Page 68 of Juan

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Spencer said, tucking her even closer against his body. He was all but wrapped around her, except for her one hand that still clung to Daphne’s. She rested her head on his shoulder, preparing to hide her face against his neck if the scene got to be too much to watch. But as she inhaled his warmth and his scent, breath by breath, something different happened.

Memories, different ones, pushed to the forefront. Laughing in the kitchen with Dottie. The appreciative cheers of the Falcons when she pulled off a new dish. The laughter and smiles of the people of Mystery Lake on Youth Day. The feel of Spencer curled around her as she slept. The smell of Zoe fresh from the bath and the sound of her giggles as she scrambled after Sherman. Spa days with Daphne, chats with Craig at the grocery store, hikes she’d taken with Joey and Charley to places of impossible beauty.

She’d always carry the trauma of her first marriage with her, but she had a different life now. A life she loved, one she’d fought for. One with people in it who would fight beside her when she needed a reminder. The way Spencer and Daphne and Callie and Leo were now. The way Ethan, Chad, and Sabina were, even though she didn’t know them well.

Inhaling deeply, her body released its anxiety on the exhale. Sensing the change, Spencer leaned back and looked at her in question. She angled her head and smiled. “I’m good,” she said.

His eyes searched hers, then his lips tipped up at the edges. “You are,” he said. Then dropping a kiss on her forehead, he turned his eyes back to the screen. She drank in the lines of his face, his sharp cheekbones, the curve of his eyes, the angle of his jaw, then brushed a kiss on his neck, under his ear, before turning her attention to the screen, too.

She had no idea how the raid would turn out. No idea what, if anything, the agents would find. But she wasn’t going to miss a second of it. Because whether it happened today or tomorrow or a week or a month from now, Anthony Ely was going to pay for his crimes. All of them.

Chapter thirty-two

The camera jostled as Anthony finally moved aside and the team entered the house, Grace trailing in last, deliberately taking her time. Juan let out a breath. A not-so-small part of him had hoped that Anthony would die on the spot. He’d turned red enough during his one-sided argument with the FBI that Juan wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to the man’s blood pressure. There’d also been a tense few seconds when it looked like his verbal protest might turn into something more. Not that Juan condoned the use of unnecessary force, but if the agents had subdued him, physically or with their weapons, he wouldn’t have been sad.

But no, the bastard hadn’t cooperated. At least not with Juan’s hopes and dreams.

In the end, Anthony stepped aside and let the team enter as he made a call. His attorney would probably show up in a few minutes. Not that it mattered. As Callie said, the warrant was tight; HICC wouldn’t have moved forward any other way.

Never having executed a warrant, he had little idea what to expect. Back in the day, he and his team weren’t really the knock-and-announce sort. No, they were more ram-the-door-and-storm-the-castle type. Now that the agents were in, though, he recognized the patterns, the way they fanned out, the way they entered rooms. But that’s where the similarities stopped. The two agents in the room where Grace now stood began systematically going through it—not necessarily politely, but they definitely weren’t tearing things up. No books were yanked off shelves, no couch cushions slashed, no tables overturned. Not that they didn’t search those things, but the process was a lot…tidier than he’d anticipated. And way more boring.

“You said this will take a couple of hours?” Amber asked thirty minutes in. She still sat curled in his lap. One of his favorite places for her to be.

“Judging by the way it’s currently going, I’d say longer,” Sabina replied. “As we said, it varies. These agents are being considerate. But very, very thorough.”

“I guess we can’t be too upset about that,” Daphne said. “Even if this is as exciting as watching paint dry. Why couldn’t they burst in and just find the drugs?” she whined dramatically.

“There’s a big chance they won’t find the drugs at all,” Chad said. “And the computer forensics will take a while. We’re pretty much going to sit here and watch them disassemble the house.”

Amber snorted. “It’s worth it knowing how much it will irk Anthony and his need for control. I almost wish he was in the house so we could watch him try to hold it together.”

“Ask and ye shall receive,” Juan muttered as Anthony entered the room where Grace was thumbing through an Andy Warhol coffee table book. An agent preceded them, and a man they didn’t recognize walked by Anthony’s side. “The lawyer?” he asked.

“Yep,” Leo confirmed, his eyes on his computer as usual. Juan wondered if he somehow managed to get access to other body cams and was surveilling the operation like an omnipresent sort of tech god. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least. Then again, maybe he had other work and was just in the room for moral support. That would also be just like him. Leo had grown up in a very different kind of situation from any of the Falcons, but Juan would be hard-pressed to name anyone who supported them more who wasn’t an actual Falcon. Or partnered with one.

For the next hour, they followed Grace around as she looked for hidden drawers, behind paintings, and inside boxes stored in the basement. She even took apart the coffee machine, although Juan was pretty sure she did that just for Amber and not because she thought the drugs might be hidden there.

“I think I love that woman,” Amber murmured when Grace left the parts strewn—tidily—across the kitchen counter.

“The computer and other electronic equipment have all been bagged and tagged,” Leo said. “It’s on the first van of evidence heading to the local FBI headquarters. The techs will start on it tonight.”

“Given the passport and bank information Toni found, are they worried about Anthony fleeing once the raid is over?” Amber asked, then added with a frown, “Do they even know what Toni found, or is that a secret?”

Sabina waved off her concern. “HICC received an anonymous tip about the location of the passport and bank information. One of the agents has already pulled it from the desk. We didn’t see it happen because Grace wasn’t in the room.”

He snorted. Anonymous tip his ass.

“At the very least, they have him on something, right?” Amber pressed. “After all, it’s a fake passport. In a different name.” Again. Hope threaded with concern laced her voice. She wasn’t the only one worried the day would result in nothing.

Chad nodded. “Yes, he forged a federal document. It is a felony, and they will likely arrest him. But if they don’t find anything else today, his lawyer will probably have him out on bail by tomorrow morning.”

“Surely he’s a flight risk if he already managed to get one passport faked,” Daphne said.

“They’ll confiscate his real passport, too,” Sabina said. “But yes, they’ll make that argument at the bail hearing.”

“Please tell me if they let him out, he’ll have to wear one of those ankle things,” Amber said. “The kind that tracks him like a wild animal.”

Juan laughed. He liked seeing this vindictive side of Amber. It wasn’t her nature, which made it kind of cute, and no one would argue that she didn’t have the right to feel it.