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“Maybe the pay working for a cartel is better. But what about the fact you’ve been branded a criminal, and you’re an accessory to a list of federal crimes perpetrated in more than one country? You’ll never be able to escape the consequences of the choices you’ve made.”
“And you’re such a saint?”
Kenna stared at him.
“Let’s just do what we have to do.” He turned to the man in the chair, whose head lolled so that his chin touched his chest. Ramon grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and tipped his head back.
Blood bubbled from between the man’s lips.
“He doesn’t have long left.” Kenna moved to stand closer. “Who is he?”
“One of Navarro’s delivery guys. A local.” Ramon studied the man’s face, one eye swollen nearly shut. The other one glassy and unable to focus. “He was out driving and saw the killer dump the body in the desert.” He patted the man’s cheek and spoke in Spanish.
The guy sucked in a breath through his nose and blinked his one eye, finding a semblance of focus on the two of them. He muttered something, a series of mumbled words.
“We need to know what time it was, and we need a full description of the person.”
Ramon glanced at her. “I thought you weren’t interested in solving this case?”
She could try to have no emotion, the way Kart seemed to think served him better than the alternative. Kenna could pretend she didn’t care about a single victim with no one to seek justice for her. She could pretend she didn’t prefer having something to take her mind off what was going on around her.
But all of that would be a lie.
She didn’t know why her drive to seek the truth often also felt a lot like empathy for the victims. If she had been given a choice, she would have opted to do this without the anger and the grief over the senseless way so many people’s lives ended.
She stuck her hands in her pockets. “We also need to know if he saw anyone else.”
“So we work together,” he said. “Like we did back at Quantico.”
It took Kenna a second to figure out what he was referring to.
But she remembered.
ChapterEleven
nine years ago
Quantico, Virginia
Special Agent Santiago entered the room first, and Kenna strode in right behind him. She had the paper file with the “suspect” background. The man on the other side of the table was an agent from the behavioral analysis unit, specially tasked with playing the suspect in this scenario.
Kenna dropped the file on the table. She waited a second, then grinned. “I’ve always wanted to do that. Plus, it makes a cool sound when it slaps the table.”
The suspect blinked.
She’d successfully already caught him off guard. He definitely hadn’t expected her to say that. “We found your burial ground. Every single body that you concealed in that field. We have all of them.” Kenna touched both palms to the table and leaned forward. “It’s over, Emerson.”
His gaze shifted to Ramon, then back to her. “Probably just a bunch of animal bones. That’s all those cadaver dogs ever find, and then you guys write it up like it’s a missing person.”
“Is that right?” Kenna pushed off the table and straightened.
She and Ramon had dressed the part of full-fledged agents. Their task was to get this suspect to tell them who his accomplice was.
They weren’t supposed to compare notes with any of the other trainee agents, but her roommate Cecilia had told her that the exercise involved throwing them a curveball at some point.
She was ready.
The suspect sat back in his chair, a smirk on his face.
