Chapter 44
Mistake was an understatement.
Why had she let the truth slip out?
With everything Everett was doing to clear her name, this was absolutely not the time to tell him Bobby was his half-brother.
Remi paced across the living room to the back windows and stared out at the darkening sky.
The jungle crowded close behind the guard house, thick and tangled beyond the hidden security line.
A single trail, almost impossible to spot unless a person already knew it was there, cut through the foliage and disappeared into the steep, uneven terrain of the Breaklands.
Worry clawed at her, but not because Everett was out there alone.
He knew these lands as well as she did. The escapes they’d made across the Breaklands as teenagers were etched into both their memories. He had his phone, his gun, and enough tactical skill to survive anything lurking in the brush.
She was worried about what state of mind he’d be in when he came back.
How was she supposed to comfort him after blowing up his entire world?
The minute she’d told him the truth, he had pushed away from her with such force she nearly tumbled off the couch.
He’d shot to his feet, staring at her like he didn’t know whether to believe her or hate her for saying it.
“What did you say?”
Her voice had shaken when she repeated the truth. “Bobby was your half-brother. That’s why he hated you so much. He thought you had the life he was supposed to have.”
“That’s a lie.” Everett rubbed both hands over his head, pacing the living room like the walls had closed around him. “He lied to you.”
That was when she realized what she had done.
She hadn’t just exposed Bobby’s secret. She had shattered the fairytale Everett had carried about his parents.
The scion of an old-money Connecticut family falling head over heels in love with a smart, fearless Black student leader on Yale’s campus long before interracial relationships were mainstream.
His father fought racism, family pressure, and threats of disinheritance to hold on to the woman he knew he’d spend the rest of his life with.
The Gilliam family eventually came around, embraced his mother, and then retired, stepping aside to let his parents take the commercial development business into a new era.
It was the kind of love story people polished until it gleamed.
And Remi had cracked it down the middle.
Telling Everett about Bobby meant telling him his father had cheated.
That Eric Gilliam had betrayed the woman Everett loved more than anyone in the world.
That the man he’d admired, trusted, and measured himself against had done something ugly enough to create Bobby Zaniewski and cruel enough to leave him outside the life Everett had inherited.
It was too much to put on him.
“Okay.” Remi had moved toward him slowly. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.”
He recoiled from her.
“Why did you believe him?” Everett’s voice dropped low and lethal.
Remi froze.
“Did he have proof?”
She nodded because lying now would only make it worse.
“DNA proof?”
“Yes.” Her throat tightened. “He ran his DNA against yours. It proved the two of you shared a father.”
For one terrible second, Everett only stared at her.
Then he grabbed his shirt, shoved it on with rough, jerky movements, and walked out the back door into the jungle without another word.
That was hours ago.
Remi folded her arms across her middle and looked toward the trail again. Shadows had thickened beneath the trees, turning every palm frond and twisted vine into shapes her imagination wanted to mistrust.
He would come back.
He had to come back.
The computer dinged behind her.
Remi turned toward the living room, where Everett’s monitor glowed from the desk. A notification box flashed in the corner of the screen.
Search complete.
The least she could do was be useful while she waited.
She crossed to the desk and sat in Everett’s chair, the leather still holding the faint warmth of him. The search window showed several results tied to Lois Gaston’s image, but the top file wasn’t under Lois’s name.
Henrietta Boisson.
Remi frowned and clicked it open.
The first page loaded with a federal case summary, a witness designation, and a heavily redacted identity history. A facial recognition note sat near the top.
Probable match: Lois Gaston / Henrietta Boisson.
Her pulse kicked.
Lois Gaston wasn’t Lois Gaston.
Remi leaned closer to the screen and read faster.
Henrietta Boisson had been from Haiti. Years ago, she had entered a secure federal witness program after testifying in the trial against Yvette Toulouse, better known in the DEA files as the Haitian Honey.
Toulouse had run one of the most prolific narcotics trafficking cartels in the region for nearly a decade before the case against her finally broke open.
Henrietta’s testimony had helped put her away.
After the trial, Henrietta had been given a new identity, French citizenship, and reconstructive surgery to alter her appearance. Two years ago, she exited the protected program.
No official contact since.
Remi sat back slowly.
The mistress found dead in Bobby’s bedroom had been a protected witness in a DEA narcotics case.
A case from the same world Everett had lived in before the DEA reassigned him to the Palmchat Islands.
That could not be a coincidence.
Her fingers moved over the keyboard, clumsy at first, then faster as she searched for Yvette Toulouse. News results surfaced first. Old headlines about the Haitian Honey. Trial coverage. Cartel violence. Conviction. Sentencing.
Toulouse had been sent to a supermax prison in the United States.
A year ago, she’d been found dead in her cell.
Suicide by hanging, according to the report.
Remi’s skin prickled.
She dug deeper, following archived references, cross-links, and redacted case numbers until the search system opened a file that made her stomach drop.
Lead undercover special agent: Everett Gilliam.
The room seemed to tilt.
Everett had been the agent who blew the case wide open.
He had helped take down Yvette Toulouse, and now one of the witnesses from that case had ended up dead in Bobby’s house.
Remi stared at the screen, every earlier assumption rearranging itself into something darker.
Had Bobby known who Lois was?
Had he seduced her because of her connection to Everett?
Or had Lois come to Bobby because of something tied to the Haitian Honey case?
Bobby and Lois being murdered together didn’t look like an affair gone wrong anymore. It looked like a message. A trap. A thread pulled from Everett’s past and knotted around Remi’s throat.
She grabbed the notebook beside the keyboard and started writing.
Henrietta Boisson.
Yvette Toulouse.
DEA.
Everett.
Bobby.
Her hand slowed on the final name.
Remi needed Everett back. He would know what mattered, what was possible, and what parts of the file might uncover how all of this connected to Bobby and Lois being stabbed to death.
The front door opened.
Remi’s head snapped up. Everett was back.
Then the door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass in the windows.
She stood from the desk.
“Everett?”
No answer.
Remi moved out from behind the desk. She listened for Everett’s stride, his voice, any familiar sound that would turn the fear rising in her chest into relief instead.
A man emerged from the shadowed hallway.
Remi stopped.
He was not Everett.
He was tall and broad through the shoulders, with medium-brown skin, short dreadlocks pulled back from a face carved down by exhaustion and something far worse. An unkempt beard covered his jaw.
But it was his eyes that rooted her to the floor.
Dark, empty, and soulless.
The kind of eyes that made a person understand, instantly that mercy was not on the table.
She reached behind her for the Glock. It wasn’t there. Damn it! She’d taken it off after pacing too long with it digging in her back. Where the hell had she put it?
The bedroom … it was on the dresser where she had laid it as she’d changed into the maxi dress. She’d meant to bring it back with her into the living room.
Stupid.
So fucking stupid.
Then she saw the machete in the man’s hand.
Dried blood crusted the blade.
Her breath caught in her throat as the memories slammed into her. The machete in her hand as she argued with Bobby. The heavy weight of it as she swung the blade. The blood coating the end from the slice she made in Bobby’s arm. The weapon looked like the one she’d had the night Bobby was murdered.
Remi stumbled back, her heel catching on the edge of the rug.
Her mind scrambled for distance, for cover, for the phone, for the gun she should have kept on her body.
“Who…” Her voice broke. She forced the rest out. “Who are you?”
The man stepped farther into the room, the bloodied machete hanging loose at his side.
His mouth curved without warmth.
“The man who should’ve killed you the first time.”