Chapter 12
Everett let himself into the suite at Hotel Braganza with a crooked smile still on his mouth and a duffel bag slung across his chest.
The door swung shut behind him. He stood in the quiet. The suite was generous for a hotel room, a far cry from what the Braganza had offered guests a decade ago.
The renovation had done right by the bones of the place.
Terra cotta tile stretched across the floor, warm underfoot.
The furniture was bespoke Caribbean in muted tones of teal and ivory, anchored by a four-poster bed dressed in white linen that caught the glow of the antique sconce on the far wall.
Through the tall square windows, Conrad’s town center lay quiet below, and beyond it the dark shimmer of the Atlantic shifted under a crescent moon.
Two years he’d been living here.
Long enough for the concierge to know his morning coffee order and the night porter to wave him through without a second glance.
The Braganza was the finest offering on St. Felipe, modest compared to the properties his parents had built across the Caribbean.
Modest compared to the mansion on his parents’ private island.
The three-story house sat empty tonight, the keys tucked in some dresser drawer he couldn’t remember right now.
Didn’t matter. He had no plans to move there anytime soon, despite what he told his father.
It could continue to be maintained by the caretaker who sent monthly reports to his father’s office in Connecticut.
Everett read every one.
The bougainvillea along the west terrace had overgrown the railing. The saltwater pool filtration system had been replaced. The shutters on the second floor needed repainting.
He wasn’t ready.
The house was his mother’s in every detail that mattered.
Her taste in the crown molding, her hand in the garden, her insistence on the wide veranda that wrapped around three sides so she could watch the sun set from any room.
Walking through those doors would mean inhabiting the life his parents had envisioned for him.
A life of permanence and belonging in the place they loved most.
The mansion required a man who deserved it.
The Braganza required nothing at all.
Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out one phone and then another, placing them with careful precision side by side on the nightstand next to the bed. The screens were dark.
He lifted the duffel bag over his head, unzipped it, and dumped the contents onto the bed.
Bills.
Hundreds of them.
They fanned across the white linen in uneven stacks, some landing flat, others curling at the edges where they’d been crammed in without ceremony. A cascade of dollars that spread across the mattress in a satisfying mess that would have made a different man fall to his knees with gratitude.
Three hours at the high-stakes table, riding a streak that started with blackjack and ended at a private poker game in a back room where the buy-in alone would’ve covered most people’s mortgages. The casino had been generous tonight.
Everett laughed under his breath.
Kane’s voice rolled through his head.
I have a feeling your luck is about to change.
Maybe his friend had been right.
Not that Everett needed the money.
His family’s commercial development enterprise was globally renowned. His trust fund remained untouched. The Gilliam name carried weight from Connecticut to the Caribbean, stamped on high-rises, shopping complexes, and resort properties across half a dozen island nations.
None of it had ever been the point.
He’d chosen the DEA over his father’s boardroom. Chosen the field over the fortune. Chosen to be the man who put criminals behind bars instead of the man who built the buildings they laundered money through. Yale had given him the credentials. The agency had given him purpose.
And Jamaica had taken it all and fed it through a shredder.
In the end, he’d faced the raw, brutal reality that he was no different from the men he’d put behind bars. They were the same.
And that had broken him.
Tonight, though, none of that mattered. He’d walked out of the casino a winner, rum warm in his blood and luck riding his shoulder like a reckless friend. It had been stupid. Pointless. A childish rush. He knew that.
It had also been fun as hell.
He kicked off his shoes. One landed near the sitting area.
The other hit the chair leg and spun under the table.
He didn’t care. He peeled off his shirt, dropped it on the floor, shoved his jeans down, and stepped out of them without bothering to pick them up.
By the time he was in nothing but his boxer briefs, he was grinning again.
He flopped backward onto the bed.
He bounced once. Twice. The mattress springs protested under his weight, and a laugh broke from his chest that surprised him. Full and reckless and entirely too loud for the hour.
“Yeah,” he muttered to the ceiling. “You’re gone.”
Rockstar wasted.
No question.
Bishop’s Reserve at the housewarming party.
Dark rum at the casino bar between hands.
Whatever Kane had ordered when the poker game moved to the back room.
The alcohol had stacked itself neatly inside him all evening, cooperative and warm, and now it was making its presence known with the kind of sloppy, uncomplicated joy he rarely allowed himself.
He closed his eyes.
She appeared instantly.
Remington.
That smile of hers spread wide and bright, turning her whole face into sunlight. The smile he used to believe was reserved only for him. The one Bobby had put back on her lips.
His high crashed. A freefall from the ceiling to the floor, taking the warmth and the laughter and the lightness with it. He opened his eyes and stared at the slow rotation of the ceiling fan, the blades cutting lazy arcs through the air.
The phone rang.
He turned his head toward the nightstand and froze.
The screen glowed in the dim room, illuminating the photo he’d assigned to her number.
A picture of the two of them. Her arms wrapped around his neck from behind, her lips pressed against his cheek.
His expression was unguarded in a way that made him wince now.
Eyes half closed. Mouth curved in the kind of smile that only existed when she was touching him.
He couldn’t remember who took the shot. One of the guys.
Kane or Adonis at some beach gathering that blurred with a dozen others from the years when he and Remi were a certainty.
The photos should’ve been deleted a long time ago, along with the rest of the evidence that she had once been the center of his world.
Who was he kidding?
She was still the center of his world.
But he wasn’t foolish enough to believe she was calling him. Not now. Not out of the blue, just because the rum had conjured her face behind his eyelids. He was drunk to the point of hallucinating. That was all.
He slammed his hand against the phone and silenced it.
The ringing stopped. The photo disappeared. The screen went dark.
He exhaled and gathered the scattered bills from the bed, stacking them in loose piles with movements that were slower than they should have been. His fingers felt thick and imprecise. Another sign that he’d overdone it.
Five seconds later, a different ringtone blared.
He went still.
The burner.
The sound cut through him sharp and cold.
He’d programmed it that way on purpose years ago, because that phone was never supposed to ring for casual reasons.
Only one person had that number. Only one person had ever been given the instructions on when to use it.
“If you ever need me and you can’t reach me any other way, call this number. Only this number. And only if it’s life or death,” he said, trying to stop her hands from tugging the belt from his waist and pushing his jeans to the floor. “Remington, wait … this is serious.”
“So is this …” Her giggle was infectious. She bit her bottom lip as she snatched the belt off him.
He cupped her face, his thumbs brushing her cheeks as he made her look at him. “I need you to memorize this number. This is serious.”
She gave him a mock salute, then recited the number over and over with a wide grin.
He shook his head and kissed her. Hard. When he pulled back, she was breathless. “Promise me you’ll only use it in real emergencies. Life or death, okay?”
She extended her pinky to him. “I promise.”
He looped his pinky around hers, then threw her over his shoulder.
The last time it rang, she’d been on the other end, begging him to break cover and meet her at his safe house in Kingston.
Her voice had been raw, threaded with a need that went beyond missing him.
She needed to talk to him, and she couldn’t wait.
It was too important. He’d agreed. Told her he’d be there by morning.
Started making arrangements to extract himself from the operation for forty-eight hours without blowing his cover.
He never made it.
The Jamaican cartel enforcers got to him first. His identity had been compromised, and he’d fled for his life through the backstreets of Kingston, ditching the car, the weapons, the phone that connected him to the agency.
He’d reached Ike through an old communication channel, and Ike had erased every trace of his undercover identity so the men hunting him couldn’t finish the job.
A month on the run. A month of not knowing if Remi was safe.
A month that ended with Ike finding him, and the truth about what happened while he was gone cracking his world open at the fault line.
The burner was still ringing.
Unknown number. No photo. But Remington was the only person who could call it.
It rang a third time. A fourth. A fifth.
His brain was a wall of rum and adrenaline, the two forces battling for control.
He stared at the glowing screen, every ring pulling a wire tighter inside his chest. Sixth ring.
His brain caught up with his body, and he lunged for the phone, knocking the stack of bills from the nightstand as he brought it to his ear.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t have time to.
“Everett!”
Hysterical.
Her voice shattered against his name, each syllable fractured with terror.
The rum evaporated from his blood in a single violent instant, replaced by something cold and precise that flooded his veins and sharpened the edges of the room.
“Please help me!” Tears clogged her words, distorting them until he could barely make them out. “Please. I did something … it’s bad … I don’t know … what to do … oh God … what have I done?”
“Remington.” He kept his voice level. Controlled. The voice he’d used in the field when assets were panicking and every second of composure bought another second of survival. “Where are you?”
“I’m … “ She sucked in air like she couldn’t get enough of it. “ … umm … I’m home.”
“What happened?”
The line went silent.
He waited. Pressed the phone harder against his ear as if proximity could pull the answer from her. Every muscle in his body went tight. The air conditioning hummed. He glanced at the screen to check that they were still connected. The call timer ticked upward. Fourteen seconds. Fifteen. Sixteen.
“Remington.”
A ragged breath. Then another. The sound of someone gathering the fragments of themselves.
When she spoke again, her voice was thin. Fragile.
“It’s Bobby.” The words broke apart in another wave of crying. “He’s dead.”
The sobs broke through. Deep, full-body sobs that tore from her chest with a violence that made him grip the edge of the mattress. The wrecked sounds of the woman he loved disintegrating in real time.
Everett closed his eyes.
The room pitched under him, but he stayed upright by sheer force. He did not ask how. Did not ask why. Somewhere deep in his gut, dread curled tighter, waiting. Because this was not the end of it.
He knew there was more.
“Everett … I … I …”
He heard it coming. Felt the shape of it in the hesitation, in the particular register of her breathing, in the way her voice dropped from hysteria to something flatter and more terrifying.
“I killed him,” she said, each word laced with shock. “I killed Bobby.”