Page 17 of Cooper

The senator and Pablo met in a private residence outside Georgetown, where the windows were tall, the wine was old, and the staff had been trained to forget the shape of a face before morning.

Myles listened without interrupting as Pablo described Bianca’s disappearance, the frozen land transfer, and the wealth lying uselessly under rock and scrub like a corpse that refused to stay buried.

When Pablo finished, Myles asked only one question. He wanted to know whether Bianca was valuable alive, or merely necessary. Pablo smiled at that, slowly and without warmth, because it proved he had chosen the right kind of monster.

They agreed she had to be found breathing, at least long enough to sign. After that, neither man wasted language on possibilities. They were careful men, and careful men understood that the most terrible decisions were safest when left unfinished in the air.

Myles brought resources Pablo could not easily buy abroad. Quiet inquiries at consulates, pressure through law enforcement liaisons, surveillance requests buried inside counterintelligence briefings, and favors from people who believed they were serving national security when they were only tightening a noose around a missing woman.

Pablo supplied money and names. Myles supplied cover and reach. Between them they built a net wide enough to catch refugees, witnesses, whistleblowers, and anyone unlucky enough to resemble Bianca Garcia in a blurred photograph or a corrupted database.

The first lead came from a border crossing in Chile, then collapsed under scrutiny. The second came from a clinic in Córdoba and ended with a nurse abruptly changing her story after two men visited her home. The third was a photograph taken at a bus station, blurred by distance, showing a woman with Bianca’s posture stepping into a vehicle with tinted windows.

Pablo studied that photograph until the room seemed to darken around it. He did not feel guilt when he looked at the outline, only irritation knowing it was not her.

His brother had found one final way to deny him, and Bianca had become the lock on a door Pablo had already decided to break.

Myles, for his part, saw more than money beneath the shale fields. He saw leverage over markets, contracts for donors, influence in a region where influence could be converted into committee power back home. He wrapped every appetite in the language of strategy, and because he spoke it fluently, even decent men sometimes mistook the sound for duty.

Neither man considered stopping. To Pablo and Myles, conscience was what weaker men called the moment before surrender.

As pressure mounted, Pablo began to come apart in small, private ways. Then a message arrived through a channel Pablo had almost forgotten, a single sentence sent from ananonymous account and routed through enough servers to make tracing it hopeless.

It said Bianca was alive, and that she had something far more dangerous than a signature.

Pablo read the words three times before forwarding them to Myles. The senator called within seconds, his voice stripped of its practiced warmth. For the first time since their arrangement began, both men understood that they were not merely hunting Bianca Garcia; somewhere in the dark, she, or someone else, had begun hunting them back.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Coop? One of your teammates is on the line. A fella named Guy Morgan,” said AJ.

“Yeah. He’s on my current team,” he nodded looking at the men around the table. They started to stand but he waved them to take a seat again. “It’s fine. He’s a good guy.”

“Coop? It’s me, Morgan,” said the voice.

“Hey man, how are you? Still enjoying leave?” he asked.

“I am, or at least I was. I got a call last night from the manager at Iron Anchor near the base. Petty was drunk off his ass mumbling some bullshit he didn’t understand.”

“Is he okay?” frowned Coop.

“I think you need to see the video, brother. Manx and I took him home and recorded him.” The screen switched to a blurry cell phone video, then Jim Petty, rocking his head back and forth, cursing at himself.

“I’m a fucking traitor. A loser. A piece of shit.”

“You’re not making sense, Petty. What’s wrong? How are you a traitor, brother?”

“Don’t call me that, I’m not worthy of being called brother. I-I needed the money. I needed a lot of money. I owe everyone and Kelly left me with debt up to my eyeballs. I had to. Don’t you see, I had to.”

“Petty, slow down. What did you do?”

“Bianca. The chick from the jungle, the one Coop was hot for. They were looking for her. Not just Rodriguez but some guy that claimed he was her father. Except, he’s not her father. He’s her fucking uncle. He needs her to sell the land the village was built on. He needs to sell it to the U.S.”

“You’re not making any sense, Petty. Get some sleep.”

“No! You’re not fucking hearing me. It’s loaded with natural resources. They need it. We need it. The U.S. They need that tract of land to harvest the shale resources and more. They won’t give up. They’ll kill everyone if she doesn’t sign over that land.”

“What the fuck did you do?” asked the teammate.