Page 36 of K-9 Guardians

He sounded hollow. Way too calm and casual about the fact she was about to walk out that door and out of his life forever. Possibly taking the only chance Julien had with her.

“So do I.” Scarlett gave a final nod before maneuvering around him. Her boots echoed off the fancy tile until the pitch changed, and King couldn’t hear her or Granger’s steps.

He was thrown into a silence punctuated only by his own thoughts.

King forced his weight onto his good leg and took a step forward. The island with the body on the other side of it spanned the length of the entire kitchen and didn’t leave a whole lot of room for an injured former DEA agent with a bad leg to navigate.

His heart seemed a whole hell of a lot heavier than it had a minute ago as he caught Socorro’s SUV pulling away from the house. Albuquerque PD would arrive to investigate the body. He had ten, maybe fifteen minutes before he’d be forced to take a back seat. He needed something now.

King set the crutch against the counter, not caring when the damn thing slid out of reach and hit the tile with a metallic bounce. His good knee collapsed onto the cream tile, and it took everything he had not to fall onto the body while trying to hold himself together.

Moving or searching a body before the medical examiner had a chance to catalogue the remains wouldn’t help his case with the DEA, but King couldn’t wait. Because Scarlett was right about one thing. They were already out of time. Julien was out there. Without anyone to look after him or use him for their own agenda. Alone. Scared. Possibly hurt.

“Come on, Muñoz. You gotta give me something. Where would you have stashed a ten-year-old kid?”

King plucked at the blood-soaked business card stabbed into the bastard’s wound. Why the hell had Muñoz hung on to it? The son of the bitch had his son. Having King’s contact information wouldn’t have done him a damn bit of good.

King memorized the bruising settling at the back of the lieutenant’s neck. Tortured. Thoroughly. And for an extended period of time. But that didn’t make sense. Muñoz served the cartel. Why kill him with his own MO unless...

Acid surged up his throat as he pieced the business card back together. Muñoz’s blood raced into the whorls and loops of his fingerprints. The front looked like every other business card King handed out to witnesses, victims and sources. Apart from one element. His first name had been circled in smeared dark ink.

Turning the card over, King stared at the scrawled handwriting across the back. Recognition iced through him as he read the phone number over and over. Not in his handwriting, but Adam’s.

He cut his attention to Muñoz’s face, trying to come up with why his former partner would’ve had any motive to reach out to Muñoz one on one. Close enough to hand the lieutenant one of King’s business cards. And only came up with a single answer. “Son of a bitch. You were helping them, weren’t you? You were Adam and Eva’s source.”

Muñoz had wanted the DEA to breach the warehouse. Had given Adam and Eva what they needed to investigate. Which meant Muñoz hadn’t ordered Eva’s murder or had anything to do with Adam’s death. Someone else had. Someone who’d caught onto Muñoz’s betrayal and killed him for it.

That was why the lieutenant had been so desperate for King to hand over Eva and Adam’s investigation files. He’d needed something from them. A way out of the cartel? A chance to get away from someone within? Then he’d used Julien to try to force King’s hand.

Only Scarlett and King hadn’t been able to break the cipher Adam and Eva used to manually encrypt their notes, and Muñoz wasn’t talking anymore. King had nothing to support his theory, but the pieces fit the violent and bloody puzzle scattered around him.

He stared at the inked circle around his name.

“It can’t be that easy.” His name. It was the four-letter word that linked them all together, wasn’t it? Except now the DEA had the physical case files, and King had left the copies with Scarlett. It would take a court order for her to hand it over after the way they’d left things.

Pounding footsteps charged his defenses into overdrive, and King used the edge of the counter to bring himself to his feet.

“Police! Is anyone here?” Two officers penetrated his vision, weapons aimed. At him. “Sir, I’m going to need you to step away from the body with your hands up.”

“Agent Elsher, DEA.” One hand raised in surrender, King dragged his badge from beneath his shirt for the officers to inspect for themselves. “I know this is bad timing, but I’m going to need a ride.”

Chapter Thirteen

Her heart hurt.

It wasn’t the shame of her past that pinned her to the back of the seat. It was King. His parting words circled her brain until they blurred together in one long streak. She’d meant nothing to him. After everything they’d been through together. After risking her own life—and the lives of her K9s—for him. She was nothing but something to be used for his own gain.

Just as she had been for her former commanding officer.

“You want to tell me what happened back there?” Granger slid his palms along the steering wheel’s frame as he checked the driver side mirror. “Last I checked, Elsher is the one who brought us into this mess.”

Scarlett forced her gaze out the window as the tears burned. Dirt kicked up alongside the SUV and pinged off the metal frame as they carved through the desert. The suspension failed to absorb every bump in the road, knocking them around in their seats, but the internal beating was so much worse. “I told him the truth. About what happened overseas.”

“How much of the truth?” A small inflection in his voice was the only evidence Granger Morais had an opinion about any of this. It warned her to choose her words very carefully. Because what she’d done on tour didn’t just involve her. Her teammate could be brought up on conspiracy charges for hauling her off base to that hospital if the army identified him.

“All of it.” She saw the mistake now. Trusting a federal agent with information that could put her behind bars for the rest of her life. “He didn’t take it well, and I don’t know what he’s going to do now.”

“Damn it, Scarlett.” Granger’s disappointment burrowed beneath the hurt and the invisible pain suffocating her second by second, stealing the last of any remaining self-compassion she had. “We had a deal. I risked everything to save your life, and the only thing I asked in return was for you to keep the details of your involvement in the smuggling ring between us. You’re less than a year from your discharge. The army can still court-martial you. They can come after us both.”

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