Chapter 16 #2
“No.” Here comes the hard part. “Last night, I let Mauricio’s killer get away because I was shocked that I knew him.
” He had to man up and face his team leader with this news.
Look him in the eyes and let him know he’d failed.
He’d lied. “He showed me his face before getting into the vehicle last night.”
“You want to run that by me again?” Wyatt requested, and Roman felt all eyes on him.
A soft intake of breath came from Harper, and Roman knew she’d most likely swiveled in her chair to face him, but he forced his attention to remain on Wyatt.
“My uncle had concerns I’d been targeted since I was close to the explosion, and as the only legitimate living heir—in my uncle’s eyes—to his empire, he wanted to find who’d tried to kill me.
” And that Roman actually believed. “He sent one of his security details, a former police officer, to follow a lead about Mauricio.”
“And what happened?” Wyatt pushed his hands into his jeans pockets as if unsure what in the hell to do at the news.
What would Wyatt think or say if he knew all of the truth? All of Roman’s secrets? They always said, no solo ops, but he didn’t have a choice, did he?
“Mauricio put up a fight, and they struggled. Carlos killed him, and then we showed up while he was tossing the apartment. Carlos found the USB on him.” Roman finally looked over to see Harper’s stunned eyes pointed his way.
“He was surprised to see me on the street, and then he took off.” He guiltily tore his eyes away from her to look at the other guys crowded before him with the same shocked expressions.
Mouths partly opened and eyes narrowed in disbelief.
“Mauricio worked at one of my uncle’s restaurants.
They found the laptop in his locker.” Roman stood and held the nape of his neck and squeezed.
“I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for what I did. ”
The room fell silent, and he wasn’t sure what to say. He knew they wouldn’t boot him from the teams for this, but he’d be leaving soon, anyway. His days as Echo Four had been numbered since 2019 when Thiago died.
“And you believe your uncle? Does he have a lot of enemies?” Wyatt uncrossed his arms and stepped around the coffee table.
“You don’t get to where he is without racking up a list of people who hate you,” Roman offered the answer his uncle often had provided him in the last few years.
“But after seeing the USB, Luciano believes Harper was the intended mark. He thinks Mauricio was simply a shitty bomb maker and failed at the job he was hired to do.”
“But I don’t think Mauricio failed,” Harper whispered, and Roman swiveled his focus her way. “Someone is baiting me. Playing a game.”
“I messed up by keeping this from you, but I had to talk to my uncle first and make sense of everything. And if you want me off the—”
“You should have told us,” Wyatt cut him off.
“But because of you, Harper didn’t get hit by a car, and we have Mauricio’s laptop and the USB.
We’ll find out what’s really going on. So, don’t give me any bullshit about leaving the team.
” He stabbed Roman’s chest with his index finger. “That’s an order.”
“Roger that,” Roman forced out. “My uncle is stepping up protection at the hotel while we’re here.” Even though I told him to back off.
“Does your uncle know anything else about Mauricio?” Chris asked.
“He spoke to his contacts with the police. No red flags in Mauricio’s background since he got out of prison. No political or mafia connections, either. I’m inclined to believe Mauricio was coerced into killing Ezra. Or blackmailed.”
Chris huffed out a frustrated breath. “That’d mean no money transfer for us to trace. That’d be smart on the bad guy’s part.”
“We’ll look into it. See what we can find. Someone made contact with Mauricio somehow,” Wyatt said as if trying to remain optimistic.
Then again, they did always get their marks.
“We also need to figure out why he or she chose Barcelona to bring Harper to when they had access to her already,” Chris spoke up. “And whether there’s really going to be a terrorist attack.”
If Roman and Harper had still been sleeping together in the last several weeks, he would have guessed they’d been lured to Barcelona because of him. Logically, all signs pointed to Harper being the target.
But it was too coincidental for Roman’s comfort.
The hotel selected for the initial meeting with Ezra was connected to Roman. Rosario and Antonio had wed there.
Mauricio worked at his uncle’s restaurant.
They were in a city Roman’s uncle practically owned.
“What if we were supposed to find this USB?” A.J.
asked. “Why else would Mauricio have it? And I get the feeling whoever is pulling all the strings sure as hell wouldn’t leave a loose end like Mauricio still alive unless they had a reason.
” He paused. “I bet someone wanted us to find him and that USB.”
Hell, A.J. had a point, which meant Mauricio would’ve been useless to them whether his uncle’s man killed him or not.
Harper stood and joined the rest of the team, her attention on Roman as if he had all the answers. “Are we supposed to be distracted by the USB to shift our focus off the true target, a terrorist attack?”
“Jessica easily traced Ezra’s flight from Tel Aviv,” Finn reminded them. “They had to have known we’d send people to Israel to follow up. Maybe Israel is the real distraction.” He held both palms open. “Or everything has been a distraction. Spain. The stalker. Tel Aviv.”
“Someone has us chasing our tails,” A.J. bit out.
Harper hung her head and set her face to her palm.
“I need to use the dates and times from these photos and videos and see if I can pull all available surveillance cameras from the areas where I was followed. If I can find someone that appears in multiple locations, a common denominator, that could be our guy. Or woman, I suppose.”
She frowned, and Roman wished he could go to her. Do something to make her feel better. But he was still torn up with rage about everything and didn’t trust himself not to punch a hole in the wall.
“I’m betting the person who followed me is only hired help, same as Mauricio,” Harper added in a mournful tone. “Or smart enough to choose locations where there’d be no CCTV, expecting that I’d try and pull the footage.”
“No.” Roman shook his head. “It was him, the mastermind behind this fucked-up scavenger hunt. And the way he watched you—that was personal.” Chills crept up his spine at the visual.
“I think it’s someone you know.” And that led him back to the questions he’d pushed aside when he saw the video in that cafe, and maybe his concerns were relevant to their current case after all.
“It does kind of feel like someone knows what our moves will be before we make them,” Chris pointed out.
“It’s possible we’re dealing with someone that was former CIA or connected to one of Harper’s old cases, particularly to Ezra. Former military, maybe.” Wyatt scratched his bearded jaw. “I don’t know, I’m just thinking aloud based on my talk with Natasha.”
“I can try and speak to Zack,” Harper offered.
For some reason, hearing Harper say that name had Roman recoiling as if he were about to be gut punched.
“Zack won’t talk to you since you’re a civilian.” Wyatt turned and gave Roman a skeptical look, as if still not convinced he’d shared “everything” with the team about his uncle and Mauricio’s death.
Yeah, Wyatt knew something else was up. It was getting a hell of a lot harder to hide the truth while surrounded by his demons in Barcelona. So close to the devil.
“Anything else your uncle found out? Police get an ID on the body in the car yet? Can we confirm it was Ezra?” Wyatt asked.
“Police haven’t made an ID yet.” He’d nearly forgotten to share that bit of news. “They’re having trouble.”
“I have a feeling they won’t be able to identify his remains,” Harper spoke up. “The CIA went to a lot of trouble to erase Ezra’s existence from history after he parted ways with the Agency in 2018. I, um, forgot that detail after I hit my head. Sorry.”
God, she had nothing to be sorry about. He was the one who needed to talk, to rip the Band-Aid off now. Open Pandora’s box and get it over with.
“About that case,” Wyatt began, but a knock at the door had him redirecting his focus toward the small foyer by the kitchen.
“Should be the guards letting us know they’re stationed in the hall.” Roman quickly went to the door and checked the peephole first. “It’s them.” He opened the door to see two men he knew well, and he knew exactly why his uncle had chosen them, too.
Roman exchanged a few quick words with them in Spanish, then shut the door and turned back to the room.
Harper kept her focus pinned to the closed door with slanted brows. “Roman.” She looked to her bedroom and then back at him. “We need a moment.” Now she was the one pulling him away, and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what she had to say.
“Yeah?” he asked once they were alone in her room. His back went to the door, and he gulped at her worried brown eyes on him. A spark of fear and a mix of anger there.
“The men in the hall. I remember them,” she slowly began, and his muscles locked tight at what he knew was to come next. “That morning before the car bomb that I followed you . . .” She turned to the side, her body slightly shaking as if in shock.
“It’s not what you think,” he managed out in a raspy voice, and his words carried her focus to him.
“How could it not be? I saw you burying a body alongside the men from the hall.” Tears filled her eyes, and with a trembling voice, she asked, “Roman, who the hell did you kill?”
He’d been wrong earlier.
The day had just managed to become a hell of a lot worse.