Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rory felt like she’d just been in a head-on collision. Carter leveled her with a steady gaze as she grabbed on to the arms of the chair and willed her head to stop spinning, her heart to slow down.
She drew in a deep breath. “Wife?”
He leaned over her shoulder and set his phone in front of her.
Rory examined the photo of a woman with long black hair and thick dark glasses sitting next to her at an outdoor café and was overcome with a rush of sadness.
Real names were never used in her line of work, so she’d nicknamed her partner, the woman in the photo, Jolie. Her disguise had reminded Rory of Angelina Jolie from the movies SALT and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
Ugh, and Brad Pitt was in that second movie. And now she was reminded of her ex who looked like the actor. And damn, Andrew was still a potential problem, wasn’t he?
Jolie was Rory’s first partner when she officially began going after traffickers. Hell, Jolie was the driving force who’d set her on the mission that had consumed her life for the last three years—targeting The Italian. And after Jolie went missing, Rory had vowed to finish what they had started.
She’d assumed Jolie was dead. The business of taking down smugglers was like swimming with sharks—tricky and unpredictable, and disaster was only one mistake away. But she wasn’t prepared to hear her former partner was Carter’s wife. Jolie is Rebecca Dominick?
Carter reached down and swiped to another photo. A blonde woman with pretty green eyes, who looked a bit more like Charlize Theron than Angelina Jolie, was now on display. But Rebecca had the same bone structure and full lips as the image of her alias, Jolie.
“Where was this photo taken?” he asked, disbelief shredding his tone.
“Cartagena, Colombia,” Rory answered softly.
“Explain,” he issued the quick command.
Rory’s stomach clenched, and tears formed in her eyes as the depth of Carter’s loss and the measure of his despair fully sank in. He had lost his wife due to her conviction that even if she were the only person in the fight, she would do her damnedest to bring down as many smugglers as possible.
“I was new to dealing with wildlife smugglers. They were much more dangerous than antiquities buyers, which I quickly learned.” Every once in a while, the scar at her side still hurt like a fresh wound, and it acted as a reminder of what she’d been through.
“I’d been in Colombia once before to plant a tracking device in a shipping crate to identify the smuggler’s trade route’s ending point.
On my second trip to Cartagena, I was there to collect additional evidence so that I could turn everything over to the authorities. ”
“And what happened?”
“Your wife, well, that’s how we met, and she saved my life,” she announced, letting him take a moment for that news to sink in before continuing her explanation.
“A guard grabbed me on my way out. Managed to stab me, but I got away—thanks to your wife. She said she’d been on her way to a meeting with Benicio Josef, the man I was after, when she saw me running not far from the compound.
She almost hit me with her car. When she realized the severity of my injury, she took me to the hospital instead of going to her meeting.
She was in disguise, as was I. Somehow, my wig stayed on.
And we both were too afraid to share our real identities. ”
“What in the hell was she doing meeting with a dangerous smuggler?” Carter ran his fingers through his dark locks.
“She said she was sick of corrupt politicians and lack of progress in Washington, so she wanted to take action herself. She’d been tracking the man for a while because he trafficked people as well as animals.
On the pretense of being a potential buyer, she’d arranged a meeting hoping to get inside information.
After I left the hospital, we met at a café before we both had to leave town, and she professed fate had put me in her path that day, believing had she actually gone to the meeting, she would have wound up dead. ”
“I don’t know what to say. Rebecca was aware of my role at the Agency, the kind of men I dealt with.
How frustrated I was that so many traffickers were getting away with what they were doing and how powerless I always felt.
” He cupped his jaw and looked toward the sky as if blaming himself for inspiring his wife’s crusade.
“She never told me about you,” Rory confessed. “I’m sorry. But I guess she was just trying to help.”
Carter faced her again, his eyes dark and fierce.
He kept his gaze on her for a long moment, then grabbed his phone, pocketed it, and returned to the head of the table.
“One of Santiago’s men had been tracking her.
Maybe they followed her because of me. Or she’d been poking around.
Asking too many questions in D.C.” He grimaced with an apology as if sorry his wife was the reason The Italian discovered Rory.
“Rebecca and I began to work together after Colombia. All virtually. We exchanged information over the phone and via emails. Too risky to meet in person. About six months after we first met in Colombia, she disappeared. No answer on her burner. No response to emails. I tried to find her, but I didn’t know anything personal about her.
I was terrified our work had gotten her killed.
So, I fought like hell to bring down who I believed was responsible.
The Italian.” Rory’s nerves were shot to hell, but she needed to hang on.
To remain strong. “It never occurred to me when you asked for my help tracking down your wife’s killer, that Jolie was actually Rebecca.
But maybe The Italian never learned my identity back then since I was in disguise, and that’s why I was never .
. .” She swallowed. “Killed.” Like her. “Maybe The Italian only recently found out about me.”
“Or you were both followed from that point on, and The Italian kept you alive for some other reason,” he quickly countered.
His eyes fell to the ground.
Full circle. We are connected. How crazy is this?
“Your targets,” Carter began, his tone rough, “how’d you acquire them?”
“Rebecca had a contact in Intelligence who’d given her a list of twenty-five smugglers.
The man in Cartagena was one of many who she planned to go after.
When we started going through their files online, checking the Dark Web for commonalities, we discovered they all might work for one man. The Italian.”
“Twenty-five? Twenty-fucking-five.” Carter’s shoulders collapsed, shock crossing his face.
Rory wondered if Jesse, or Ella, would react the same way when they learned what Rory had really been up to during the last several years.
“Those twenty-five names were open cases. Well, they were my open cases. The CIA didn’t believe they warranted resources or funding—too small of fish to be considered high-value targets—so they were all technically closed.
But it pissed me off that none were deemed HVTs, so I kept copies of their files at home, coming back to them whenever I had the chance.
” He cursed under his breath, his gaze cutting back to the ocean.
“I was her contact without knowing it, wasn’t I?
I never thought she’d go through my work files. ”
Carter was back on his feet, hands in his pockets as if trying to keep from punching something.
“So, you were after The Italian when you were still at the Agency?” she asked after giving him a minute to cool down.
“No, The Italian wasn’t on my radar when I was there. I hadn’t even heard of him back then. I clearly missed whatever connection you two found amongst all those smugglers the Agency deemed not important enough to go after.”
But Rebecca had to have been onto something big, even though she hadn’t realized at the time. Because why would she have been followed to Colombia on her trip where she met Rory in the first place?
“Where did Rebecca get the name of the smuggler you were both there for three years ago in Cartagena? And you, for that matter? How’d you find him? I had no open cases from that city.”
“While at the hospital, I told her I’d found a connection between Benicio Josef and a smuggler I happened upon by accident in Peru.
Animals and animal parts were being shipped from Peru to Cartagena and then on to Asia.
When I planted the tracking device in Josef’s compound, I found evidence tying him to wildlife trafficking between Colombia and Africa as well.
I sent all of my evidence to the necessary agencies.
I just figured she removed him from her list after that, so I didn’t push for more information. ”
“Well, he wasn’t on my list,” Carter reiterated. “But you managed to confirm the link between Josef and The Italian?”
“Rebecca and I realized his connection while studying the list, but I had already sent the evidence to Interpol and the DEA. Josef was also smuggling drugs stitched up inside animals.” She cringed. “He had his hands in everything, though.” Scum of the earth.
“My wife must have found Josef as a target another way, and her research landed her on The Italian’s radar. I guess I don’t understand why The Italian waited so long to go after her. Or you, if he knew about you, too.”
“Based on the photos you now have, Santiago could have killed us both in Cartagena instead of taking our photos. Removed our disguises and learned our identities on the spot. I have no idea. And since those photos were of us outside a café, he had to have been following us for days.” And that’s creepy and stalker-like.
“I assume Santiago didn’t give up any identifying details about The Italian to you, but did you kill him? ”