Chapter 33
What a fucking relief.
We’ve got a week before Ingram is back.
Ingram being out of the picture gives GhostEye a huge amount of time.
I’ve seen Ava hack into university systems and small companies in mere hours.
Hell, the reason she even got mixed up with GhostEye in the first place is that she won their hacking contest. The hacker who hacked the hackers.
I trust that girl to dig until she reaches daylight.
I’m sure she’s slept very little since Rio knocked on her door last night after mine.
I push inside the GhostEye offices. They’re humming with tension. Santi passes me on his way out, tipping his cowboy hat before heading back out to the pastures.
Ava sits at her station with three monitors lit up in front of her, face pale from the screen glow. Enzo is at his station behind her—they work back-to-back—and he taps his keyboard methodically.
Rio is at the table, and his usual, ironed, suave demeanor is slightly rumpled. There’s a condensation ring on the table near his elbow and a second empty mug beside the first.
None of them has stopped moving for hours. There’s even a blanket and pillow out on a loveseat in the corner by the coffee machine.
They’ve been here most of the night, I’m sure.
They knew one thing: by morning, I could walk into this room carrying word that Freya was red-lighting the whole operation, and that would be it.
They’d have to stop. Whatever they found before I arrived was gold, so they weren’t going to stop mining with what little time they might have had.
Thankfully, I’m not here to deliver that news. She and I—we’re partners. But this goes beyond that.
I don’t ask easily. I never have. And she knew exactly what she was putting on the line when she handed this to me—to Rio. Her career. Her name.
I feel the responsibility lock in. I won’t take it lightly. We need to work fast.
Rio lifts his coffee mug to me. “Morning.”
I nod. “Morning.”
He gazes at me intently, one question in his eyes: What did Freya say?
I stare him down with one answer in mine: The conversation never happened.
Somehow, in the magical silent language of men, he knows I’m not here to stop them.
I sit down on the side of the conference table nearest to Ava’s desk.
“We’ve been digging all night,” she says without looking up.
I rest my elbows on my knees. “What did you find?”
She shifts enough for me to see a monitor lit up with just code, like I’ve walked onto a sci-fi set.
“We started with Zoe’s call logs last night,” Ava says. “That was the easiest thing to breach.” She moves her mouse and opens a spreadsheet, then points at one number. “This number began occurring daily on Zoe’s cell logs about six weeks before her death.”
I lean over and see the pattern. “You think that’s our guy. Maybe Mace?”
She nods. “We’re working on that assumption for now. As you might guess, the number tracks to a burner phone. It took a while to trace, but I followed the SIM activation batch. It leads back to a store in Nevada.”
Nevada? Feels a long way for Ingram, or whoever killed Zoe, to go for a burner phone. Still, if he’s willing be part of a woman’s death, a long drive isn’t exactly out of bounds.
Ava switches screens. “We also managed to get into her bank statements last night, following the lead on the lottery win she told her parents about. There.” She points to a transaction on a screenshot.
“Ten thousand dollars. If this was a scratch ticket or some other win, she would have likely deposited cash. But this sudden windfall was transferred by a Nevada LLC called Avarice Inc.”
Enzo turns around, looking tired behind his glasses. “I’ve been working on tracing the financial information for Avarice…”
“Are you close?” Ava asks.
He glances over his shoulder, but barely, as if she’s asked that enough times to make him feel he should have cracked it by now.
The room goes quiet except for the low hum of a few laptop fans, the rapid tapping of Enzo’s keyboard, and the clicking from Ava’s mouse.
Rio walks over to the window with his coffee and stares out. I wonder if he’s thinking about Mariana. I know the feeling of waiting many years for justice to finally be within your grasp.
I’ll never forget the night of Ava’s so-called escape from captivity.
I know the pain of waiting…not knowing if the hero or the villain would win.
Back then, it was Ava’s life in the balance. Now it’s Rio’s vengeance, Freya’s career, her safety, our kid’s future—all tied to the same thin thread: whether the truth comes out clean or comes out covered in blood.
We need this done before Ingram returns.
Finally, Enzo taps his keyboard with one triumphant thud. “I’m in.”
We all crowd into the space behind him.
He scrolls down the statements on his screen. “Shit. There aren’t many transactions.” He clicks again. “I need a yearly view.” A few more clicks. And then he freezes.
I lean over to get a better look at his screen.
Rio mutters, “Damn.”
There, on the screen, is Zoe Marshall’s name and bank details. A transfer of ten thousand dollars. The transaction date was five days before her accident.
The room falls silent as if Zoe just died for a second time in front of all of us. The air feels thicker, heavier. Zoe stops being a case for a second and becomes a young woman again.
Rio steps in closer, the muscles along his jaw tightening. He’s not blinking, not breathing right, not even pretending to be calm anymore. This isn’t GhostEye’s Rio. This is Mariana’s Rio.
He points at the screen. “Who owns the account?” His words carry something volatile.
Enzo scrolls again, taking in more detail from what he found. He furrows his eyebrows. “This is strange… This account was opened ten years ago, but it barely shows any activity.” He’s talking to himself more than to us.
“We just need the name,” Rio says, impatiently.
Enzo ignores him and continues to search.
Rio exhales once with frustration.
Then, ice makes its way through Enzo’s veins. “No…”
Whatever air was left in the room vanishes.
My blood runs cold when I see him like this. “What is it?”
“There was another transfer of ten thousand ten months ago. To a woman named Emily Vargas.”
Ava scrunches her nose. “Emily?”
Enzo’s scrolling faster now, following a thread none of us can see. “Eighteen months ago—another ten grand. To Lauren Bishop.”
What the fuck…
Enzo rips his glasses off. “A little over two years ago…a payment to Alyssa Reed.” He shoves his fingers into his eye sockets.
There’s no oxygen in the room as we all calculate what this might mean.
Three payouts before Zoe.
Rio snaps his fingers toward his brother and walks to his desk. He sits and begins typing. “Enzo. Give me those names again.”
I know exactly what he’s doing, and I dread the outcome. He’s searching for death certificates.
Only a few minutes after Enzo gives him the names, Rio announces the exact terrifying scenario we’ve all been hoping isn’t true.
“All these women are dead.” The blue light of Rio’s computer catches every sharp angle of his face, and his eyes illuminate with rage. “Car accidents.”
His gaze snaps over to Enzo’s identical eyes. As if sharing twin telepathy, Rio silently asks if Avarice ever paid Mariana.
Enzo clicks farther back in the files and lifts an apologetic gaze.
There’s nothing on Mariana.
The brothers stare at each other without blinking for what feels like an eternity. Ava flicks her gaze between them, registering the same sadness I do.
There’s no evidence for Mariana’s murder in those bank accounts.
But we still have a serial killer on our hands.
And Ingram covered it up. Or he fucking did it? If it was a cover-up, did he know about all these other women, too?
Is Ingram Mace?
Surely, the Marshalls, or someone in this tiny town, would have noticed Ingram and Zoe were close? There aren’t a lot of places to hide in Echo Valley. There are still too many questions.
Ava puts a hand on Enzo’s shoulder. “Do you need a break? I can take over.” She smooths her hand through his hair, trying to give him some comfort because it’s clear to see that, despite it not being his fault, he feels he failed his brother.
Ava is gentle with him but still in command of the job that needs to be done. “We still need the account holder’s name.”
Enzo takes her hand and kisses the back of it. “You need a rest more than I do. I got this.”
And I turn back to yet another question reeling through my mind. These other names aren’t women from Echo Valley.
“Rio,” I say. “The other women, were their death certificates issued in California?”
Rio turns back to the screen where he found the certificates as a matter of public record. Thank God for people searching up their genealogy.
Rio’s eyebrows knit together. “All three of these women have Nevada certificates.”
This isn’t pointing cleanly to Ingram.
“It’s unlikely Mace is Ingram then,” I say.
Ava turns toward me. “Explain.”
“He couldn’t be running across state lines like this. And does he have the money for these transfers? On a cop’s salary with a family—unless he has some other source we don’t know about.” My wheels are spinning.
“It’s possible he has a source,” she offers. “And a double life is possible, too.”
“It is, yeah. But unlikely. Traveling to Nevada several times a year to meet women, pay them, kill them, and cover it up without his wife noticing? Ingram coaches the Little League team; he’s active in our community.
There are only twenty-four hours in a day.
We’ve got three women in Nevada paid by Avarice in two years. And that’s only what we know about.”
Rio taps the table with two fingers. “But Ingram is involved. He lied and omitted evidence in Zoe’s case.”
“He knew something,” I agree. “But maybe he wasn’t protecting himself.”
If Ingram’s not the monster at the center of this, just the one standing guard at the door, then whoever’s inside that room is still out there…and Freya is the one rattling the handle from the other side without even knowing it.
Fuck, I need to go. I grab my jacket, but before I get to the door, Enzo says three words that slice through the thick air like a blast.
“I found Mace.”
My pulse kicks hard against my ribs. Whoever this son of a bitch is, I need his name before Freya gets any closer to the mess he’s made.
“Name. Now,” Rio demands, already halfway to his brother’s shoulder.
“Michael A.C…Ingram.” He glances up and meets my eyes. “Mace.”
The room fractures. My heart rate kicks into overdrive.
Rio’s jaw goes rigid. “Ingram’s brother? The one who took a job out of town…” he seethes.
Ingram wasn’t shutting down evidence for himself.
He was covering for blood.
Something cold moves through my chest, and it’s hard to swallow.
“Ingram’s trip to Florida”—my veins are ice—“maybe it’s an alibi…”
Ava turns sharply, dread saturating her features.
I head for the door. “He conveniently leaves town right when she’s working highway duty alone?”
Rio’s eyes darken. “An alibi?”
“If Ingram tipped off his brother that someone was on his tail…”
Dread and rage ignite in my bones. I think back to the wrench at the quarry. Mace could have been here watching Freya for weeks.
I need out of here now. Freya’s out there in the middle of nowhere, likely with no reception and blind trust that Ingram being gone means she’s safe.
“I’m coming.” Rio unlocks his desk drawer and pulls out a gun. “I’m not fucking missing this.”
We rush out of the offices, running, not walking.
It’s not measured. It’s not even fully formed. It’s instinct. The oldest, rawest part of me—the part that loves her, that fears for her, lights up like a flare.
Nobody is touching the mother of my child.
Nobody is coming near her.
Not Ingram. Not his brother.
Not the fucking wind unless it has permission.
We move swiftly in the harsh brightness of the winter sun, and it feels like miles before we throw ourselves into my truck and it roars to life.
“If he touches her…” Rio starts.
“He won’t.” My voice is a blade. “Because we’re going to get to her first.”
And if we don’t?
Someone will die.