“You remember the product you sold me?”
I stared at him.
“Yeah.”
“Our CST unit tested it.”
That made my brows pull together.CST unit?The wording sounded wrong. A regular customer would not be talking like this. This feeling in the pit of my stomach felt official wrong, like the kind of wrong that stood by side with the law.
Ryan glanced down at the paperwork before looking back at me.
“The cocaine was nearly a perfect match for the product we’ve been tracking through the Ruiz Cartel organization.”
Ryan kept talking.
“The purity matched,” he flipped a page, “the chemical markers matched,” he flipped another page, “the cutting agents matched.”
Then he looked directly at me.
“So, either the Ruiz Cartel suddenly started sharing recipes with local dealers…” he paused, “Or the product came from them.”
The parking lot suddenly felt quieter. My eyes dropped to the folder, and that’s when it finally clicked.
Not the Ruiz part. I didn’t know much about them except for what Chino said when we tried to sell the bricks to him. Shit with Ryan started to click. It was the way he talked, the paperwork, the testing, the questions, and the confidence as he spoke. Nobody buying drugs in the street talked like this. I stared at him for a long moment. Then I shook my head slightly.
“Who are you?”
A small smile graced Ryan’s face.
“There it is.”
The answer immediately irritated me, so I folded my arms across my chest.
“Who are you?” I asked again, this time with so much bass in my voice.
Ryan closed the folder.
“I work organized crime.”
I felt sick to my stomach because Trigga said when we met this nigga in the club that he was probably the police. He studied me for a second before opening his mouth again.
“And right now, organized crime is very interested in whoever gave you those drugs.”
The night had gone quiet around us. The only sound came from the occasional car passing somewhere beyond the park. I stared at Ryan, and his ass was staring right back at me.
Finally, I shook my head.
“What exactly do you want from me?”
The answer came immediately.
“I want access.”
I laughed because the request was ridiculous. I didn’t know shit about the Ruiz Cartel. The only thing I knew was who I had stolen the bricks from. His ass doesn’t even know that I had sold him stolen product.
“You got the wrong person.”
“I don’t think I do,” he quickly responded.