36
Trust but verify
Lawson’s Landing, early March
The phone buzzed against the nightstand, slicing through hard-won sleep like a blade.
Rafferty squinted against the screen’s glare, blinking to make out the name.
He sat up, his instincts kicking in before full consciousness did.
He answered in a rasp. “Hannigan. You have something?” His hand scrubbed over the fuzz on his scalp, the stubble still unfamiliar after weeks of baldness.
He was growing his hair out at Sullivan’s insistence. For the upcoming royal wedding.
“It’s done,” SAC Hannigan, DEA Country Attaché, Brazil, replied.
“Define done,” Rafferty said, low and sharp. He had received no warning that they were this close to a takedown.
“We executed a joint op on the compound south of the Venezuelan border. Hostile engagement. Firefight turned into a full-blown detonation — the place was rigged with incendiaries. Once the blaze was contained, we did a sweep. Recovered Kamila Carvalho’s body in the master suite.
Coroner’s got it now for DNA confirmation. ”
“And the others?”
“Luis Barbosa and a few others in the top echelon confirmed KIA. We captured several detainees. Foot soldiers, not shot-callers. But they’re cooperating. DEA headquarters is calling this a terminal hit on the Fantasma Cartel.”
Rafferty didn’t exhale. He just sat there, heart hammering. “I want visuals. DNA proof.”
Trust but verify.
While gathering evidence, he’d secured everything in a safety deposit box at a bank in Manaus — including a few strands of hair he’d discreetly taken from Kamila’s brush.
It was that collection, meticulously compiled, that he eventually turned over to the Brazilian authorities in exchange for immunity from prosecution for Oliveira’s death.
“You’ll get it. Lawson, I mean this — your intel, your evidence stash from Manaus — this op wouldn’t have landed without it. I know it came at a cost, but you helped dismantle a dangerous organization.”
The line disconnected. There was no relief.
Only disbelief.
Could it really be over?
His phone pinged.
He tapped the message. A secure link. Password-protected.
He entered it and opened the files.
Images populated slowly. Fire damage. Destroyed infrastructure.
Then the bedroom.
The Malfatti landscape above the charred fourposter bed.
A bed he had slept in.
Then her.
Her body was eerily intact; the flames had barely danced over her skin — like hell was simply biding its time to finish the job.
It was Kamila.
He set the phone down with a heavy hand.
He got dressed and took his morning coffee out onto the back veranda, eyes fixed on the tree line beyond which Brandy-Lyn’s cabin stood.
He wanted to rush over and share the good news.
That the danger hanging over him, his family, them , was finally over.
That he was free. Free to love her. Free to talk about a future with her.
But he couldn’t.
Because since that morning — the one where he finally blurted out the ugly truth surrounding the accident — everything had changed.
His mother had overheard. And now she moved differently around him.
Quietly. Carefully.
Like she was tiptoeing through a cage that housed something wild. She handed him things without meeting his eyes. Kept her voice light, all sugary sweet and cheerful. As if she were trying not to startle the monster she suddenly believed might live inside him.
If Brandy-Lyn ever looked at him like that — like she didn’t quite recognize him, like she wasn’t sure she was safe …
That would destroy him.
He tossed the rest of the coffee into the grass.
And ran, a thousand regrets nipping at his heels.