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“Makes sense.” Baker stared at the space where the floor should’ve been. “Question is, which case would they have wanted to destroy?”
“Did you have any active cases running on the cartel? Maybe one of their soldiers or an incident that occurred within Alpine Valley town borders?”
“Son of a bitch.” Baker took a step back, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I should’ve seen it before now.”
“You had a case,” she said. “What was it?”
“Cartel lieutenant. Guy named Marc De Leon. We arrested him about three months ago. He’d taken to strapping a bomb to a woman’s chest after torturing her for a couple hours. Best we could get from him, she was a random target. Unfortunately, she didn’t survive, and the extent of her injuries kept us from identifying her. We’ve searched missing persons reports and interrogated the bastard any chance we could, but it’s gotten us nowhere. Everyone just calls her Jane Doe.” Sorrow dipped his voice into a whisper. “We could prove he was at the scene. Dead to rights. Found his fingerprints on the weapon he left behind. I picked him up on foot just outside of town covered in blood within a couple hours. It was easy to connect him back to the cartel through his priors. The lawyers are going at it right now, trying to claim some insanity defense, but it’s not working. He knew exactly what he was doing when he killed her.”
She’d heard about the raid. Known the town had nearly burned to the ground the night that another lieutenant had ordered his men to bring Elena Navarro and her eight-year-old brother, Daniel, to him. They’d torn apart families, destroyed homes and shops and set Alpine Valley right back under their control. By fear and intimidation. But now Baker was adding murder to the list. Why hadn’t she known about this before tonight?
“The case wasn’t going away. What better way to get your man off the hook than to send in your resident bomber to destroy all the evidence?” she said.
“Yeah, well. They got what they wanted, didn’t they? We had the knife. We had his fingerprints, witness statements, GPS from his phone that put him in that house at the time of the raid.” Baker kicked at a half-cremated box that hadn’t gotten caught in the blast. “All destroyed. The prosecutor won’t be able to do a damn thing about it, and that woman’s family gets nothing. No sense of closure. No justice.”
Her heart hurt at the idea of the victim’s family knowing what’d happened to her but never being able to move on. Because Baker was there, too. Haunted by what’d happened to his sister, never finding peace. Never being able to move on from the past. Jocelyn wanted that for him. A chance to heal, to live his own life apart from the horrible trauma that’d taken away everything he’d loved.
And there was only one way to do it.
She stepped to his side, staring down at the singed hole where the evidence room used to be. It wasn’t just Marc De Leon’s case that’d been destroyed but all of them. Dozens of victims who’d never see the resolution they deserved. “Lieutenants like De Leon are indispensable. It takes years of loyalty and trust to rise up the ranks. It’s what he knows about the cartel’s operation that they’d go out on a limb to save, but that doesn’t make men like him untouchable.”
“You sure about that?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Jocelyn breathed in smoke-heavy air, mentally preparing for the war they were about to start. “I am.”
HEWASBACKat square one.
The promise of a new lead in his sister’s murder was wearing thin. Pain radiated up his side as the SUV’s shocks failed to navigate the uneven landscape. He’d once believed Alpine Valley was where he belonged, that his future rested here in miles of desert, star-streaked skies and protective canyons. Somewhere he could build a future.
He didn’t have a future anymore.
Not until Sangre por Sangre paid for what they’d done. To him, to the residents of his town. To the hundreds of future victims they would discard in a power struggle to gain control. It wasn’t just about what’d happened to Linley or that lieutenant trying to squeeze himself out of a murder charge. It wasallof it. The constant threat and the repercussions of a cartel’s choices determined who would live at the end of the day and who wouldn’t. And Baker couldn’t accept that. These people deserved better, and he wasn’t going to stop. Not until every last man and woman connected to the cartel was behind bars or six feet under.
The rush of adrenaline he’d suffered at the smallest inkling of a threat refused to let go. It was tensing his hands until he found it nearly impossible to release. His body had yet to get the signals there wasn’t any actual danger right in front of him, and there was only one way to force it back into submission.
“I need you to do me a favor.” His voice failed on the last word. Exhaustion had gotten the best of him long before now, but he was somehow still holding it together. They were coming up on the road that would either take them back to Socorro or to the edge of town. “Turn right up here at the T.”
Jocelyn’s mouth parted in the dim light given off by the SUV’s controls behind the steering wheel. The slightest change in facial expression spoke volumes. She knew exactly what he was asking, and she was the only one who could help. “Are you sure?”
“I just need...” He didn’t know what he needed. Something familiar? Baker didn’t have the capacity to explain right then. The gnawing hollowness in his chest wouldn’t let him. “I’m sure.”
She navigated north.
He’d driven this way so many times, he could practically feel his breath coming easier as he anticipated every bump in the dirt road. But it wasn’t enough. A war between getting relief and putting himself at risk raged as the rough outline of the structures separated from the surrounding darkness up ahead.
“You can stop here,” he said.
Momentum kept his upper body moving forward as Jocelyn brought the SUV to a full stop outside the cattle gate, but the pain stayed at a low simmer. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”
“You don’t have to go in there alone.” Her hand shot out as he shouldered the passenger side door open, clamping on to the top of his thigh. The contact should’ve set him on high alert, but there was something about Jocelyn Carville that put him at ease. “I could come with you.”
His automatic answer rushed to the front of his mind. He should shut her down, take the time he needed to get his head back in the game. But the logical part of him understood she’d already seen him at his worst, that walking into that house without support could break him.
Baker let his hand slip from the door. “Yeah. Okay.”
The vehicle’s headlights guided them to the gate. A chill ran through the air. A storm was on its way in, the first few drops collecting along the top of the gate. Baker grabbed for the padlock securing the gate to the frame and took out his key, twisting it in the lock. The chain hit the dirt, and he swung the gate open. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
Gravel crunched under their feet as they hiked the empty driveway. The barn sat in the distance, more than half of the structure gone from the explosion. Its rugged outline stood stark against the backdrop of the last bit of blue behind the mountains. But the house was still intact. The single story was exactly as he’d left it. Tan stucco practically glowed in the beaming moonlight and highlighted the black window casings, two-car garage and front door. Mid-century metal floral details held up one corner of the porch, matching the color of the exterior of the house. It was a weird, old addition on a brand-new build, but Linley had insisted. Now he couldn’t imagine taking it out.
