Chapter 24
Leland heard them before he saw them.
Heels striking stone. Ragged breathing. The wet scrape of a shoe that didn’t lift cleanly. One of them was injured.
He lifted a hand, and the agents with him assumed their ready positions.
The tunnel mouth opened onto a narrow strip of shoreline where a secondary dock jutted into the water. Beyond it, smoke rose in a dark column from what remained of the main pier and from the shattered helipad on the ridge above.
Four of álvarez’s people emerged out of the tunnel, too busy arguing to notice the danger awaiting them. Two men in guard uniforms wrestled a single long crate between them, the weight forcing them into an uneven, stumbling rhythm.
“Lift it higher, idiota,” the one out front ordered. “If you crack it, I swear—”
“Then you carry it,” the man behind the crate snapped, sweat streaking through soot on his face. “This thing weighs a damn ton.”
A fourth guard limped behind them, one hand clamped to his bleeding thigh, contributing nothing but curses and dead weight.
The bossy one jerked his chin toward the dock ahead. “Keep moving. We’re almost home free.”
“Not quite,” Leland said calmly, stepping into view.
OIJ agents fanned out behind him, weapons raised. One of them spoke brusquely in Spanish. “Policía! Están arrestados. ?Armas al suelo!”
The guards froze. The one in the lead glanced at the boats as if calculating the distance. Another dropped his end of the crate in defeat, knocking his partner off balance. He fell to his knees, holding his back. The wounded man sagged, pain finally winning.
It confirmed what Leland suspected. They weren’t fighters. They were opportunists who’d mistaken chaos for escape.
“You heard the man,” Leland barked. “Drop your weapons and get on the ground. Now.”
No one tested him. Weapons clattered. Knees hit sand. The wounded man collapsed with an agonized groan as officers moved in to secure them.
Leland keyed his mic. “Tunnel exit contained. Secondary dock secured. No outbound traffic.”
The response came within seconds. “Copy. Main dock destroyed. Helipad is a loss, too.”
“Understood.”
Once the guards were led away, Leland turned toward the long crate abandoned in the sand. He crouched beside it, flipped the metal latches open, and lifted the lid.
He revealed a haphazardly wrapped canvas in colors he recognized even through soot and grime—the triptych. álvarez’s crown jewel.
Leland’s jaw tightened. Even now, while innocent young women ran for their lives, these men had tried to profit.
Movement stirred inside the tunnel again.
Leland drew his weapon and turned but relaxed as soot-smudged members of his team came into view. He keyed his mic again.
“The rest of my team is coming out.” His eyes skated past Mateo, past Rhys, and landed on the young woman clutching Gaby’s hand.
“And one survivor,” he added, relieved that he could.
He switched off his comm.
álvarez was in custody. His guards were in restraints. The muses were being gathered and escorted to safety. The fucking mansion could burn to ash and cinder for all he cared. But teams were already working to contain the blaze.
There was still much to do. The operation was still active, still shifting under their feet.
But as his gaze slid to Gaby, and the raw relief on her face as she clung to her sister like she might blow away on the breeze, something in him settled.
For one of their own, at least, mission accomplished.
***
They sat on the sand. Twenty-three of them in all. Barefoot. Wrapped in blankets. Thin, pale, shaken—no longer muses for anyone, but free young women.
Natalie leaned against Gaby’s side, fingers still laced through hers as if letting go might undo everything. Medics moved among them, murmuring reassurances, applying oxygen, checking burns, bruises, and watching for shock.
Out on the water, boats idled in a loose perimeter. More were arriving from the far side of the island to ferry the rescued women away.
Gaby watched the operation unfold. A mix of OIJ, FBI, Coast Guard, and the small Devlin contingent worked alongside one another, methodical, professional, and calm.
They couldn’t disguise their disgust, however, while escorting the guards up the beach in cuffs.
Or when the equally complicit guests, who’d tried to vanish into the smoke and chaos, were arrested and read their rights.
At the center of it all stood Leland.
He didn’t bark orders. He didn’t posture. He simply spoke, and people moved. Under his direction, the chaos resolved into order, shaped and contained, leaving no gaps.
The composition of the team suddenly made sense. Rhys had been the spear. Mateo, the shield. And Leland was the net, allowing no one connected to álvarez to slip through.
Natalie moved restlessly beside her.
“You okay?” Gaby asked.
Natalie considered the question longer than expected. She looked out at the water. At the boats. At the officers moving with purpose. At the men who’d turned the last few months into a living nightmare.
“I’m not sure,” she said honestly. “But if not now, I will be.”
That was the sister she knew—thoughtful, direct, and determined. Gaby squeezed her hand. The future didn’t feel like such a threat anymore. It felt possible.
***
The sun was high overhead, the beach all but cleared. The rescued women, everyone except for her and Natalie, were long gone, ferried toward the mainland on two boats with medical personnel and trauma counselors among them.
The guests had been transported too. There was no elegance now. No entitlement. Just wealthy, once-powerful men, and one woman, who had believed themselves untouchable. Now bound and helpless like the victims they once used and controlled.
Only two boats remained.
“One of those has to be for us,” Natalie murmured, leaning into her.
They sat in the shade of a palm, sheltered from the heat of the day, but she was drained—ready to leave, and who could blame her.
Gaby scanned the dock for someone who could speed things along. Leland and Mateo were busy loading the crate onto one of the boats. But there was no sign of Rhys.
Someone else caught her eye, however, and made her blood run cold.
Sebastián álvarez. Marched across the sand in cuffs, still wearing his shooting jacket torn at the sleeve, smeared with ash and dirt, one side darkened with blood from a split lip. The smug confidence he’d worn so easily the day before was gone.
His Majesty reduced to a prisoner. And she’d witnessed his fall.
He walked stiffly between two officers, gaze fixed straight ahead—until it wasn’t.
The churn of the engines, the cry of seagulls, and the crash of waves all receded as álvarez’s gaze met Gaby’s.
If looks could kill, she would have dropped dead right then and there.
But she didn’t shrink, and she didn’t glare back.
She simply lifted her chin and smiled. Not wide.
Just enough to say, you lost, you vile bastard. And a woman helped bring you down.
“Avance,” his police escort ordered with a firm nudge.
He stumbled, caught himself then continued down the sand toward a gray patrol boat.
She checked on Natalie. She had finally stretched out on the cool sand, her head resting on Gaby’s thigh, eyes closed, breathing deep and even. Thank God she had missed him.
A shadow fell across them. Gaby looked up.
“Rhys.”
He was bare from the waist up, his ruined shirt discarded. A clean white bandage wrapped his torso, stark against sun-warmed skin, clearly the work of a real medic. Sand clung to his forearms. Wind and sweat had pushed his hair back, and he was still as striking as ever.
He glanced at a sleeping Natalie before lowering himself beside Gaby. A quiet exhale left him as he stretched his legs out in front of him.
“You two holding up?” he asked softly.
Gaby nodded. “Trying to. But I could ask the same of you. What did the medic say?”
“That it was more than a scratch but didn’t need stitches. He cleaned it, bandaged it, and sent me on my way.”
She narrowed her eyes, skeptical. “At your insistence, I’m sure.”
A flash of white teeth was his answer before he brushed a knuckle lightly down her arm. “Today couldn’t have happened without you, Gaby. You did good.”
As a distraction, it worked. She breathed out slowly. “Back in the muses’ wing, locked behind a gate, the fire spreading with the wind… I wasn’t sure we’d get here.”
“I had faith in you. Mateo did too. He filled me in.”
“I did what I had to, and I’d do it again.”
“I know, love. And I respect that now.”
Their eyes held. Something warm and unfinished passed between them.
“We’ve got a lot to sort out back in Miami,” he murmured.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
Mateo’s whistle cut through the moment. “Cargo’s secure!”
Rhys pushed to his feet—too easily for someone who’d been cut open hours ago. Gaby’s gaze followed the sweep of his hands brushing sand from his backside. When he turned back to her, expectant, she glanced down—straight into Natalie’s open eyes and the faint, knowing smile curving her lips.
She ignored it, took Rhys’s hand up, and then helped her sister.
Rhys guided them across the sand to the dock where one boat remained. The island’s former owner and soon-to-be convict were nowhere in sight. They crossed a short gangplank, Rhys steady at their side.
She and Natalie took a bench seat toward the back. Minutes later, Rhys joined them as they pulled away from the dock. Her sister let out a deep, hitching breath. “It’s finally over.”
Gaby slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, honey. It’s over, and you’re going home.”
As the boat entered deeper water, it picked up speed and veered right. Gaby couldn’t keep from looking at the island one last time. Smoke still rose from the ruined structures. Stone blackened. Grandeur broken.
But beyond the scars, the jungle remained lush. The cliffs still met the sea in wild, breathtaking lines. The water glittered, untouched.
The island itself wasn’t evil. It had simply been claimed by the wrong hands.
As the shoreline receded, her gaze swept from her sister—eyes closed, face tipped to the sun and wind—to Rhys, who reclined strong and solid beside her.
They weren’t riding off into the sunset.
Far from it. What came next was uncertain.
She doubted it would be easy or perfect, but it belonged to them, to be molded into whatever they chose.
She’d be there for Natalie every step of the way and hoped the same held true for Rhys. The look he’d given her earlier and the soft words and touches made her believe it might.