Page 18 of South of Justice

He said, “All I know is, they want her. Badly.”

“So do I. Now.”

Ryan’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t call you to give you a head start.”

“Relax. I’m clean these days.” A hollow chuckle. “Mostly.”

More typing. Then a long pause. “There’s nothing on Lucía Duarte. Anywhere. You’re right, she’s a ghost.”

Ryan exhaled and raked a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

“But,” Lázaro went on, “there’s been a name come up a few times on private boards. Some traffic a day ago—encrypted nodes, Latin America subnet. Someone asking about Alpha_C3. Ring a bell?”

Ryan stood, pacing the cramped room. “What is it?”

“Ledger fragment. Financial. Think Panama Papers meets snuff film money.”

“Okay. Is it her?”

“No one’s using the name Lucía Duarte. She’s way smarter than that. But the Alpha_C3 drop? Same encryption signature I saw on a leak a few years back. Sinaloa-linked shell companies.” Lázaro’s tone shifted, quieter. “Whoever did it then, and whoever did this now, they hide in the exact same way.”

Ryan frowned. This hacker shit was not his lane. But he understood patterns of concealment. They were as distinct as fingerprints. And once you learned someone’s pattern, you could find them again. “Can you trace the Alpha upload?”

There was a long pause, and Ryan wondered if he’d pushed his luck too far.

Finally, Lázaro said, “Not over the phone. Not for this. You want this kind of help, you come to me in person.”

“Where?”

“South of Mulegé. Boat launch at Punta Prieta. Midnight tomorrow. Come alone. Come quiet. You bring any heat, I vanish.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Don’t be late, Marshal.” The line went dead.

Ryan lowered the phone and stared at the blank screen.

Marshal. No one had called him that in years.

The sun had just started to drop when Ryan pulled the battered Toyota pickup onto the shoulder. A rusted sign half-swallowed by desert brush read “San Ignacio: 52km.” He leaned back in the seat and let the engine idle, his spine aching from hours behind the wheel.

The truck was borrowed—stolen, technically—from a guy he used to bounce out of Club Persephone on weekends. Julio hadowed him a favor, and Ryan hadn’t asked too many questions about the keys. It ran, mostly. That was all that mattered.

He cracked the door open and stepped out, stretching until his shoulders popped. For a moment, the silence felt oppressive. Ryan looked up at the sky—wide, and blisteringly blue. All around him, the Baja desert pulsed with heat. Nothing but scrub, dust and endless road ahead.

He climbed back in the truck and kept driving.

THIRTEEN

Old shipping containerssat cracked open like giant metal tombs, half unloaded or filled with forgotten palettes of moldy textiles. Trucks dozed under sun-bleached tarps. And there, in the back corner of the freight yard, was the office—barely more than an aluminum box propped up on cinderblocks.

Lucía hesitated at the gate, sweat rolling down her spine. She adjusted her cap lower and tucked her hands into the sleeves of her top.

She wasn’t here for nostalgia. She was here because she needed one thing: a roof over her head, where no one would think to look for her. Just a few days of shelter. Time to figure out how to get ahead of El Escriba’s men, what to do about the third fragment, and maybe—if luck decided to stop spitting in her face—how to find a way to vanish for good.

Ramiro had been her father’s friend, back before her father’s death had been written off as “accidental.” Back when this place still ran as a functioning freight yard. Before the cartel moved into town and did what it did everywhere in México: sucked businesses and livelihoods and people dry, like a vampiric plague.

If there was one person left who might open the door without asking too many questions, it was Ramiro.