Page 73 of Bound By A Promise
Aléjandro pulled his phone from the pocket of his blue jeans. “It’s Rei.”
“That was fast,” I replied.
“He’s good at what he does.” Aléjandro answered the call. “Rei, you’re on speaker. Ourpadre, Dario, and Dante Luciano are with me.”
I stiffened at the sound of my own name. The man on the other side of this call was supposed to marry my wife, and now we were fighting the same fight.
Reinaldo didn’t acknowledge my presence. “I found some interesting information. Jennifer Goodin hasn’t posted to her Instagram account or YouTube channel in over two weeks. Prior to that, she posted multiple times a day.”
“What did she post about?” Jorge asked.
“Get this…she had a true-crime podcast.”
“Fuck,” Aléjandro growled. “Anything about us?”
“No, she was concentrating on a story out of Simi Valley. A woman, Kira Ivanov, was murdered after claiming her husband went missing. Jennifer believed the two incidents were connected, but the police weren’t making any headway.”
I looked at my brother-in-law. “Does that have a connection to the cartel?”
“Sí,” Jorge answered. “Ivanov. Danill Ivanov was Kozlov’s soldier that gave up Kozlov’s location after the attack on Andrés’s home. Kira was his wife. He never returned to the bratva.”
“Who killed his wife?” Dario asked.
“Not us,” Aléjandro said. “When we were questioning Danill, he said the bratva would kill her if they knew he gave up information.”
Dario stood. “Let me get this straight. Some random influencer living next door to you was doing podcasts about a bratva killing and didn’t know she was messing with a powerfulcrime organization? And two weeks ago, she and her husband fell off the grid?”
“Yes,” Rei answered through the phone. “And Micah Goodin has not reported to work in the same amount of time.”
“No one has reported them missing?” I asked.
Rei responded. “The investment firm notified the police, and Jennifer’s fans are commenting on her posts. The fan theory is that the two went away on a trip to investigate one of Jennifer’s leads.”
Jorge stood. “Get our people out of that house. We don’t need any connection to whatever happened to the Goodins.”
Aléjandro replied, “We need to know who was in that window with their sights on our pool deck. Whoever that was knows who lives here and is a danger to my wife and family.”
Rei spoke. “I just accessed Micah Goodin’s bank account. The day before his disappearance, he received a half-million-dollar wire transfer from an LLC out of Delaware.”
“Always fucking Delaware,” I murmured under my breath.
Dario looked up from his phone. “I sent Lorenzo, our trusted technology expert, the information Rei’s found. Two searches are better than one. In the meantime, I propose that we take Valentina and Mia back to Kansas City with us.”
The muscles in the side of Aléjandro’s face tightened.
I asked, speaking to Dario, “When Herrera was in Missouri for your wedding, didn’t he spend time in New York?”
“Yes.”
“New York isn’t far from Delaware.”
My brother shook his head. “You can set the LLC up from anywhere. You don’t physically need to be in Delaware.”
“Of course Herrera has LLCs,” Jorge said. “There’s nothing linking him to any of this. Since Gerardo’s execution, he’s been quiet.”
“We know Gerardo was working between Herrera and Kozlov,” Aléjandro said. “Gerardo’s out of the equation. Herrera and Kozlov are still present.”
Rei spoke, “I found a deleted Instagram post, dating back to two weeks ago. It’s a picture of Jennifer on a private plane. The caption reads ‘Research.’”