Chapter Thirteen
T he garage door rumbled closed behind him as Matthew stepped into the bay workspace of ESI. Fluorescents hummed overhead. The smell of old coffee, machine oil, and Carter’s leftover carnitas filled the air.
The flagged box from the nursery had already been unpacked. Twelve bags of Herbal Bliss were lined up across a steel worktable in some twisted farm-to-felony display.
Carter stood at the end, typing into a tablet, then looked up. “Morning, sunshine. You look well-rested.”
Matthew grunted and dropped his keys into the tray by the door.
“Didn’t expect to see you until morning.” Caspian leaned against a workbench, arms crossed, a smirk on his face. “Thought maybe you were on a sabbatical. Or a victory lap.”
Bennett, nursing a cup of black coffee, lifted a brow but remained silent.
Matthew didn’t dignify that with a response. He headed to the lockers to drop his bag.
Carter’s sly grin tugged at his mouth. “You’re walking like a man who enjoyed the storm. Or was it the company?”
Matthew turned to give him a look. The guy knew full well what had taken place.
They’d already had this conversation via text, and if he pushed it, Matthew wouldn’t hesitate to show his disapproval with his fist. After a weighted beat, he continued to the locker room to stow his gear, then returned in a better frame of mind.
“Hey, we’re just saying,” Caspian chimed in. “We’ve all been there.”
Bennett shrugged. “It’s the shift. You’ve got that post-mission, still-smiling-but-won’t-admit-it vibe.”
Matthew didn’t smile. Not exactly. Although, the corner of his mouth twitched. “You done?” he asked, pulling a stool up to the edge of the table.
“Not even close,” Caspian said. “But I respect the hell out of it.”
He settled onto the seat, his elbows braced on the table, the bags lined up in neat rows beneath the fluorescent glare.
Carter gestured toward the bags. “While you were out playing cowboy Casanova, I ran the preliminary scans.”
Matthew sobered instantly. “And?”
Carter flipped his tablet around. “Definitely HPC. Pharmaceutical grade. Traces of residual compounds—one of them matches a known binding agent used in counterfeit oxy. Not enough to bust anyone on the spot, but enough to confirm what we suspected.”
Matthew nodded once, his jaw tight. “Not only are they cutting corners,” he said.
“They’re faking the whole thing. It’s made to appear to be real oxy—same size, same stamp, same coating.
You hold one next to a legit prescription pill, and you can’t tell the difference.
” He glanced down at the resealed bag. “But it’s not oxy, not even close.
Most of the time, it’s fentanyl—or worse—pressed with fillers like HPC to give it weight.
Cheap to make. Sold at full street price. And deadly as hell.”
He knew because he’d seen it before.
South of Juárez. Night op. SEAL team insertion into a suspected weapons cache that turned out to be a pill press operation.
Bags of the same fine white powder stacked floor-to-ceiling in what was supposed to be an abandoned church.
Rows of counterfeit pills—stamped to mimic oxy, Xanax, Adderall—all destined for U.S. streets.
Only that mission hadn’t ended clean.
One of their own had tipped off the cartel.
A teammate. Someone Matthew had trusted.
The fallout had been ugly, the investigation worse.
He could still remember the moment he found his name on the list of those under scrutiny—as if he might’ve been part of it and looked the other way.
He clenched his jaw and tightened his fingers on the edge of the worktable, before he let go.
The idea that his loyalty, his judgment, could be questioned had cracked something deep inside him.
They’d cleared him. Eventually. But the damage had been done.
That op had been the beginning of the end. For his team. For the life he thought he wanted.
And now?
Now it was showing up again, in a town that didn’t deserve it, in the hands of people like Callie who’d never signed up for this kind of war.
He thought of her standing in the sun that morning, spine straight, eyes full of fire. The weight of it all pressing on her shoulders, and still, she didn’t flinch.
Callie Morgan didn’t run.
An unexpected warmth flooded his chest. The beautiful, stubborn woman assessed. She planned. She stood her ground. But, dammit, she shouldn’t have to.
Not for this.
Not for the kind of war that came with bodies and betrayals and powder that looked harmless until it wasn’t.
He’d seen too many good people get burned in the crossfire. Too many towns turned into shadows of themselves because someone decided to use them as cover.
He wouldn’t let that happen here.
He wouldn’t let it touch her.
Not the woman who made him believe he wasn’t broken anymore. Not the woman whose smile told him he was more than what the job had left behind. The woman who’d leaned into him that morning as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
The kind of closeness he hadn’t let himself hope for in a long damn time.
She’d said thank you without the words, and he’d felt every single part of it. And heaven help him, he wanted more. More mornings. More rainy afternoons. More of whatever this thing between them was becoming.
Before any of that, though, he had to make sure nothing got past them. Nothing slipped through the cracks.
Matthew didn’t know what this was between them yet, he only knew what it wasn’t—it wasn’t expendable.
The quiet scrape of a chair alerted him to Caspian’s presence beside him.
“Was it like Juárez?” the former East Coast SEAL asked, his voice low.
Matthew glanced over, meeting his gaze. No judgment there, only memory and something close to respect.
“Same playbook,” he replied. “Different chapter.”
Caspian nodded once. Nothing more needed saying.
“Well, the lot numbers are fake,” Carter stated.
“Label formatting matches what showed up in a DEA briefing ESI got pulled into last year—Eastland County job,” Carter said.
“We were doing asset protection at the time. Local sheriff flagged the supplier as cartel-linked. Never turned into a full op, but it stuck with me.”
Matthew lifted a bag from the table in front of him and studied it. “Same supplier?”
“No, different front,” Carter replied, “the structure’s nearly identical, though. Phony invoice, clean-looking product, offshore account. The lot number formatting? Exact same style. Someone reused the framework.”
Caspian rubbed his jaw. “That was before our time, right?”
“Yeah,” Carter said. “Before you three came on. But I’ve kept tabs. I’ve also kept them on anything that smells as if it came from Duke’s orbit.”
Matthew’s jaw ticked. “Didn’t law enforcement freeze everything after his death?”
“They froze what they could prove belonged to him,” Carter replied, his voice sharpening.
“Still, check this out.” He picked up a folder from the end of the table and handed it to Matthew.
“I flagged the actual sender, GreenSpan Imports . The invoice was tucked inside the box. Appears to be a legit import business out of Arizona, but the shell company’s account is funded through an offshore bank tied to Vantage Gulf Holdings .
One of Duke’s. Paper trail’s thin, but we’re working it. ”
Caspian narrowed his eyes. “GreenSpan?”
“Yeah,” Carter said, flipping the tablet toward them. “No online footprint. Two recent flagged invoices in Arizona, one on a DEA watchlist for suspicious packaging. And now they’re shipping through Callie’s nursery as if it’s a simple pallet of pest repellent.”
Matthew scratched his temple. “You said one of Duke’s?”
Carter nodded. “Yep.”
Bennett cursed under his breath. Matthew didn’t blame him. Thanks to Duke and his greed, Bennett’s woman had almost been killed a few months ago.
He frowned at the contents in the folder. “Unbelievable.”
“I know.” Carter sighed. “This shell company? Never appeared on paper. Just funneled through one of his holding firms. My guess? It was either overlooked, or someone reactivated it thinking nobody would be looking that far down the tree.”
Bennett gestured at the row of bags. “Somebody’s trying to reboot something, quietly. And they’re using Callie’s business to do it.”
Matthew’s grip on the folder tightened. “Gabe know about this shipment?”
“Yeah,” Carter said, nodding. “I called him when Caspian dropped it off. Gave him the basics. He’s letting us run with it for now, unofficially.
Said as long as it stays confined to the nursery and no laws are broken, we can take first pass.
” He tapped the corner of the tablet with his finger.
“Of course, if this leaks out—if it touches another property or even sniffs of a wider drop—he’s stepping in. Hard.”
Matthew exhaled through his nose. “Fair enough.”
Bennett tapped on one of the bags and blew out a breath. “Using a clean nursery with no red flags, no history. Smart move.”
“Yeah. They chose Callie’s business because it wouldn’t raise suspicion,” Matthew said quietly. “They knew no one would look twice.”
He hated that. Hated the precision of it.
Matthew handed the folder to Bennett and stared at the bag in front of him, running a hand across the smooth plastic seal.
The enemy hadn’t disappeared.
It had gotten quieter.
More careful.
More dangerous.
He refocused on Carter. “You dig up anything on Ellis yet?”
Carter didn’t look up from his tablet. “Still working it. That guy’s records are Swiss cheese—clean on the surface, with weird gaps in all the right places.”
Matthew frowned. “Too clean?”
“Exactly. My guess? He’s either really careful, or someone inside was using his business to traffic this shit, and he’s clueless.”
For Callie’s sake, he hoped it was the latter. A lot easier to feel sorry for someone she’d known for decades than to deal with betrayal from a close acquaintance.
Been there, faced that. And he’d never wish that on anyone, especially not her.