Chapter 29
“I’m surprised you agreed to this,” Everett said.
Sebastian didn’t look at him. “You shouldn’t be.”
But he was, and maybe that’s why it meant so much.
Everett kept his gaze on the slope below them, where rows of coffee trees climbed the Cabrito Mountains in clean, green bands.
The morning mist hadn’t fully burned off yet.
It clung to the higher ridges and gathered in pale ribbons between the trees, softening the sharp rise of the mountain and blurring the world beyond the fields.
Hullabaloo Coffee had always been beautiful at this hour, when the mountain softened under mist. Red volcanic soil.
Glossy leaves. Clusters of ripening cherries tucked beneath the branches.
A breeze that carried the scent of wet earth, crushed leaves, and roasted beans drifted up from the worker station below.
It should have been peaceful.
Nothing about this felt peaceful.
Sebastian stood a few feet away, one boot braced on the narrow dirt path between the rows. He looked like he belonged here, dark hair touched by the damp air, shoulders rigid beneath the weight of a grief he hadn’t bothered trying to hide.
Everett had expected anger. Distance. Maybe even refusal.
He hadn’t expected friendship to still be between them, battered but not dead.
“How are the guys?” Everett asked.
Sebastian’s jaw flexed. “Fucking destroyed over this. They need to do something. But they can’t.”
Everett understood that better than Sebastian probably wanted him to.
In any other situation, Bobby’s murder would have triggered something brutal and immediate from the Stingray team.
They would have hunted the person responsible with a patience that looked a lot like professionalism until it became something else.
The kind of justice men like them only pretended they had outgrown.
But this was different.
Remington was wanted for Bobby’s murder, and Everett’s feelings for her had never been private or deniable. The team was caught between the dead man they loved and the living man asking them to protect the woman accused of killing him.
“Gabrielle is a wreck.” Sebastian dragged a hand over the back of his neck. “Trying to make sense of all of it. It’s worse with Ike … missing.”
Everett looked toward the upper ridge, where the coffee rows gave way to denser mountain growth and old footpaths that disappeared into the Cabrito wilderness, obscuring the luxury casita where Ike was hiding out.
Sebastian followed Everett’s gaze, then looked away first. “She doesn’t like thinking about losing Remi, too. They were becoming close.”
Everett’s chest tightened. Now it was his turn to look away, down the slope, where workers moved between the coffee trees with baskets strapped at their waists, their hands quick and practiced as they stripped ripe cherries from the branches.
“Britt, on the other hand, seems unfazed,” Sebastian said.
“She’s Titus Freeman’s daughter. Is that really a surprise?”
“I heard Hunter paid you a visit at the office.” Sebastian gave him a look.
“He did.”
They both knew the only reason Hunter would engage with any of them was a directive from Britt. Remi and Britt were best friends. It only made sense that she’d deploy Hunter to use resources from Titus Freeman’s organization to shield Remi from the consequences of what everyone thought she’d done.
“Good.”
The way Sebastian said it, Everett believed he meant it. He could only imagine how torn Sebastian was. But he was here, walking a line so thin it should have cut him.
Sebastian glanced at him. “Seems like you have everything covered. Why this meeting?”
Everett turned fully toward him. “Because I need you to hear me out.”
Sebastian’s expression changed. The wariness sharpened.
Everett let the mountain air fill the space between them for one more second. Downhill, someone laughed near the sorting shed, and a truck door shut.
Then he said, “I know everything that happened that night. At least everything she can remember.”
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.
“There are gaps,” Everett continued. “Big ones. Enough to make it possible that what everyone thinks happened that night didn’t happen.”
Sebastian stared at him. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“She didn’t kill Bobby.”
Sebastian scoffed. “She admitted she did it. You found her at the scene next to Bobby’s bloody, dead body. What do you mean she didn’t kill him?”
“She told me what she thought happened.”
“It happened. She stabbed him to death. The cops have a mountain of evidence that says she did.”
“All circumstantial.” Everett held Sebastian’s stare. “They don’t have proof that she stabbed him.”
Sebastian turned and walked a few steps down the row. He stopped beside a coffee tree heavy with red cherries, his hand closing around one of the branches without pulling anything from it.
Everett stayed where he was.
Push too hard, and Sebastian would shut down. Hold too much back, and he’d never believe it.
So Everett put the entire thing on the table.
“She doesn’t have any memory of plunging the machete into Bobby fourteen times. None at all,” he said, then gave Sebastian the rundown of what Remington had told him about that night. Everything except the truth of what Bobby had done to him years ago. That was a wound better left untouched.
Sebastian stepped back onto the path. “You really believe she was knocked unconscious long enough for some other killer, lurking on the property, to watch the fight, get lucky when she hit her head, sneak in, finish Bobby off, go upstairs and kill the woman Bobby was sleeping with, then escape without being seen.”
When he said it aloud, it sounded absurd.
Everett knew that.
He also knew it was true.
Or close enough to the truth that every instinct he had refused to let go of it.
Everett said, “I think we can’t possibly know what happened because she was out cold when Bobby was murdered.
I felt the bump on Remington’s head that night.
It was bad enough for me to wonder if Bobby was abusive to her.
A fall that produces that kind of knot could knock her out for a while.
Twenty minutes. Thirty. Easily. That’s an eternity for a murderer. ”
Sebastian’s face gave nothing away.
“And when I told her about the woman found dead in the house, she was stunned. She insisted she’d only killed Bobby, not anyone else.” Everett’s voice dropped. “But I don’t think she killed anyone.”
Sebastian’s stare hardened. “She’s the reason you’re seeing it this way.”
“She’s the reason I care this much.”
“That’s not the same as being objective.”
“No,” Everett said. “It isn’t.”
Sebastian looked almost surprised by the admission.
Everett took a step closer. The red soil gave under his foot. “If this were any other case, any other client, any other woman, I’d still dig. I’d see the holes. You know I would.”
Sebastian didn’t answer.
“That’s all I’m asking for. The chance to dig deeper. Find the loose thread that proves she’s innocent.”
“And if there is no loose thread?”
“Then we leave the island … for good.”
Sebastian’s expression shifted. Disappointment. Anger. Grief. Maybe all three.
The wind moved through the coffee trees, leaves brushing each other in a soft, restless hush.
“I can’t convince the guys to help with this,” Sebastian said.
“I’m not asking for help from the others.
” Everett didn’t need them. At least not yet.
He’d already had a conference call with Adonis, Rocco, and Hunter to start the investigation into the dead mistress and any other enemies that Bobby might have had outside of the PC-5.
That island cartel angle, he’d handle himself with a personal visit to Remi’s father. He owed the man that much.
Sebastian looked back at him.
Everett reached inside his jacket and pulled out the envelope Faroe da Costa had given him. He held it out.
“I just need you.”
Sebastian’s eyes dropped to the envelope before he took it. “What is this?”
“Faroe’s proposal.”
Sebastian pulled out the papers, unfolded them, and scanned the first page. The annoyance came fast.
“How did you get this?”
“Faroe came to me to lobby for his idea. He thinks if I tell Serena it has merit, she’ll overrule you and let him implement it.”
Sebastian gave him a flat look. “Of course he does.”
“You denied it.”
“Because it’s a waste of money.”
“It’s redundant,” Everett said. “Not useless.”
“It gives a marginal increase in protection at an excessive cost.”
“But it doesn’t weaken the security.”
Sebastian’s eyes lifted from the page.
Everett held his stare. The smell of ripe coffee cherries rose under the damp heat, sweet and faintly fermented, mixing with the bitter smoke from a small burn pile somewhere down the slope.
Sebastian folded the papers back into the envelope. “How does this help you?”
“We only have days before the cops finish working through my connections and come looking for us at your bungalow. We need to be gone before then.”
“To where?”
“A secure location that’s never been used by Stingray for any client.”
Sebastian’s face changed before he could stop it. “In the Breaklands?”
Everett nodded. “In the old guard house.”
For the first time since Everett arrived, something almost like humor broke through Sebastian’s expression.
He chuckled. “I’ve heard stories about you and Remi and that guard house.”
Everett looked at him. “And they say women are the gossips.”
“You denying it?”
“No.”
Sebastian’s brows lifted.
Everett took the envelope back. “It’s a special place for us.”
“I gathered that.”
“For more reasons than you’re imagining, so wipe that look off your face.”
Sebastian’s mouth twitched.
“It’s isolated,” Everett said. “Familiar. Defensible. And it will feel more like home to Remington. Something we both need.”
The guard house sat on the most rugged terrain of the Breaklands, near the points where the cliffs dropped dramatically into the sea.
The area was rarely patrolled by the King Family security team because of its natural security barriers.
Minimal retrofitting of the area would be required to ensure they were not found by the cops.
“Adonis, Rocco, and Hunter are on board to help me get it upgraded,” Everett said.
“But you need Faroe and the security team busy with a major project on the other side.”
“Yes.”
Sebastian looked back at the envelope. “You want me to approve a security plan I already rejected.”
“I want you to let Faroe win one.”
Sebastian’s expression soured. “That may be the cruelest thing you’ve asked me for yet.”
“It won’t kill you.” Everett waited.
Sebastian didn’t answer. Everett suspected his hesitation had nothing to do with being forced to indulge Faroe again and everything to do with not wanting to do more for a woman he still believed killed Bobby.
“Look,” Everett said. “If I’m wrong about her, you’ve lost nothing. Faroe gets his project. Serena feels safer. You have overlapping security coverage for the area.”
Sebastian’s face remained hard.
“If I’m right,” Everett continued, “you’ll have helped me prove it.”
“You mean helped her.”
“No.” Everett stepped closer, making sure Sebastian heard every word. “Do it for me, not for her.”
Sebastian looked at him for a long moment, and something in his expression shifted, not softer exactly, but more resigned.
“For your sake,” Sebastian said, “I hope you’re right about this.”
“Is that a yes?”
“That’s a don’t ask me for another fucking thing after this.”
Everett nodded once. “I’ll respect that for at least twelve hours.”
Sebastian gave him a look.
Everett slid the envelope back into his jacket. “Twenty-four if you’re lucky.”
“Get out of here before I change my mind.”
Everett started down the trail. He was almost to the lower path when he saw Greta Zaniewski. She stood at the edge of the awning with both hands wrapped around a cup of black coffee she didn’t seem to be drinking. Her eyes were rimmed red, her mouth drawn tight as she stared out over the fields.
Everett shifted toward the service path behind the drying racks.
He had no desire to cross paths with Bobby’s mother.
“I’m sure the day my son died was the happiest day of your life.”
Everett stopped.
The words cut through the soft rustle of leaves. For one hard second, everything in him wanted to keep walking. For another, he wanted to turn around and tell her what Bobby had done, how much damage her precious son had left behind.
Instead, he turned. “I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Zaniewski.”
Her mouth twisted. “Are you?”
He let the question pass.
Greta stepped away from the awning, the untouched coffee trembling in her grip. “It’s a double loss, finding out his wife was the one who stabbed him. Remi was his whole world, and she never appreciated him. She treated him like he was less than. Like he could never live up to you.”
Everett kept his face still. “I don’t know anything about their marriage. I stayed away.”
“But you don’t have to anymore, do you?” Her voice sharpened. “Now you can swoop in and take one more thing from my Bobby.”
“I’ve never taken anything from him.”
“You got everything he should have had.” The bitterness in her voice was strange, as if she’d been carrying a grudge he hadn’t known existed.
“The son of Eric Gilliam wanted for nothing,” she continued. “But he also wanted for everything.”
Everett went still. “You know nothing about my family or me.”
Greta’s face hardened. “You always thought you were better than my Bobby.”
“No,” Everett said. “Bobby thought that. I stopped trying to convince him he was wrong.”
He left her there. The service path dipped behind the drying racks and cut toward the lower road. Everett took it fast. He opened the SUV door and looked back up the mountain. Greta’s strange bitterness and whatever history fed it would have to wait.
Remington couldn’t.