Chapter 19
Gabe
She falls asleep against my side, dark hair spread over the sheets, breath evening out, body going soft and heavy in a way that tells me she feels safe enough to let go.
I don’t move. Don’t want to wake her.
But I don’t sleep either.
My mind won’t quiet. Not after what we just did. Not after what it means.
I’ve wanted Evie Thompson for years. Told myself it was impossible. Inappropriate. That the age gap, her brother, her career, hell, her father—all of it—made this something I couldn’t have.
And now I have her.
I’ll fight like hell to keep her.
To earn my place at her side.
Which means I have something to lose.
I shift slightly, careful not to disturb her, and watch the way moonlight cuts across her face. She looks younger when she sleeps. Less guarded. The prosecutor’s armor stripped away.
I trace the curve of her shoulder with my eyes, not my hands. She needs her sleep.
Even if I can’t sleep, because this changes everything.
Not just between us—though it does that too—but operationally. Every decision I make from here forward will be filtered through the knowledge that if she gets hurt, I won’t recover.
That’s not tactical.
That’s a liability. I know it.
But walking away isn’t an option. Neither is pulling back.
I just need to be smart. Aware.
When she wakes, it’s because she’s hungry.
We order room service, eat in bed with the lights low, and talk about nothing important—Geneva, the cold, whether Swiss chocolate lives up to its reputation.
She falls asleep again with her back against my chest. I’ve known for years what this is.
The only question was whether she’d let me in close enough to show her.
Sometime in the middle of the night, we make love again, because now that I’ve had her, I can’t stop myself.
I don’t want to stop anything.
She is what I want.
This woman.
Forever.
I exhale slowly and close my eyes, listening to her breathing, memorizing the rhythm.
Hours pass. She rolls off me in her sleep, curling on her side.
I finally drift off sometime before dawn.
Morning light breaks through the sides of the drapes.
I blink awake, disoriented for half a second before I remember where I am. Who’s beside me.
Evie’s still asleep, one leg tangled with mine, hair spread across the pillow, sheet tucked under her chin.
I slip out of bed carefully, pull on my jeans, and cross to the window. Close the drapes more securely so she can sleep longer. When I exit the bathroom, she’s awake. Sitting up. Sheet pulled to her chest.
“Hey,” I say, voice rough. “Didn’t mean to wake you. You can go back to sleep.”
She rubs at her eyes, hair mussed, knees drawn up beneath the sheet. “I’m getting up.”
I enter the closet and dress quickly. When I re-enter the bedroom, she’s still sitting in the same position.
“Want me to turn on the light?”
“It’s fine. I’m going to shower.”
She means after I leave.
I recognize the signal and step out of the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind me.
At the desk, my phone has two missed messages. One from Quinn. One from Hudson.
Quinn
Call when you can. Found something.
Hudson
You’re going to want to see this.
I dial Quinn first. She picks up on the second ring.
“Morning,” I say, glancing at the time. A little after eight here. Early afternoon on the East Coast.
“Gabriel,” Quinn says, crisp and professional. “I’ve got Hudson here. I’m putting you on speaker.”
I move to the kitchenette, activate the Nespresso machine, and set my phone to speaker. “Go ahead.”
Hudson’s voice cuts through. “Hey.”
“Tell me what you’ve got,” I say.
“We’ve been tracing payment flows,” Quinn begins. “Skillfully managed. And not where we thought they’d be.”
“That’s not a surprise,” I say. If DOJ insiders are involved, they’d know how to hide money.
“There’s a PAC,” Hudson says. “Industry-facing. Clean donors on paper. Nothing that would trigger immediate scrutiny.”
“But,” I prompt.
“But it’s not behaving like a normal PAC,” Quinn continues. “Irregular consulting disbursements. No election-cycle logic. No legislative push tied to specific policy goals.”
“Pass-through,” I say.
“Yes,” Quinn confirms. “To an advisory firm called Meridian Risk Solutions. Based in McLean, Virginia.”
I lean back against the counter. “Lobbying?”
“No,” Hudson says. “That’s the thing. They don’t lobby. They don’t testify before committees. They don’t file public position papers.”
“What do they do?” I ask.
“They manage risk,” Quinn says. “Narrative risk. Regulatory risk. Institutional risk.”
I circle those words but don’t come up with anything. “In other words—”
“They tell people when not to act,” Hudson finishes.
The machine clicks off. I don’t reach for the cup.
“Who’s on their payroll?” I ask.
“Former DOJ senior clerks,” Quinn says. “Retired DHS policy analysts. Ex-compliance officers who know how federal review chains work.”
“None of them can make decisions,” I say.
“No,” Hudson agrees. “But they can shape how decisions are framed. Delay. Deprioritize. Bounce cases into secondary review.”
“Friction,” I say.
“Exactly,” Quinn says. “And here’s where it gets specific: We pulled financial records for Meridian. Payments from the PAC spiked twice in the last eighteen months.”
“When?” I ask.
“First spike: three months before Project Safe Passage was officially deprioritized at DOJ,” Hudson says. “Second spike: two weeks before Lina Morozova’s transfer authorization was signed.”
That can’t be a coincidence.
“Did you uncover who signed the transfer authorization?” I ask.
“DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Operations,” Quinn says. “Name’s Michael Vrell. Career official. Clean record. No obvious ties to Meridian.”
Not the Michael I’m thinking of—Harridan, different agency, different role. But I note it.
“And,” I prompt, knowing this is going somewhere.
“Vrell’s authorization relied on an NGO certification that came through a Swiss-based nonprofit called Alpine Refuge Network,” Hudson continues. “And guess who sits on their advisory board?”
“Someone connected to Meridian,” I say.
“Two people,” Quinn confirms. “Former DHS officials, both of them, now consultants at Meridian. They didn’t pay Vrell.
They didn’t need to. They just made sure the certification that crossed his desk looked airtight—proper formatting, the right signatures, nothing that would trigger a second look.
Career guy like Vrell, clean record, he’s not digging into an NGO cert that checks every box.
That’s the whole point of using people who used to do his job. ”
“He signed off on something legitimate-looking,” I say slowly, “prepared by people who knew exactly what would pass without scrutiny.”
“Exactly,” Hudson says. “He’s probably not even aware anything’s wrong.”
I close my eyes briefly.
“So it’s not bribery,” I say. “It’s networking. Recommendations. Trusted voices telling officials what’s safe to approve.”
“Yes,” Hudson confirms. “And it’s perfectly legal. Until you connect the money.”
“Which you did,” I say.
“We’re still working on it,” Quinn says.
“But here’s what we have so far: Alpine Refuge Network received a wire transfer from a Cayman-registered shell company three days before Lina’s transfer was approved.
The shell company traces back—through two more layers—to a Panamanian holding structure that’s linked to cartel money laundering operations. ”
“El Pastor,” I say.
“Not directly,” Hudson says. “But entities tied to his network, yes.”
I nod, processing. “What about the facility itself? Where Lina ended up?”
“That’s where it gets messy,” Quinn says. “The facility is privately owned. On paper, it’s a women’s health and trauma recovery center. Funded by a Swiss foundation that has received donations from multiple NGOs—including Alpine Refuge Network.”
“So they didn’t just authorize her transfer,” I say. “They transferred her to a facility they indirectly fund.”
“Yes,” Quinn says. “Which means when she became a problem—”
“They could handle it quietly,” I finish. “Is this just Lina? Or is there a pattern?”
“We’re still digging,” Hudson says. “But we found three other trafficking cases in the last two years that stalled at DOJ after Meridian received payments. Two of those cases involved witnesses who disappeared or recanted.”
“Jesus,” I mutter.
“And one more thing,” Quinn adds. “We pulled metadata from encrypted communications between Meridian and the PAC. We can’t read the content, but we can see timing and frequency. There’s a cluster of activity right after Evie’s car accident.”
My hand tightens on the counter edge.
“Reporting back on an assignment,” I say.
“Or someone was monitoring her,” Hudson says. “Either way, they knew.”
I exhale slowly. “Send me everything. Flow charts. Timelines. Especially the DHS authorization chain for Lina’s transfer.”
“You’ll have it in ten minutes,” Hudson replies.
I hesitate. “Anything with Evie’s name come up? Direct mentions?”
“Not in documents,” Quinn says carefully. “But Meridian has a consultant who specializes in prosecutorial risk assessment. Former federal prosecutor. She knows DOJ culture intimately.”
“Meaning she’d know Evie’s reputation,” I say.
“Yes,” Quinn confirms. “And it’s conceivable she’s still got sources inside.”
“Which means they could’ve heard the second she pushed back on deprioritizing Safe Passage,” I say.
“Quite possible. The source might not even know they’re a source. She’s respected. Her role as consultant is completely legal.”
I turn toward the bedroom door. Still closed. Faint sound of the shower running.
“One more thing,” I say. “Can you trace who accessed Lina’s location data after her transfer?”
“Already working on it,” Hudson says. “But DHS systems log access by clearance tier, not individual users. We’ll have a list of who could have accessed it.”
“That’s enough,” I say. “For now.” We’ll be on a flight home later today. We’ll pick this up back in DC.
“Gabriel,” Quinn says before I can hang up. “This isn’t just corruption. This is architecture. Whoever built this understands federal bureaucracy better than most people inside it.”
“I get that,” I say.
“Be careful,” she adds.
I end the call and stand there, phone warm in my hand.
This wasn’t panic.
This wasn’t a local cover-up.
This was institutional capture. Systemic. Patient. Designed to function without anyone inside the system realizing they’d been co-opted.
And Evie—brilliant, relentless, refusing-to-be-silenced Evie—walked straight into the middle of it.
The shower shuts off.
In a few minutes, she’ll come out of that bedroom expecting to talk about next steps, about which office to push on, which name to chase.
She’s not going to like what I have to tell her instead.
Because the people capable of building something like this don’t stop when they’re seen. They adjust. And the two of us are variables they’ll want to remove.