Chapter 5
“Were you going to tell me?” Everett jammed his hands into the pockets of his linen pants, keeping his voice low enough that the nearest cluster of guests couldn’t hear. He stood side-by-side with Rocco, overlooking a massive banquet table filled with every tropical fruit imaginable.
Rocco barely gave him a side glance as he balanced five mango pieces, artfully skewered with glossy toothpicks, between his fingers.
The garden of Rocco and Jemma’s pale lavender bungalow, nestled in the affluent neighborhood of Allegra Shores, was already crowded. A hum of delighted conversations filled the breeze in the outdoor space, decorated with teak furniture arranged in clusters across the lawn.
Allegra Shores was perfectly suited for his friend and his new fiancée. The kind of neighborhood that knew how to impress without trying too hard. Elegant enough for Jemma's tastes, grounded enough that Rocco wouldn't feel like he'd sold out the rough edges of his San Juan upbringing.
The gods had blessed the afternoon with picture-perfect Caribbean weather.
Clear skies stretched overhead, the sun warmed without punishing, and the breeze carried the salt-sweet smell of the ocean mixed with jasmine from the garden beds.
Beyond the back of the property, the beaches of St. Killian shimmered gold and tan against turquoise water.
Under different circumstances, Everett would have stood at the railing and let the view settle him the way Caribbean views always did.
But he was far from appreciating any of it.
“No.” Rocco popped a mango in his mouth. An incredulous expression passed across his face.
“That’s a bitch move, and you know it?—”
“What I know is that both Jemma and I were blindsided when Cedric showed up at our door with a few of her other colleagues from the DEA,” Rocco explained, steering him away from the buffet table toward the far end of the garden, where a low stone wall separated the lawn from the cliff's edge. “He wasn’t invited.”
“But you couldn’t make a scene and kick him out.
” Everett could feel the tension between his shoulder blades loosening by fractions, not because the situation had improved but because Rocco grounded him in a way few people could.
They'd been through too much together. The DEA years, the undercover chaos, the long road back to something that resembled functional lives.
They both turned to look at the man holding court near the pool, gesturing with a drink in his hand, laughing about something Everett was certain wasn't funny. His jaw tightened.
Cedric Pedersen looked every bit like a man who’d recently been promoted to a position that far exceeded his abilities and was enjoying every unearned minute of it.
Special Agent in Charge of the San Juan DEA office.
Early forties, with the kind of build that suggested regular gym time and careful attention to diet.
His hair had gone silver at the temples in a way women probably told him was distinguished.
He had the polished appearance of a man who understood the optics of leadership better than the actual work.
Rocco nodded with a side-eye. “It could be worse.”
Everett froze, staring at his friend and reading all the subtext of that one statement.
He didn’t respond, and he damn sure didn’t want to think about how he hadn’t slept a single minute last night.
Staring at the wooden beams of his ceiling.
Mind circling a single thought about what was supposed to happen this afternoon.
Everett wasn’t surprised Remington had opted out of coming to the party. Gabrielle’s digging about his plans for the party had been deliberate. Intel she’d passed along to the one who’d wanted to know if it was safe to show up.
It wasn’t.
Remington had made the right choice for both of them.
“Don’t jinx him.” A familiar chuckle floated in the air. Everett turned as Sebastian walked over with a man he’d never met before. They approached with the easy rhythm of people who'd unexpectedly established a rapport.
“Grayson, I see you’ve met Sebastian,” Rocco said, extending his hand to shake the man’s.
Grayson grinned, eyes crinkling as he slapped Sebastian on the back.
“He was telling me all about Stingray Security. The growth explosion, hiring more bodyguards, protecting everyone from actresses to the Prime Minister’s children, all in less than a year.
Can’t believe you punked out of being part of the fun, Rocco. ”
Everett wasn’t surprised that his co-leader had given Grason the sanitized version of their business.
Everything Grayson talked about was the public-facing company that Everett led.
But there was another side to the team under Sebastian’s leadership, one that was on a need-to-know basis.
The side that brought Ike’s original vision for the team to life.
Helping people in serious danger. People who couldn't afford to pay.
People who had nowhere else to turn. Red metal cards, etched with a stingray, were scattered all over the islands.
Their purpose and use had spread like a quiet wildfire.
Secret safehouses. Personal bodyguards. Top-notch investigative work.
All the ingredients for them to truly make a difference, and it was working.
They had a growing list of saved clients to prove it.
“Being a doctor is fun,” Rocco said, clapping Grayson on the shoulder, then he turned to Everett. “This is Grayson Clark, the newest member of Jemma’s Drug Task Force at the PIIB. He moved to the islands a couple of weeks ago. Grayson, this is?—”
“Special Agent Everett Gilliam,” Grayson said, turning to Everett. His smile cooled and definitely didn’t reach his calculating and assessing eyes. “Your reputation precedes you, sir.”
Everett looked past the man at Cedric, caught up in another conversation with eager listeners. He wondered if Cedric was strategically regaling the guests with tales of their DEA days, ones that included Everett.
Rocco and Sebastian locked eyes for half a second. The casual atmosphere evaporated as they picked up on the same warning blaring in Everett’s head.
He took another long look at Grayson. Mid-thirties with an athletic build, good-looking enough, but with a clothing style straight out of a mail-order catalog. The face didn’t register. Wasn’t familiar. But Grayson definitely wanted them to know he knew who Everett was. The question was, why?
“You know Everett?” asked Rocco, a slight edge in his voice.
Crossing his arms, Everett turned toward Grayson. He was clean-cut in an unremarkable way. Someone who could disappear into a crowd without a second glance. Capable. Fit. Alert. But there was something about the way he carried himself, like he was acting in a role he wasn’t comfortable in.
“Who doesn’t know the man instrumental in taking down the Haitian Honey?” Grayson said with fake awe that none of them believed.
“Haitian Honey?” Sebastian tilted his head toward Everett. “Do I want to know this story?”
As a former PISCO, Sebastian’s special ops background had almost entirely been focused on criminals within the Palmchat Islands, namely the PC-5, the islands’ notorious cartel. Everett wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t familiar with the incomparable Yvette Toulouse.
Everett’s eyes narrowed. It wasn’t well-known, even in law enforcement circles, how instrumental he’d been in apprehending the crime lord.
“It’s the stuff of legends,” Grayson said, launching into the story about how Yvette Toulouse had run a criminal empire across Haiti and the southeastern Caribbean for the better part of a decade, trafficking narcotics through shipping routes disguised as humanitarian aid while funding kidnapping networks that terrorized entire neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien.
She had been methodical in her cruelty and brilliant in her architecture of plausible deniability, setting up front men and fall guys with the patience of a chess grandmaster who never had to touch the board herself.
Three different people had been arrested, tried, and convicted for running her organization before Everett proved they were all proxies, and that the real power had been sitting behind the counter of a perfume shop in Petionville the entire time.
He didn’t need a play-by-play of one of the biggest cases of his career. Especially not one that put a target on his back.
Everett's gaze drifted, involuntarily, toward Cedric. The Toulouse case had catapulted Everett within the DEA. The higher-ups were dissatisfied with Cedric’s leadership but didn’t want to reassign him until they had a better replacement.
Rumors that Everett was that guy started to circulate.
Rumors led to innuendos, which led to secret meetings, until it was almost assured.
They just needed evidence that the Toulouse takedown wasn’t a one-hit wonder. They wanted Everett to do it again.
Cedric swooped in, dangling the Jamaican undercover operation like bait and pitching it as the next career-defining case. But he knew full well the operation was held together by bad intelligence, untested contacts, and a timeline that rushed every critical decision.
When the whole thing collapsed, Cedric had walked away clean, without reprimand or demotion. There was a lateral shuffle and eventually a promotion that proved the DEA's institutional memory was as short as its accountability.
“Last I heard, she’s rotting away in Carswell still trying to convince people she’s innocent and was framed,” Grayson said, leveling Everett with a steely dark stare.
“Spoken like a true insider,” Everett said, taking a step closer.
“Guilty as charged. I was on the FBI team out of Miami,” said Grayson, then lowered his voice as he asked, “Did you ever think maybe you got it wrong? Missed something?”
Everett took a step toward him. “Better question is, do you?”
The air went sharp. Neither man looked away. Rocco shifted his weight, ready to step between them if necessary.
Grayson chuckled. “Of course not. Like I said, you’re legendary.” He raised his glass in a mock salute, then scanned the garden as if he'd spotted someone he needed to catch. “Duty calls. Gotta keep making the rounds. Good to meet you, gentlemen.” Then he was gone.
“What’s with that guy?” Sebastian asked, closing ranks around him with Rocco. “How well do you know him?”
“Not as well as I thought,” Rocco said, visibly disturbed. “And you don’t remember him at all? Nothing about him rings any bells?”
As if on cue, the wind charm on the veranda chimed.
A sensation older than reason within him took up the cadence like a tuning fork to his heart.
A frequency beneath the audible, something his body registered before his mind had the chance to intervene.
He was powerless to resist it. The discipline he'd spent years building to counteract it crumbled.
He felt all of it before he turned around. Before Sebastian's posture shifted. Before Rocco's eyes tracked to a point behind him and stayed there too long.
He knew she was here.
He hadn't spoken to her, not once, since he'd moved back to the islands nearly three years ago.
They'd been in the same rooms, the same events, the same gatherings where their shared connections made complete avoidance impossible.
But they'd perfected a choreography of distance.
Opposite corners. Separate conversations.
Eyes that never met for longer than the brief, punishing instant required to confirm the other's location and retreat from it.
As if they'd both understood, without ever discussing it, how dangerous it was for them to do anything more than survive each other's presence.
He’d wanted that to change today. With Bobby nowhere around. Where he could have her all to himself, if only for the briefest of moments.
He turned.
Remington stood at the threshold of the garden.
She wore a coral sleeveless dress that showcased a body built for purpose rather than vanity.
Muscular in the way that came from work that mattered.
Curves that spoke to strength instead of softness.
Her dark hair fell past her shoulders in loose waves that caught the late-afternoon light.
She took his breath away.
Not the poetic version. The literal one. His lungs forgot how to work. His chest locked. His carefully maintained walls cracked in the space of a single heartbeat, and he understood with the certainty of a man who'd tested every limit of his resolve that he could not be near her.
Not today.
Not in this garden with its spectacular views and its rum-soaked conversation and its slow steel drum music that would make the distance between them feel like an invitation.
Not while Cedric Pedersen stood twenty yards away as a living reminder of every catastrophic choice that had led Everett to this exact intersection of longing and exile.
"Coffee bar," he said to no one in particular. He crossed the lawn without looking back, already knowing that there was not enough rum in the entire Palmchat Islands to make standing in the same garden as Remington Spade feel like anything other than what it was.
Exquisite torture.