Page 2 of Consume

I exhaled, knowing that she had been running most of this investigation on her gut instinct with little facts to back her theoriesup.

“And the facts are that your son is missing, Joaquín has been involved with a cartel, and we aren’t sure of Mia’s involvement.”

“This doesn’t point to her being involved. It is consistent with her obsession with freeing Joaquín. As for your pictures of her and Mitch at Rafael’s . . .” I closed my eyes and tried to push the thoughts of Mitch’s hand riding up her thigh, her lips covering his mouth, his cock pressed against her as she straddled his lap, “they don’t prove that Mia or Mitch are involved with a cartel. I know Mitch. He’s a jackass, but he probably brought her there so she could scan Rafael’s place. Hell, he even told me that he thought Ksenya could make Rafael openup.”

“You knew Joaquín well also, did you know he was involved with a cartel?”

I sneered ather.

“That’s what I thought. Whatever Mia’s motives are, she’s lying to you. About how much, we aren’tsure.”

“I thought we were dealing with facts now, Ashley. What kind of proof do you have that she’s still lying?”

“She’s crazy, Grant. She has gone too far and done some incredibly outlandish things to free her brother. Why is she doing this? Yes, she loves him, but it isn’t normal for a sister to do this for her brother. Their relationship is atypical. Maybe . . . nevermind.”

“Say it, damn it. Maybewhat?”

“Maybe she gave your child to Tiffany. After all, she hid the pregnancy from you, the baby’s father. Have you considered that she’s plotting something with Joaquín?”

I let out a bark of laughter. “No, I haven’t considered that. If you believe that, you’re crazier than she is. She loves her son and would never have considered giving him away.” I knew she had lied to me, but I also knew why she lied. I could feel her love for me. She loved people so deeply that she was blinded by her devotion. To me, to Joaquín, and to our son. “You don’t have a fucking clue about what happened to Mia. She left me because she had been raped, and then she almost died in the hospital after giving birth. Mia is elated that her son is alive. Do you have any other theories?”

Ashley’s eyes bugged. “I had no idea she had been raped. I’m sorry to hear that. Did she press charges?”

“No. She doesn’t know who didit.”

Ashley sat on her desk and crossed her legs. I scanned the room and made a mental note of the lack of personal effects in her office. There was a steel name plate, and a framed picture of a little girl who looked like Ashley. But the picture seemed dated, from the nineties by the clothes the girl was wearing. There were no other pictures on herdesk.

I remembered that at the party I had met her at, she’d told me that she’d been a screw up in school, dated some abusive guy, and didn’t talk to her parents. I realized now that her story was probably a pack of lies as part of her cover, but the way she had told me made me think there had been an ounce of truth in herlies.

She noticed me looking around the room and hopped off the desk. “You just need to consider everything. You’re a good man, Grant. Better than most of the SEALs I’ve met. I can’t find anything negative in your background. You deserve better thanher.”

I shot a look at her. “Like you? You targeted me from day one and haven’t given me a single reason to think Mia is lying about anything she knows. You were at the party when Tiffany got killed. All over me, but you were just using me. You came with Tiffany! Why were you there, damnit?”

“Because we were investigating Joaquín’s connection to the cartel. Tiffany had been arrested for prostitution with a SEAL and in order to get the charges dropped, she traded us information.”

“WhichSEAL?”

Ashley shook her head. “I’m not going to divulge his name, but he has been disciplined and is cooperative. It isn’t relevant to finding yourson.”

The hell it wasn’t. It wasn’t a secret that SEALs frequented hookers. But if the SEAL was with Tiffany, maybe that SEAL was involved with Joaquín’s shady deals. Maybe that SEAL was Paul. “And you didn’t know she had akid?”

“At the time we made the deal with her, we were unaware that she had given a boy to her mother to raise. If we had known, we would have investigated that before we allowed her to go undercover for us. She tipped us off that Rafael dealt to some SEALs who also smuggled drugs. We believe Joaquín pirated drugs in Aruba and Afghanistan.”

I believed that, too. Kyle had mentioned that Joaquín had snuck off one night in Afghanistan. It made perfect sense. I kept my thoughts to myself and let Ashley finish.

“That night, Tiffany was supposed to just wear a wire and try to get him to talk. We think Joaquín saw the wire and killed her. Unfortunately, she is dead and Joaquín is a psychopath so we will never know why he killedher.”

“And you didn’t get any of it on recording?”

“No.” Her lips pursed, and I shook my head. “We believe Joaquín disabledit.”

Of course he did. We had both been trained on how to deactivate bombs and disable wires. Joaquín was smart. NCIS was stupid if they thought a highly-trained SEAL wouldn’t notice awire.

“If you have all this evidence against Rafael, why aren’t you arrestinghim?”

“Because we aren’t after him. We are working with the DEA, and he will be dealt with later. I’m NCIS. My concern is drug smuggling in the Teams.”

My blood chilled remembering the picture of a young Rafael Hernandez, the man whose truck had killed Mia’s parents. But maybe Rafael wasn’t the mastermind; maybe Joaquín was. There were still some clues to the puzzle that both Ashley and I were missing.