Chapter 13 - The Offer
The plan was simple enough to explain in thirty seconds.
That was how Mateo knew it was dangerous.
Elena would call Harold Pike and say she was ready to sell.
Not negotiate.
Not fight.
Sell.
Pike would take the bait because the access road was the last missing piece of the land package.
Dana’s team would wire Elena and place agents nearby.
Mateo hated every part of it.
Elena did not.
She sat at Denise Harper’s motel desk, borrowed phone in hand, and dialed Pike’s office.
His assistant answered.
Elena’s voice was soft. “Tell Mr. Pike I’m tired.”
Ten minutes later, Pike called back himself.
“Elena.” His voice was smooth. “I heard about the fire. Terrible.”
“You know what I want.”
“I can guess.”
“I’ll sign.”
Silence.
Then: “Tonight.”
Dana wrote on a pad: ASK WHERE.
Elena did.
Pike hesitated.
Then said, “Mercer clubhouse. Nine o’clock.”
Mateo shook his head violently.
Dana ignored him.
Elena asked, “Wade is in jail.”
Pike chuckled. “Wade was never the person you needed to fear.”
The line went dead.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Dana finally said, “That helps.”
“It helps you,” Mateo snapped. “It tells me we’re sending my grandmother into a room with whoever is above Wade.”
Elena turned to him. “You keep calling me your grandmother like it means helpless.”
“It means family.”
“And family is why I’m doing it.”
Mateo’s anger collapsed into fear.
She saw it.
Her voice softened.
“I have spent fifteen years being careful because Rafael died before he could finish this. I thought surviving was the same as winning.”
She looked toward the motel window, where the ruined bakery stood across the highway.
“It isn’t.”
At 8:40 p.m., Dana fitted a microphone beneath Elena’s blouse.
At 8:52, Elena walked alone toward the Mercer Riders clubhouse.
Mateo watched from an unmarked van.
At 8:59, the front door opened.
Harold Pike appeared.
Beside him stood County Judge Marian Vale.
May you like
And behind them was someone Mateo had not seen in twenty years.
His own father.
