Beyond the Breaking Point - Lori Sjoberg Page 0,75
cockroach is hiding.”
“You got it. I’ll start digging. The password is ‘1-2-3-4-5-6’ in case you want to poke around as well.”
For a moment, he simply gaped at the computer. “Are you kidding me?”
She laughed. “You’d be amazed how many people use simple things like that. Makes my job a lot easier. Keep that in mind the next time I tell you to use a stronger password.”
He entered the numbers and the main screen appeared, with dozens of icons over an image of a bikini-clad brunette posing on the sandy shore of a beach. He opened a browser and pulled up the history, hoping to find something of value.
“Your boy’s got eight different email accounts.” Larissa’s voice carried over the phone. “Yahoo, Gmail, Zoho, Outlook…he even has an old AOL account. Oh, my God, his financials are in here.”
That grabbed Wade’s attention. “Which ones?”
“Um…all of them, I think. Accounts, locations, names, dates. It’s going to take a while to sift through everything.” There was a pause as she typed in a command. “This might be the Holy Grail of cartel intelligence. I can’t believe he left this behind.”
“That’s great, but where the hell is he?”
“I don’t know. I’m scrolling through his email activity to see if there’s anything useful.” Somebody spoke in the background, and Larissa replied, “Thanks, but I can’t. Why don’t you hang around a few minutes? I’ve got Wade on the phone.”
“What can’t you do?” Wade asked.
“Oh, Nina just wanted me to go to lunch with her. She says hi, by the way. When we’re finished, could you put Austin on? She hasn’t talked to him in days.”
“Yeah, sure.” A pang of guilt gnawed at him. If it wasn’t for him, Austin would be home with his wife, instead of dodging bullets and sweating his ass off in the middle of the jungle.
More typing carried over the phone. “From what I can tell, each email account is used for a different branch of the cartel. He’s got issues in Sinaloa. It looks like another group is trying to muscle into his territory. They killed one of his lieutenants last week.”
Normally, he’d find that kind of information interesting, but right now all he wanted to know was where to find the asshole.
He scrolled through the past week’s browser history but didn’t see anything of value. Mostly shopping. A lot of porn sites. Social media. One of the links led to a video conference site, but there was no record of who he’d spoken with or for how long.
“I found his cell phone account,” Larissa said after a few minutes of silence. “Want the number?”
“Hell yeah.” He wasn’t sure what he’d do with it, but at least he’d have the number if he needed it for anything.
She rattled it off, and he jotted it down.
“It looks like his phone last pinged in Dos Cruces.”
At first, the name didn’t ring a bell, but then Wade recalled the small town twenty or so miles south of Guadalajara. During his time undercover, he’d heard rumblings about Aranza owning property there, but the reports had never been verified. “Where in Dos Cruces?”
“I can’t say for sure. The ping only gives the tower location, not the exact address of the caller. I’ll keep an eye on it. If it continues to ping the same tower, that’ll give us a good indication that he’s staying in the general vicinity.”
“When was the last ping?”
“About an hour ago.” There was a pause. “From what I can tell, his phone is either turned off or in an area without service. Let me see what I can do about hacking into his GPS.”
“Thanks, sis. You’re the best.”
He could feel the pieces clicking together, and it gave him one hell of a rush.
Roberto Aranza might not face justice today. He probably wouldn’t face it tomorrow.
But he would. It was only a matter of time.
Chapter 19
Wade pored over the files in the laptop, noting the numerous changes to the cartel he’d worked so hard to eradicate.
Aranza had been a busy boy these past four years. Not only had he expanded the borders of his sprawling narcotics empire, he’d also broadened the scope of operations to include human trafficking and money laundering.
But like most empires, it had grown to the point where resources were stretched thin and things were beginning to unravel. Taking time off to tend to his ailing mother had only accelerated the decline. In addition to the lieutenant Larissa had mentioned, another high-ranking member of his inner circle had been