“And NCIS. We were tasked with finding the Marines.”
The DEA agent nodded. “Special Agent Todd Miles, glad to have you with us.”
“This is what’s going to happen,” Fast Lane said.
Shea and Bates were moved back, and she watched the swift and deadly raid. The cartel members didn’t know what hit them. There was loud gunfire as she stayed undercover on her knees, tense and hoping for only casualties on the cartel side of the battle.
Suddenly, a gun lodged into the middle of her back, and Bates grabbed her by the hair. He pulled her head back, the tendons of her throat protesting.
“I know what you’re doing, bitch, and I’m afraid you’re going to meet with a terrible accident, just like your sister. Move.”
He dragged her to her feet and pushed her through the jungle, back to the cliffs. “Climb.” She did what she was ordered, and when they reached the top, he said. “You should have minded your own business, just like your damn sister. It was easy to get her out on the wharf. She was so dedicated to the Navy.”
She couldn’t help it. She punched him in the face, and he reeled back. He’d actually murdered her sister! She grabbed his gun hand and twisted his wrist, breaking bones, and kicked his legs out from under him. “I’m not going to be as easy to kill as my sister, you bastard.”
She shoved him down to the ground, setting her knee hard into the middle of his shoulder blades, pulled out her gun and racked the slide, then set the cold steel against the back of his head. Her whole body shook.
“I have money. You’ll be set for life.”
“Do you think I care about money?” she bit out
“Shea.” She turned to find Hemingway standing there. “Babe, don’t. He’s not worth it.”
“Please,” Bates whispered. “Listen to him.”
Shea stared blindly at the back of his head, thinking how the bullet would rip through his skull, and he would cease to exist. But would he take the very best of her with him? Every barrier she had erected was in pieces at her feet. She had convinced herself that she was getting revenge for her sister’s death, but that had been her protective cover, her excuse, something to hide behind.
She couldn’t use that excuse anymore. She’d already let the grief in last night, her tears a homage to her sister and their love. Maddy would want her to be happy.
And, at this moment, Maddy was the only person who mattered. She set the safety and pulled the gun away. “Flex cuff this bastard,” she said and climbed back down the cliff.
She breathed in the steamy air, closing her eyes as her heart slowed. When she opened them, the sun glinted off…metal? She frowned and walked toward it.
Crouching down, she dug the object out of the soil, brushed off the caked dirt.
Her heart lurched to a stop and she closed her eyes, certain that her mind was playing tricks on her. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Her legs suddenly trembling, she dropped down to her knees, her heart hammering so hard, it felt like a stampede in her chest.
Hemingway said, “What’s going on, babe?”
She turned toward him and held out the object. His face changed as he recognized what she was holding.
A dog tag.
It read:
PALMER
J. L.A POS
224 45 6789
USMC L
NO PREFERENCE
Jason. Oh, God, what happened to you?
17
Shea sat across from Pedro Gomez. Still reeling from finding Jason’s dog tag. They came in pairs, but the chain must have been broken. She couldn’t help wondering if he was dead or alive. In the same vicinity, they’d found his ragged, bloody and torn BDU top, his name stitched above the pocket.
Gomez stared at her, his dark eyes so cold, she could feel it drop ten degrees in the room. “Why did you murder Thomas Schellenberg and torture those other two Marines?”
In heavily accented English, he spat, “They are thieves. During the earthquake in my country, Laguna Blanca was devastated, and the Marines were sent in two years ago. They got tipped off about our stash house at Laguna Naick Neck, also devastated, and stole two hundred and fifty million dollars. We only discovered their identities after the traitor was found out, and we tracked them here. The gringo died because he wouldn’t tell us where the money was and as incentive for the other two to give us the location.”
She rose and closed the file. She left the room and said to the Agent Miles. “He’s all yours.”
She walked a few short steps down the hall to the next interrogation room. Unfortunately, Taggert had been killed in the assault at the farmhouse, which left only Bates’s nephew, Brendon Hanson. His uncle was currently cooling his heels in the Asunción jail, waiting for an NCIS escort back to San Diego where he was going to be charged with treason and murder.
Saint had patched Hanson up, as Taggert had taken the brunt of the torture. When she opened the door, Hanson barely looked up. He knew his career and his freedom were over and that he was going to be incarcerated and disgraced for a long time. He sat quietly, his eyes red-rimmed.
She sat down in the chair. “What happened to my brother?” she said, her voice calm and firm.
He fiddled with his dog tags, making a musical metal sound. She was reminded all over again that Jason could be dead like Maddy. It was almost more than she could bear. She slammed her hand down on the table and pulled out the photos of his dog tag and BDU top. “What happened to my brother?”
He looked at the pictures, then looked away. “We didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said, his voice breaking. “It was an accident. Everything went wrong.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“We were sent to Argentina on a humanitarian deployment. It was awful. So much devastation.” He leaned back, his bruises and cuts a stark reminder of what the cartel was capable of when their money was stolen. “There was this guy always around. He’d bring us alcohol and coke.” He took a heavy breath. “It helped to forget pulling all those bodies out of the rubble.” He reached for the bottle of water and took a few sips, then bowed his head. “He told us about a stash house that was full of money. He said it would be easy to take what we wanted, and he would take a small fee. He could get us a helicopter to fly it to a safe hiding place, and we could come back and claim it. No one would suspect us.”
He rubbed at his eyes and finally met her gaze. “Jason overheard us planning it. We couldn’t take the chance that he would tell our commanding officer. We would be court-martialed. We kidnapped him and flew the chopper to that outcrop of rocks. But he got the drop on us, took the chopper and money. We thought he was long gone, but he wasn’t. He was gone for six hours. When he got back, he told us he was taking us in. The money was gone. He said he’d hidden it where we’d never find it.” He swallowed and took another sip of water, then leaned his forearms on the table. “Taggert lost it. He lunged at Jason, and he went over the cliff.” He choked up and tears streamed from his eyes. “We thought he was dead. I swear. We didn’t think he could survive that fall.” He tried to reach for her hands, but she jerked away from him. “We took the chopper back, then showed up for duty like nothing happened.”