Page 33 of South of Justice

He forced his attention back on checking his kit, which didn’t need checking. He didn’t trust her. But he’d agreed to her plan, and now he was betting everything on a woman he’d known for less than an hour.

The thought almost made him snort out loud. He bit back a smile at the irony. He had known Jessica Meeks for a grand total of three days before he’d nearly thrown everything away for her. He was going to beat his own record.

But the alternative was handing her over to people who’d kidnapped a child. Or maybe being forced to kill her himself.

Lucía thought she could trace the boy. She’d sounded confident, maybe even sincere. But confidence didn’t mean shit in the real world. The cartel had deeper pockets and more bodies. They could buy time. They could buy blood. He’d seen what they left behind.

What worried him wasn’t just the cartel. It was what would happen if the two of them succeeded. Because if they found the boy and saved him, what then?

He was still a fugitive. Still a man with a burn notice from his own government. If he handed Noah over to the authorities, he’d be arrested on the spot. And if he tried to run again, with a kid in tow—one that wasn’t even his—he’d be hunted harder than ever.

His freedom was already a fiction. This plan—Lucía’s plan—just chained him tighter to the consequences. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if they failed.

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, the rasp of stubble grounding him. Then he straightened, reached into the sidepocket of his pack and pulled out the kidnapper’s burner phone. He’d done what they’d asked, he’d found Lucía Duarte. But whatever their further instructions were, he didn’t want to hear them.

Crossing to the table, he set it down. Lucía didn’t say anything, but when he looked up, her gaze had shifted briefly to the phone. Then to him. Her expression seemed to relax, if only for a second. She gave a tiny nod.

He straightened, rolled his shoulders, and checked the time. Not long until first light.

Lucía moved to join him, boots quiet on the floor.

He opened the cabin door and led the way outside. The mountain air bit at his skin, sharp and cold. The first sliver of dawn split the horizon, painting the treetops in pale light.

Ryan paused, turning to look at her. “You ready?”

Lucía nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”

TWENTY-THREE

NINE YEARS AGO

The cleaning staffhad come and gone. The outer offices were dark, their glass walls reflecting fragments of city light. Even the servers had quieted, their usual humming softened to a low murmur beneath the raised flooring.

Lucía sat curled in her chair, knees drawn up under her, eyes rimmed with exhaustion. Her screen glowed softly against her face, lines of code blinking like a living organism. Every few seconds, a simulation refreshed. Each time, it ran cleaner than the last.

Her final bug—a recursive routing loop that buried six entities deep in a shell structure—was dead. She’d killed it an hour ago, and still she couldn’t make herself stop watching the data flow like water down a mountain.

This was it. The system model was complete. A full-spectrum simulation that could predict, flag, and trace movement through offshore holdings across multiple jurisdictions with minimal noise.

It shouldn’t have been possible. But she’d done it.

She leaned back, dragging her fingers through her hair, still twisted into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. Her blouse was wrinkled. Her mascara had long since worn off. She didn’t care.

She’d never felt more alive.

A soft voice came from behind her.

“You solved it.”

She startled, turning in her chair.

Javier Esquivel stood just inside the doorway. His suit jacket was gone, sleeves rolled to the elbow. The top buttons of his shirt were undone. He looked as he always did: controlled, elegant, utterly unreadable. And painfully good-looking.

Lucía scrambled to sit properly, brushing invisible lint from her skirt. “I didn’t realize anyone else was still here.”

“I wasn’t,” he said. “But Espinoza flagged the server activity. He said someone was pushing your simulations past the cap. I assumed it was you.”

She flushed. “I didn’t mean to overrun the limit. I’ll throttle back the?—”