Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
The boat ride back had been quiet. Gates piloted with eerie calm, the small motor cutting a low drone through the black water.
Lucía sat in the back, watching the wake stretch behind them like a scar.
The air was salt-thick and humid, but she barely felt it.
Her gaze kept slipping to the bow, where Ryan sat with Noah curled against his chest.
The boy hadn’t said a word since the compound.
He clung to Ryan like a lifeline, his small hands twisted into the fabric of his shirt.
Ryan kept one arm around him, protective and still, his free hand resting lightly on the boy’s back.
There was a softness in his face Lucía hadn’t seen before, something she hadn’t known he was capable of.
For some reason, it unsettled her.
After docking in darkness, they walked. A long, cold trek through scrubland to where Gates had stashed the SUV, hidden beneath a camouflage tarp in a dry arroyo.
Noah shivered in Ryan’s arms the whole way.
Gates drove them in silence, headlights off, one hand on the wheel, the other drumming his thigh with a strange, patient rhythm.
By the time they crested the final ridge and the safehouse came into view, a familiar unease had settled in Lucía’s chest.
Inside, the place was untouched. The trauma kit still lay open on the kitchen counter. The bloodstained rag from Lucía’s earlier wound had dried stiff. The chair Ryan had sat in, watching her sleep, remained angled toward the bed.
Ryan carried Noah in and laid him gently on the couch in the living room. The boy stirred but didn’t wake. Lucía watched as Ryan knelt beside him, brushing the boy’s hair back with an unconscious tenderness that caught her off-guard.
Gates moved efficiently, setting his gear near the door, then checking the perimeter through the warped blinds. “We’ll stay here until first light. No chatter. No lights.”
Ryan didn’t answer. He stepped into the kitchenette, opened a bottle of water, and drank half in one go.
Lucía lowered herself onto the kitchen chair, her body still protesting the motion. Everything ached. Her bandages were soaked with sweat, and her skin prickled beneath the gauze.
“Kid needs electrolytes,” Gates said. “And rest.” He pulled a small packet from his bag and held it up. “I’ll mix this into water. It’ll help.”
Ryan returned to Noah’s side, handing him the bottle once Gates had added the powder. The boy drank, eyes still foggy with fear. Ryan murmured something low. Lucía couldn’t make out the words.
She turned her attention to Gates.
His bag was pre-packed. Everything in place for a quick getaway. “You planning to get him out tonight?” she asked quietly.
Gates met her gaze. “Soon. The longer we stay, the more exposed we are.”
Ryan looked up sharply. “You’re not taking him anywhere without telling us where.”
“Of course not,” Gates said.
Lucía caught Ryan’s eyes. Weariness was written into the lines of his face. He nodded once. The look he gave her was intimate but distracted. Like he was still halfway inside that compound, still hearing footsteps and gunshots.
The overhead fan stirred the humid air, but not enough to stop the sweat from collecting in the hollow of Lucía’s throat.
She’d washed the grime and blood and salt spray from her skin in the bathroom with a washcloth, careful not to aggravate her wound.
But no sooner had she dressed in fresh clothes than she was damp with sweat again.
She sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on her knees, her ghost laptop closed in front of her.
She hadn’t let herself think about the ledger in days.
The hunt for Noah had occupied her attention completely and forced it to the periphery of her mind.
Maybe that was why she’d been so quick to offer to help. Distraction as a form of protection.
Through the door, she could just hear the soft murmur of voices. Ryan and the boy. Noah’s voice, light and tentative: a question about the safehouse generator. A joke from Ryan, followed by a quiet laugh.
The boy was safe now. Her role in the rescue mission was over. Her gaze fell to the laptop. And there was nothing to shield her from the thing she had to face. The ledger. Javier’s empire in 1s and 0s. And the digital noose she’d been carrying around for over nine years.
She dragged a hand through her hair. Her shoulder still ached.
It was healing, but slow. Every jolt of pain reminded her of Ryan, of how he’d tried to patch her up on the side of that road outside Salina Cruz.
Of how he’d risked his own freedom to accept help from Gates.
Of how he’d sat by her bedside, the worry etched on his face.
Of how he’d been so gentle with her when he’d kissed her…
And the kiss…
Lucía closed her eyes. She could still feel the heat of it. The grip of his hand at her jaw. The feel of his tongue in her mouth, hot and wet and so hungry for more.
But that had been adrenaline, she told herself. Fear. Relief. Biology.
Distraction, as a form of protection.
She wasn’t foolish enough to imagine a life with a man like that.
Not with what was coming. Because tomorrow they’d go their separate ways.
Gates would take Noah north, back over the border and hopefully back to his home.
Ryan would face whatever consequences awaited him for putting his trust in Gates.
And she—
She would become smoke again.
Literally. Because she had no real plan. Just the ledger and the long shadow of Javier Esquivel.
She leaned forward, pulled the laptop closer, and flipped it open. The screen lit her face in blue. She needed to finish what Mateo died for. She needed to bring it down.
Even if it meant burning everything with it.
A soft knock at the door broke her concentration. Ryan’s voice, low and cautious, filtered through. “Lucía?”
She quickly wiped her hands on her jeans before opening the door. Ryan stood there, looking at her with quiet concern. She forced a smile, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m fine.”
He stepped into the room, his gaze flicking to the laptop on the bed, then back to her. “You don’t look fine.”
Ryan’s boots scuffed softly against the wood floor as he stepped into the room. “Want to talk about it?”
Lucía shook her head once, sharp and dismissive. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m okay, I’m just thinking.”
“You’re shaking.”
She looked down. Her fingers were clenched so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.
He crossed his arms but didn’t move closer. “I’ve seen this before. When the pressure gets high enough—”
“You think this is me being emotional.”
“No,” Ryan said quietly. “I think this is you being human.”
She wanted to snap at him, to throw something—maybe the laptop—and march out. But instead, her throat tightened. She looked away, blinking fast. “The final piece of the ledger…” she started, then stopped.
Ryan didn’t push. He waited.
Lucía swallowed. “It’s not just data. It’s not just some string of characters. It’s tied to my past. My mistakes. Everything I built, everything I destroyed. It’s in me, and I can’t take it out without tearing something open.”
She hadn’t meant to say that much. The room felt suddenly too small. “It was supposed to be justice. But it feels like grief now. All of it.”
Ryan unfolded his arms and stepped forward, slow, careful, like she was a wire about to snap. He didn’t touch her; he just stood close enough to make her feel it. “What happens if you use it?”
Lucía’s jaw clenched. “Everything changes.”
His voice softened. “And what happens to you?”
She didn’t answer.
Lucía sat on the bed and folded her arms. “What about you, cowboy?”
Ryan looked down at her, reading between the faint lines on her face that she’d shut up shop in the sharing-her-feelings department. “What about me?”
“You can’t just force me to spill my guts and not reciprocate.”
He arched a brow. “Firstly, I didn’t force you to do anything.”
She arched one back. “And secondly?”
Ryan sat on the bed beside her, head tilted like he was weighing whether to actually say the thing or just let the silence pass.
He chose the thing. “There was a woman.”
Lucía rolled her eyes. “There’s always a woman.”
“She was a federal witness living in Florida. Working as a stripper. She was the kind of beautiful that made people underestimate her. Her testimony put eight Sinaloa guys behind bars.”
Lucía’s eyebrow arched. “Impressive résumé.”
“I was relocating her to a safehouse in Baton Rouge. Then Hurricane Petra hit. I took a detour, ended up sheltering us in a falling-down farmhouse west of Mobile. No cell signal. Storm surge rising.”
She gave a small smile. “Let me guess. You fell for her.”
Ryan’s mouth twitched. “She was sharp. Funny. Said she wanted to be a dance therapist, whatever the hell that is.” He looked down at the floor. “I started thinking…maybe I could disappear. Off-grid. New name. Her, me. She had a way of making you forget the walls were closing in.”
Lucía’s amusement faded just slightly. “But they were.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Because I’d sold her out.”
The words dropped with weight, not volume.
Lucía sat still.
“They had my ex-wife, Kylie. I hadn’t spoken to her in months. Last I knew, she was using again. Living with Noah in a cockroach-infested flat in Philly, bouncing between rehabs. Then I got a call.”
He paused. “It wasn’t her voice on the line. It was a man. He said he’d grabbed her off the street after he’d found her shooting up on his doorstep. He said she was safe, for now. But I’d need to do something for him.”
Lucía’s expression darkened.
“Kylie had told him I was a U.S. marshal. He seemed to think I could assess WITSEC files, and he wanted one in particular: Jessica Meeks’s. Said she’d been a dancer who’d flipped on the Sinaloa boys. Wanted confirmation. Location. Said they’d cut Kylie into pieces if I didn’t do it.”