AN: I hope you're all enjoying the ride.

Day six:

Thursday, July 13th

Laguna Beach, California

Jasper

I hadn't slept since early Wednesday morning. Even then, I'd only gotten about four hours. My brain wouldn't shut down long enough for me to rest my eyes, and not even weed could relieve the constant worry.

How do we escape from this vicious cycle?

The cruelty of the world Edward had told me about existed became my reality. The moment they took Bean, everything inside me fell apart. I tried to hold onto hope that once we made the delivery, she would return to us, but Elena intended on using our girl to ensure compliance.

One year was unacceptable, and I was ashamed that I had been so weak as to have almost agreed to such ridiculous terms. Edward was right; we needed to get Bean out, and discussing it any further was just wasting time.

The only thing that worried me was the method of action Edward was implying, and I tried to devise a plan that didn't involve people getting hurt.

If we could learn more about Elena's business and financial situation, we could offer her six to maybe even ten million dollars in cash. It would be easy for us to deliver. I would talk to Spin, get our money liquidated, and make the deal.

I refused to take Edward's route, which only solidified when I saw how he handled Dennis. If that were just a prelude to what would come, I would have to bow out. It was entirely out of my depth and went against my beliefs in everything.

Speaking of Dennis, he was another hiccup I hadn't expected.

Our partnership, I had assumed, was built on equal respect, but I was wrong. If he sold us out to the Baja Cartel, I couldn't deny that betrayal, and trying to brush it off was difficult. Edward told me to stop the supply to Dennis's ailing wife, basically saying: Fuck that bitch, let her die in pain.

But I wasn't wired that way.

So, when I met up with him later that day to collect the Baja Cartel files, I brought him a jar of A-Class primo. Of course, I kept that shit from Edward. He wasn't in the mood for my generosity, and I didn't want another lecture.

I said to Dennis as I got into his car, "This is like the stuff I gave your wife before, but with more CBD properties."

Dennis seemed surprised, but then he smiled in appreciation. "Thanks, Jasper."

I nodded. "So, what have you got?"

Dennis reached into his pocket and pulled out two credit cards. They were encrypted data files, though, and thankfully, I had just the machine to open them. "There's six months' worth of information and geo-locations."

"Of all Elena's homes and stash houses?" I clarified.

"Everything the FBI has on her, you have now."

"Thanks," I said, taking the cards. His hand was all bandaged up and he had a bruise on his forehead, but no broken nose, like Edward thought. Still, I felt terrible about how things went down. "How's the hand?"

Dennis tilted his head and pushed his sunglasses up onto his nose. "Don't bite it again."

After leaving Dennis, I swung by the house to pick up Edward. We then hooked up with Spin at Craig and Claire's trailer. It was a single-wide and made moving around quite tricky, but the number of computers and technology was a coder and hacker's dream shack. That's where Edward and I would be able to decode these files and get the intel we needed on Elena.

Craig met us at the trailer door, and I handed him the cards. His eyebrows went up in surprise. "This is new."

Edward asked, "Is that a problem?"

"Nope, not at all," said Craig. He kept one for himself and handed his partner Claire the other card.

She waved. "Hi, guys."

"Hey," I said.

Edward nodded.

Then we both turned around to face Craig again.

He sat down at his station and slid the card into a scanning device. "Let's run them."

The files came up on the four screens in front of him. The amount of information was overwhelming.

"Whoa!" Craig exclaimed. "It's a mudslide off two measly cards. The guy is way ahead in the game."

Edward wandered off to look over Claire's shoulder as the picture of Elena and all of her associates popped up on the monitor.

She said, "I got it, too. Your boy Dennis came through. This lawyer dude, Alex Reyes, set her up with a 100,000-acre ranch in Humboldt County. Elena 'La Reina' has property all over the place—in La Jolla, parts of Palm Desert, apartments in Miami, London, and Zurich."

"Check it out," Craig said, waving me back to his screen. Something looked odd about the files. "There are gaps here." He pointed to where some file numbers were missing. "This guy is hiding his sources."

"You think old Dennis pulled a Nixon?" I asked.

"It's an MPD partition. He fucked up the master boot record."

In layman's terms, when Dennis downloaded the file, he corrupted the disk, so when we put it in our computer, we wouldn't know where the original computer's operating system was from the hard drive. However, by doing that, some files were deleted.

I hoped they weren't important.

"Claire, can you Google those houses again?" I asked.

She nodded and got right to work.

Craig muttered, "Whoever did this is very good."

Yeah, yeah, fucking perfect. How do we use this to our benefit? Our main goal was to get Bean home. Edward said offering them cash would be a waste of our time, but we had to try. Not everything needed to be resolved with violence. It was unlikely that Elena wanted to lose any more men.

"Spin?" I headed toward the back of the trailer where he was sitting. "Cash! What can we clear off now? My account and Edward's?" I came up behind him and squeezed his shoulders.

Come on, man. It would help if you gave me some good news.

Edward clarified, "Liquid." As he walked in behind me.

"Well, you can't dump the house, or you'll take a two-million-dollar hit, and it depends on how fast I can move the gold and silver, but let's estimate six to eight million."

Edward's jaw dropped. "Are you kidding me?"

My hopes deflated. "That's all?" I asked.

Spin shrugged and threw up his hands, like, "What do you want me to do?"

"After all these years?" I was stunned. My eyes narrowed and focused on the man in charge of our money. That son of a bitch, Spin. "Wow," I said. "You've been fucking me in the ass for years."

Edward snorted.

"I'm insulted you only just realized that," Spin said jokingly, but I couldn't muster a smile. The no sleep and lack of funds wasn't a laughing matter. My barely suppressed anger was evident on my face. Spin felt the energy shift and defended himself. "Hey! I didn't go all Bono over Africa and Asia, buddy-boy!"

Yeah, I get it. Saving the world was expensive, but where does that leave us?

"Let's just say we're three to four million short, depending on what we can get them down to." My mind went wild with an idea. I rushed off to the other side of the trailer where Claire was, passing Edward and placing my hand on his arm. "Come here." He followed me as I pointed to one of the screens. "There's got to be millions sitting in those houses at one time or another."

Edward arched an eyebrow as he caught on to my meaning.

"It will be like Robin Hood," I defended.

"A fucked-up Robin Hood," Edward said. "I love it. A couple of IEDs and RPGs might come in handy. We could go real Sunni on these bastards."

Claire's eyes widened as she slowly turned in her chair to face us. There was real fear. "Umm... are we in any sort of danger here?"

It was nearly the end of the day when I Skyped Elena. Edward, Billy, and Doc stood beside me but off-screen. I was the only one that could make this call. Even though I was Mr. Nothing Personal, I didn't think Elena hated me quite as much as she did Mr. Eat-Shit-Caviar.

The phone rang several times before she answered it.

"Did I not tell you that everything goes through Mr. Alex?"

Elena demanded that we enable our cameras so she could see every one of our facial tics and emotions, but we didn't get the same courtesy. So, I ended up communicating to a black screen.

At least she dropped the distorted voice, so I felt like I was talking to a human being.

"No, not this. This is ten million dollars in cash, straight up, for the girl. And we stay happy partners."

Silence. I glanced over at Edward, who mouthed: Keep talking.

"Look, Ms. Sanchez, I really thought this through."

She interrupted me and said, "So have I, and I put her value at fifteen million."

I scoffed. Fuck! How the hell were we going to make up an eleven-million-dollar gap? "That's too much."

"Why? Don't you think she's worth it?"

Any dollar amount couldn't match Bean's worth, and I had prayed they didn't know that, but obviously, Elena knew enough.

"No, she's worth it," I said, but how do we come up with that cash? "We're small compared to you."

"Grow up, motherfucker!" Elena spat.

I rubbed my face and a nervous laugh escaped me. "Give us a break here. All right? How about twelve?"

"You must stop trying to negotiate with me. Thirteen is our number, but this is not open-ended. I will give you two weeks. The rest of our deal stays the same. Agreed?"

The plan was this: once we got Bean back, we would ship her off somewhere safe. Edward and I would stick around Laguna for a bit to create the illusion that we were staying faithful to the deal, but as soon as we could, we'd be out – forever.

I said this instead: "Agreed."

Elena ended the call, and I let out a deep breath. That woman stressed me out, but the whole situation made me sick. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. And like I said, even smoking lost its appeal. My mind and body was not built for this kind of life.

But as bad as I felt, none of that mattered, Bean did, and I forego living until she was home with us.

Straightening my back, I closed the laptop and looked to my right. "Thirteen."

Edward's excited smile told me he knew it would go as well as it did, and he couldn't wait for what followed.

He patted Doc and Billy's back. "Let's get going."

Thanks for reading!