Chapter 39
The compound looked like the mountain had grown a fortress. Reinforced concrete walls cut a modern silhouette through the rainforest, all sharp lines, sleek concrete planes, hidden lighting, and a low, aggressive profile that made the building feel impossible to breach.
Hunter slowed beside him. “What the fuck is this place?”
“The real headquarters for Stingray Security,” Everett said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thick black steel card. The etched outline of a stingray caught a thread of light across its smooth surface.
He had expected it to feel foreign after the week he’d spent as an outsider on his own team.
It didn’t.
The cool metal settled against his palm, familiar and steady, and the ache that moved through him was sharper than he wanted to admit.
Everett pressed the card to the reader.
The system scanned, clicked, and unlocked the double steel doors.
Hunter stepped inside behind him, his gaze moving over the polished concrete floors, industrial ceiling panels, recessed lighting, and the red pinpoints of security cameras watching from precise intervals.
“This place looks like a five-star hotel got paranoid and hired military contractors.”
“That’s not far off.”
They moved through wide corridors broken by hidden doors, biometric pads, and glass sections that reflected them back in dark angles.
The deeper they went, the more the compound came alive around them.
A low electronic hum moved under the walls.
Somewhere nearby, machinery shifted. The faint scent of espresso cut through the cold, clean air of expensive filtration.
Hunter took it all in without slowing. “You people are hiding a black site in the mountains?”
“More or less.”
As they neared the command center, voices rolled into the hallway.
Everett recognized them before he reached the door.
All of them.
The whole team was here. Ike, Sebastian, Kane, Lachlan, Rocco, Adonis. They were working a case … without him.
The realization hit harder than he expected. But his love for Remington made it impossible for him to regret the decisions he’d made. She was his top priority. She was his only priority.
Everett stepped into the open doorway with Hunter behind him.
The command center stretched wide and bright beyond the threshold.
A mirrored conference table reflected the wall of high-definition monitors.
Maps, documents, and surveillance windows covered the screens in shifting grids.
A holographic case board glowed over one end of the room, layered with routes, timestamps, and photographs.
The black granite coffee bar along the side wall looked untouched except for the espresso machine still steaming faintly.
On the largest screen, infrared footage played in muted tones.
Ike didn’t look away from the monitors. “You’re late.”
Sebastian stood near the table with his arms folded. “We expected you twenty minutes ago.”
Lachlan glanced over his shoulder. “And your arse better not blame Hunter.”
Kane, seated at the far end of the table, pointed toward the empty chair. “Get in here. We need to brief you on options for Remi.”
Rocco sat hunched over a map, eating strawberries from a bowl as if this were a normal evening and not the moment Everett’s world had imploded. He looked up with a smug lift of his brow that said he’d known how this would go.
A cackle of laughter cut through the room. Adonis leaned back in his chair. “Bitch, what are you waiting on? The minute I got your message about moving up Remi’s transport, I knew something went sideways.” His gaze shifted to Hunter. “Glad you were able to fill in for me. Sort of.”
Hunter gave him a flat look. “Your gratitude needs work.”
“Nope. I don’t think it does.” The grin spread wider on Adonis’s face.
Ike turned from the screen and walked toward Hunter. He extended a hand. “Ike da Costa.”
Hunter shook it, his eyes narrowing. “I’m talking to a dead man?”
“Don’t believe everything you hear.” Ike released his hand, then looked past him to Everett. “I have my reasons for laying low. But when my friends need me, I don’t let them down.”
Everett wasn’t ready for how badly he needed to hear that.
He looked around the room again.
They were all here.
For him. For Remington.
Everett cleared his throat. “I thought I’d have to beg you guys to help us. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting this.”
Lachlan’s expression softened only a fraction. “Family doesn’t always see eye to eye.”
Kane leaned back in his chair. “Doesn’t stop us from being family.”
“And we know how to admit when we’re wrong,” Sebastian said.
Everett looked to Rocco. “You told them what we found.”
“Every detail.” Rocco tossed another strawberry into his mouth. “They’re fully briefed. Now we need to brief you. We’ve been busy since your call.”
Sebastian stepped closer and rested a hand on Everett’s shoulder, then pointed toward the main screen. “That proves what you already know. Remi didn’t kill Bobby. Someone else did.”
Everett stared at the thermal footage. “What am I looking at?”
Ike moved back to the console. “Bobby didn’t have video surveillance inside the house, but he had thermal cameras on a closed circuit.”
“The cops missed it?” Everett asked.
“Come on, we’re talking Bobby here. They didn’t know how to find it.” Ike raised an eyebrow. “But I did. Kane got inside, pulled the devices, and brought them here.”
Kane didn’t look up from his laptop. “You’re welcome.”
The footage rewound, then started again.
The living room appeared in a strange, colorless heat.
Furniture registered as muted shapes, the couch and side table cooler than the bodies moving through the room.
Walls and floor sank into dark purples and blacks.
A lamp near the corner glowed in a small, useless hotspot.
Two figures burned brighter than everything else.
Bobby and Remington.
No one had to ask which figure was Remington. The braid gave her away, a cool dark line against the bright heat of her body. When she turned, the braid shifted with her, a distinct shape moving against her shoulder.
The men were harder to read. Bobby was a bright torso and head, featureless in the thermal haze. The third figure near the patio doors looked the same at first, anonymous heat wearing the shape of a man.
Everett’s hands curled at his sides as the scene unfolded.
Remington moved first, furious and erratic, exactly as she had described. Bobby kept distance between them. The machete flashed on the feed only as an object disturbing movement, not as a detail. Then Bobby’s attention cut past her toward the patio doors.
A third heat signature hovered there.
“Timestamp matches her memory,” Rocco said quietly.
On the screen, Bobby grabbed Remington and shoved her aside.
Her body struck the side table.
Everett’s vision tunneled as she dropped to the floor and did not get up.
The room around him seemed to hold its breath, though every man there stayed focused on the monitor.
Bobby took one step toward the third figure.
The attacker charged.
The first swing was fast. Brutal. Bobby tried to recoil and lift an arm, but the figure came in close and kept swinging.
Thermal stripped away blood and color, but it made the violence worse in a different way.
Bodies flared, collided, separated. Bobby’s heat signature jerked under each impact until he collapsed near Remington on the floor.
The attacker stood over him.
Then he turned toward Remington.
Everett moved before he realized it.
Sebastian’s hand tightened on his shoulder.
The attacker hovered over her limp body for several long minutes. The heat signature of his body obscured his actions. Then he retreated through the patio doors and disappeared from view.
No one spoke.
On the screen, minutes passed in rapid sequence.
The third figure returned carrying another body, one with a lower, dimmer heat signature.
Lois. Already dead or close enough that the thermal system barely read her as a living person.
The attacker carried her up the stairs and vanished from the frame.
When he came down again, he moved through the living room with quick purpose, adjusting the scene, taking what he needed, leaving behind the story he wanted the cops to find.
“The whole thing took under twenty minutes,” Ike said. “Murder, staging, exit.”
The footage advanced.
Remington remained on the floor.
Everett watched for movement until his eyes burned. After the timestamp jumped forward, her fingers shifted. A small turn of the head followed. Then her body curled, subtle and disoriented.
“That’s Remi regaining consciousness,” Rocco said.
Everett already knew.
The footage rolled forward until his heat signature entered the room.
Ike paused the video.
The command center stayed silent, the frozen image bathing every face in ghostly light.
Rocco set the bowl of strawberries aside. “This is enough to convince us because we know where it came from. It proves another person was in that house, attacked Bobby, and staged Lois. But admissibility, chain of custody, and the fact that we obtained it before the cops did could get messy fast.”
“It also doesn’t identify the killer,” Kane said.
Rocco nodded. “A jury might see reasonable doubt. They might also see a confusing thermal video with three blobs.”
Ike folded his arms. “The bigger problem is that Francois found the murder weapon.”
Everett’s head snapped toward him. “What?”
“The machete used on Bobby,” Ike said. “It has Remi’s fingerprints all over it.”
Everett’s mind raced. “The killer took it from the house.”
“And either dumped it where it could be found or made sure the cops knew where to look,” Kane said.
Sebastian’s face hardened. “That’s hard to overcome with a frame-up story, even with the footage.”
Kane looked back at the paused screen. “Then we find who killed Bobby and prove Remi didn’t do it and make the killer pay for what he did to Bobby.”
Adonis added, “In that order.”
Lachlan turned toward Everett. “But first, we need to know what you want to do about Remi.”
Everett’s chest tightened. “Where are they taking her?”
Adonis’s expression lost its humor. “My contacts at both police stations say she’ll be processed at St. Felipe first. Instead of moving her to the jail on St. Basil, they’re transferring her to Tiverton for a seventy-two-hour hold.”
“Tiverton?” Everett went cold. The name pulled up every ugly detail he knew about the place. Maximum security. Violent offenders from across the Caribbean.
And Francois wanted to lock Remington up with them for thirty-six hours because his ego was bruised.
“You have two options,” Sebastian said.
Everett turned toward him.
Sebastian pointed to the case board. “Option one is Octavia Constant. Best criminal defense attorney in the islands for charges like this. We hire her tonight and have her argue Remi isn’t a flight risk, shouldn’t be transferred to Tiverton, and needs to remain in St. Felipe custody while the Donald Eastman lead and thermal footage are reviewed. ”
“That keeps us inside the system,” Lachlan said. “Which matters if the case gets to court.”
Rocco added, “But it depends on a judge moving fast, St. Basil not pushing back, and Francois not finding a way to justify the transfer anyway.”
Everett understood the shape of the trap before Sebastian gave him the second option.
“And option two?” he asked.
Ike answered this time. “We prove them right.”
Everett looked at him.
Ike’s expression didn’t shift. “We remove Remi from police custody and hide her until we have definitive proof of her innocence.”
The room seemed to tighten around the words.
Sebastian held Everett’s gaze. “Both options are risky. Both can backfire on Remi. If we keep this legal and lose, she goes to Tiverton. If we extract her and anything goes wrong, every accusation against her gets worse.”
Lachlan’s voice came quieter. “That’s why it has to be your call.”
Everett looked from one man to the next.
Kane. Lachlan. Rocco. Sebastian. Adonis. Ike.
“She’s your woman,” Ike said. “Always has been. Always will be. You know what she’d want better than any of us.”
From the edge of the room, Hunter stepped out of the shadows. He hadn’t said anything since they arrived.
“This is a decision you make with your heart,” Hunter said, “not your head.”
Everett pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. Images flashed in his mind.
Remington on the floor.
The attacker hovering over her.
Francois dragging her across the beach.
Her eyes begging him to stay hidden.
He realized with crystal clarity that what Remi would want him to do didn’t matter.
Everett opened his eyes and faced the team.
“Tell me how we get her out.”