

“No. Leave him. I don’t want any delays. Proceed with our plans. I will find him myself. Your sister, where is she?”

“She is missing. I believe he took her by force.”

“I will do what I can to make sure she is safe.”

Zapata knew how his boss operated and that El Monstruo would do whatever it took to keep that recipe from falling in the hands of his enemies. Zapata immediately sent his men to Bogotá in hopes of finding his sister first. There was no other way to warn her that El Monstruo was on his way.

Chapter 38

Captain Gómez proved himself useful once again. He had secured a lead for us on the “outsiders,” the ones believed to be conducting experiments in the jungle. Right on time, too. Cabrera and I had planned to take the first flight out to Bogotá that morning. Instead, we headed over to the local police station where Gómez held court.

“
Hola
, Agent Abby.” I looked around and spotted the captain exiting a room about fifteen feet from where we stood. “I’m glad I caught you two before you left. I have helpful news to share.”

Cabrera and I followed Gómez down a musty hall. The inside of the station was nothing like I’d expected. Usually the walls of a police station were plastered with signage directing people where to go. All this building had to offer were a few pictures of people who I assumed were local politicians. There weren’t many officers around either.

“Where is everybody?” I whispered to Cabrera.

He shrugged his answer. His thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and his expression was stony. In fact, I hadn’t seen any of the playful Cabrera I had gotten used to so far that morning.
Where is the man who did nothing but pay attention to me?
“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, this time managing a smile.

We had never discussed our night of passion, but I assumed things were okay between us. I hoped he wasn’t bothered by it. He was lucky I was not the clingy type. I would have been analyzing this situation to the nth degree.

Gómez held a door open for us, and we entered a small room that smelled of old dust. “Made from wood” was the station’s only architectural detail. Not much else stood out.

“Take a seat, please,” he said, pointing to a couple of chairs. He immediately jumped on a computer and tapped away with two fingers.
And just when I think everyone in law enforcement has learned to type…

Gómez hit return on his keyboard, and the printer next to him started to whirl. When it spat out a paper, he grabbed it and placed it in front of Cabrera. “Julio and Elan Ortega. You heard of them?”

Cabrera picked up the printed email and looked at the two names. “Nope.” He then passed it to me.

“They’re scientists specializing in genetic engineering,” Gómez said. “Their work has been questioned in the past by the scientific community.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Some question their ethics and whether the work they are doing is for the good of mankind.”

My left eyebrow flinched. “Can you go into detail?”

Gómez shook his head. “Not at the moment. I’m learning about them myself.”

“What makes you think they’re the ones who were in the jungle?”

“The man you interviewed in the jungle—he mentioned to Rapau, right before you left, that one of the scientists had a noticeable scar across his left cheek.”

My eyes rolled involuntarily. This sort of crap had been happening a lot since I’d arrive in Colombia. “I’m glad he thought to relay that information.”

“The good news is one of our men knew of a local man with a scar on his cheek. They live in the same neighborhood, and he has seen him at the market. So he dug around and got lucky. That’s how we found Elan and, subsequently, his brother.” Gómez then opened a small map and circled two locations. “Their home addresses. Will you require assistance?”

I quickly answered no. My mission here required me to dig up facts, not kick down doors and clear rooms with the local tactical unit. I thanked Gómez for his help.

As we stood, Cabrera asked to borrow a car.

Gómez promptly reached into his pocket and handed Cabrera the keys to his truck. “Bring it back with a full tank,” he said.

A twenty-minute drive put us in front of a fairly new apartment building that stood out against the wrecks around it. I couldn’t help but notice a tangle of black cables running from the building to various electrical posts.
How do they know whose is whose?
Every apartment had a balcony, and every balcony had a clothesline, and every clothesline seemed to have a load swaying from it.
Apparently driers aren’t a big deal here.
The mailboxes were inside near the elevator. A quick look told us Julio Ortega lived on the tenth floor.

When we got there, I gave the door my standard three raps and waited. I tried once more but harder. A few seconds later, Cabrera put his ear against the door. “I don’t hear anything. No one’s home.”

Not what I wanted to hear. I clucked my lips while I looked at Cabrera.

A smile formed on his face. “I got an idea. Wait here.”

Before I could protest, he spun around and hurried toward the elevator. He returned after what seemed like an eternity though he wasn’t alone.

He pointed at the door, and the man who’d followed him revealed a keychain with a slew of keys attached. Cabrera leaned down toward me. “He’s the apartment manager.”

“We don’t have a warrant.”

“We’re not in the US.”

The apartment manager opened the door. Cabrera spoke to him in Spanish and slipped him a tightly folded bill. The manager nodded and left.

“We have fifteen minutes.”

The inside of the flat was typical for a single man that spent all his time at work. It was relatively clean, thanks to its simplicity. The furnishing and décor were purely functional, revealing no hint of the owner’s personality.

I scanned the living room in an attempt to get a handle on our scientist. On a shelf, there were a few framed pictures; one showed two men dressed in graduation gowns, each holding a degree. One had a scar across his cheek.
Finally, something useful.
So you’re the Ortega brothers.
I assumed they were twins, fraternal, since they looked to be the same age and had apparently graduated from the university together. I grabbed the picture and went in search of Cabrera.

I found him halfway down the hallway in an office. The place was a mess. Stacks of paper and junk food wrappers covered the desk and spilled over onto much of the floor. Empty soda bottles lined a side of the work space. Two walls of the room held shelving stuffed with books.

Cabrera was busy rifling through a desk drawer.

“Sheesh, tell me you didn’t do this.”

He looked up, “Huh, what?”

“Shouldn’t we be a bit more inconspicuous?”

He looked around the office. “Don’t worry; it was mostly like this.” He scooped up a bunch of files, dumped them back into the drawer and forced it closed. “Nothing of use here.”

“You think?”

Cabrera didn’t respond as he walked by me. Suddenly his interest in the investigation had gone from “Let’s get this over with” to “I’m on a mission.”

“I got a picture of the brothers,” I called out as I followed him down the hall. He stopped and turned around.

“We can use this.” He snatched the frame from my hand and took it apart, shoving the picture into his back pocket.

“You guys sure do things differently down here.” Honestly, I’m a big believer in following the law, even when it comes to law enforcement. I’ve seen a lot of coworkers bend procedure or go on power trips, but I never figured Cabrera for one of them. I grabbed him by the arm. “What’s gotten into you? Suddenly you’re interested in the case and doing things I know the DEA doesn’t condone.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Honestly, I didn’t think we had much of a case until we got this lead. I guess it got my blood going.” He smiled at me. “Let’s see what this guy’s bedroom looks like.”

We entered the last door. The bedroom itself had the same feel as the living room: impersonal. The bed hadn’t been made, and there were a few articles of clothing strewn about the floor. He had a small bathroom attached. I peeked inside the shower; the tiles were dry, and so was the soap. “Looks like our guy hasn’t been here for a while. Either that or he doesn’t shower.” His toothbrush was dry as well. “I’d say he hasn’t been in his flat for at least a day, day and half. Not unusual for a workaholic.”

I exited the bathroom, and again I found Cabrera excavating the dresser drawers. At least he was being thorough. “Try not to break anything,” I said before heading to the kitchen.

Cabrera caught up with me a minute later. “Find anything interesting?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing stands out to me and says, ‘I conducted experiments in the jungle.’ ”

“Let’s head over to the other brother’s place. Maybe we’ll have better luck there.”

Chapter 39

It didn’t take long to reach the other brother’s apartment, five minutes tops. We found the apartment on the fifth floor; it was an end unit. I knocked twice on the dull brown door before Cabrera lost his patience. He was halfway to the elevator on his way to find the apartment manager when I tried the doorknob. “Cabrera,” I whisper-shouted to him, “it’s unlocked.”

He hurried back, and we both drew our weapons. I entered first and headed right; Cabrera went left, and we proceeded to clear the apartment. It was empty.

The first thing I noticed was that it was nicely decorated and tidy; a woman lived here, permanently. This brother was married, and his wedding pictures sat inside a hutch along with their china set. The couple looked happy and normal. He didn’t look like a mad scientist. There were other pictures. Julio was in a few.

Cabrera came up behind me. “You need to see this.”

He led the way to the master bedroom. It told a different story. Clothes were draped over the bed and scattered across the floor. Drawers hung open. A half-full suitcase lay next to the bed. “Someone got out of here in a hurry,” I said, turning to Cabrera.

He had a hand rested on each hip as he looked around the room. “Barely had time to pack, too.”

“Something spooked them.”

“Or him.”

I walked over to an open drawer and saw lingerie inside. “Unless he’s a cross-dresser, she left with him.”

Cabrera crinkled his forehead. “What makes you say that?”

I pointed to the drawer. “Three bras, barely a handful of thongs—the average woman has more underwear. Trust me: she packed.” I searched the closet, her makeup counter, and the medicine cabinet. All showed signs of items missing.

The investigation had taken a turn. We now had a couple who appeared to have left in a hurry. Could the other brother have left as well? There were no signs at his apartment to indicate that, but a man was less likely to pack much.

I walked over to the nightstand by the bed, where I spotted a few more pictures. One showed a monkey peeking through an open window of a shack from the outside. Standing inside next to the window and holding a banana was Elan Ortega. I handed the photograph to Cabrera. “I’d say we have good reason to believe the Ortega brothers are our outsiders, and something has them on the run.”

“If that’s true, they’ve most likely headed to Bogotá.”

“Why Bogotá?”

“When people get scared in Colombia, they leave the country. They might not have left yet.”

“Now that we have pictures, we should issue an APB.”

“Yeah.” Cabrera snapped photographs of both pictures with his phone and sent an email. “My contact with the Colombian Police will disperse the pictures to his teams at the airport, the ports, and border control. It’ll be hard for them to leave if they haven’t already.”

I looked at my watch. “Come on. We still have time to catch the last flight back.”

Chapter 40

Every few minutes, Elan Ortega peeked out the hotel window.

“Why can’t we go to my sister’s boyfriend’s mother’s house?” Adrianna asked again.

“I know he’s your brother, but he can’t be trusted. Nor can the rest of your family, no matter how remote the connection.” He worried that Zapata might have already sent men to every possible location to look for them. In fact, he couldn’t be sure they hadn’t been followed and someone wasn’t watching them right at the moment.

Adrianna wiped her eyes with a tissue. “I’m sure he will understand. Whatever you did, it can’t be that bad. I’m his sister.”

Elan looked back at her. “And that is exactly why he cannot know where you are. He will use you to get to me.”

She lay back down on the bed and hugged the pillow.

An overwhelming amount of guilt weighed on Elan. He had put the one person he cared about most into the worst possible situation all because of his and his brother’s selfish needs to achieve a milestone with their work.
Was it worth it, Elan?
he asked himself continually.

Working for Zapata had been a mistake from the very start. He realized too late that no good could ever come of it. Even Adrianna had managed to stay clear of his business. She had graduated from the university and wanted to be a writer. All she did in her spare time was work on her novel. She would often joke that she was writing a tell-all about her family and that, soon enough, they would have to go on the run. Current events were not what either of them had envisioned, though. They were both living in a fantasy world. He believed his work served a greater purpose; she ignored what her brother really did.