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The look of shock on Mase’s face was hilarious, but I didn’t have time to marvel. “Mason!” I snapped.

“Right. We need to call Shep.”

I started his way. He pushed off the wall, and I got no farther. He grabbed my arm to stop me.

“Don’t let me do to you what I do with the others.”

Was he giving me permission to pry? And why me?

“I’ll dust off my crowbar when we get home and start chipping away.”

“You might need an excavator,” he mumbled under his breath.

He was. He was giving me permission.

And I wouldn’t waste the opportunity by asking questions that did not matter. If Mason Hughes had picked me to break through his walls, and that might help him open himself up to the others—I’d learn to drive an excavator, and I’d dig.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Pete had called Shep. We were running through possible locations when Catarina walked into the living room with Mason on her heels.

“Carlos has a cousin in Baja,” Shep was saying. “Hold on.”

Catarina stutter-stepped to a halt, tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes. I didn’t get the chance to remark on her strange entrance before she shook the look free and filled us in. “The cousin lives in Tortuga Bay.”

All eyes went to her.

“That was all Tom had on the cousin’s location. And his informant is on the inside.”

“What else did Tom give you?” Pete inquired.

She filled us in on Calista’s father and Tom’s request to keep it from us. I glanced around the room and saw near-identical expressions on all the men’s faces—respect.

“Something wasn’t sitting well with the president’s wife, so I pushed him about it. He told me to drop it. It wasn’t evasion, it went deeper. There’s an emotional connection.”

“Why do you think that?” Shep asked.

Cat stared at Pete’s phone on the coffee table for a second in what appeared to be disbelief before she answered, “It was in his tone. There was a sadness there. The way a man whose heart was broken would not want to talk about the woman who broke it. I asked him if he loved her, and he told me to drop it. The demand was forceful but, again, mixed with sorrow.”

I didn’t know how old Tom was. He looked older than I was, and Maria was a few years older than Catarina—an age gap but not one that would make Tom look like a dirty grandpa panting after a young girl.

“Has Tom spent any significant time in Honduras?” Fallon asked, looking around.

“That would take me weeks’ worth of digging through his aliases. Hold on a second.”

Keys could be heard pounding in the background.

“Jesus,” Shep muttered.

“What?” Pete looked just as impatient as he sounded.

“Guess who was the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Honduras?” Shep asked and continued to pound on his keyboard, then went on to answer his own question. “Charles F. Washington.”

“Tom’s father was the ambassador?” Catarina inquired. “Could he have met her when he was a kid? When was this?”

“Two years before Maria was born. His mission ended the year after her birth. According to her birth records, Maria’s mother was unwed. No father listed.”

“Sister,” Pete, Catarina, and Ryan all said at the same time.