Page 47 of South of Justice

“She left a trail.”

Reyes raised an eyebrow. “The ledger leak?”

“Not the first time,” Gates said. “There was something a couple years back. People called it the ‘Sinaloa Dumps’ Quiet leak, full of cartel financials. Disguised just well enough to be missed by the casual eye, but someone wanted it found.”

“Her?”

“No doubt in my mind,” Gates said. “She used to work for Javier Esquivel. She knew things. Things she tried to makepublic. The Sinaloa leak didn’t go far. Not enough proof, not enough eyes on it. It almost felt like a test run.”

“And now?”

“Now she’s doing it again. Smarter this time. And I think Inglis is helping her.”

Reyes looked sideways at him. “I thought you were just here for the kid. Noah.”

Gates didn’t answer right away. He just stared through the windshield at the dusty road ahead.

“I am,” he said finally. “But Lucía Duarte…she’s something bigger.”

Reyes studied him. “You really think she still has the full ledger?”

He closed the tablet. “I think she’s carried it with her every day since she ran.”

THIRTY

Lucía waiteduntil the door was locked, the curtains drawn. Only then did she open her laptop.

Ryan was still in the bathroom, tending to his bruises. She heard him rustling around in his first aid kit, uncapping of a bottle of painkillers or antiseptic. The kind of noises that sounded normal in a place like this.

She sat cross-legged on the bed, the laptop balanced in front of her. He came out a few minutes later, shirt off, jaw darkened with stubble and bruises. The blood was gone from his bottom lip, but it was still swollen and red. She had to force herself not to stare at it. Problem was, the only other place to stare was at his bare chest, which was heavily muscled and dusted with golden hair. It spread across his pecs, then trailed down his flat stomach, before heading south and disappearing beneath the waistband on his jeans?—

“That the ledger?” he asked.

Lucía’s eyes flew back up to his eyes, which were cooly surveying her, giving no indication they’d just caught her perving. Her cheeks heated, matching the warmth that was spreading low in her stomach.

She forced her attention back to her screen. “Most of it.”

“You said you’d already leaked parts.”

“I did.” She paused. “It’s the last part they want back.”

Ryan stepped closer. “Why?”

Lucía clenched her jaw. He was only a few feet away, and she swore she could feel the heat radiating off him. Was he one of those men who ran hot? Who, when you lay in bed with him naked, almost burned you when his skin touched yours?

Her cheeks were now so hot they probably glowed. “Because it’s the key,” she said, glad that her voice came out steady and business-like. “Not just to the money, but to the names.”

“You mean, like, cartel leadership?”

“Cartel, yes. And bankers. Politicians. Two cabinet-level officials in the Mexican government. A guy who used to work at Langley.”

She let that settle, then went on: “This isn’t just criminal evidence. It’s leverage. It’s blackmail. And it’s an insurance policy…one I wasn’t supposed to survive long enough to cash.”

She paused, then added, “It’s encrypted at 256 bits with a triple-split key. Military-grade encryption. Unbreakable unless you’re God or a quantum computer. I used it to protect the ledger.”

Ryan folded his arms. “And that key is the final fragment?”

She nodded. “It’s a sequence only I know. Without it, the other two fragments are just noise. They can’t decrypt it, they can’t stitch it back together.” She tapped the side of her head. “And I’ve never written it down.” She smiled, but there was no humor motivating it. “That’s why they haven’t killed me. Why they can’t.”