Page 6 of K-9 Guardians

“Complicated.” That single word seemed to answer everything she needed to know, but Scarlett didn’t push it. “Can I assume you believe these two murders are connected based off of MO?”

“Muñoz has a pension for making an example out of anyone who gets in his way. A knife through a law enforcement badge gets the point across, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Even so, I’m going to need her name and the complete investigation file.” Scarlett seemed to produce a tablet out of nowhere.

“Her name was Eva Roday.” That last syllable caught in the back of this throat. It’d been months since he’d had the guts to say her name out loud. Especially around Julien. “As for the file, you’ll have it within the hour. Washington DC detectives closed the case three weeks ago. We shouldn’t have any problem getting access.”

Scarlett countered the added distance between them. “I’m sorry. That you’ve had to go through this more than once. Doesn’t seem fair.”

“Fair’s got nothing to do with it.” His response came harder, more bitter, than he meant it to. Because she was right. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that the cartel got away with murder—literally—and left kids and families and partners and wives holding the grief all to themselves. Sangre por Sangre had taken the most important person his son had in the world, and even having known about him for only a short amount of time, there wasn’t anything King wouldn’t do to try to fix it. That was what fathers did, didn’t they? Fix things. “All the cartel has done is make me fight harder. They’re the ones who are going to wish I played fair in the end.”

“I’m going to have to be careful then.” Scarlett brushed past him, wrenching the swinging glass door wide open. Long hair caught against the shoulder of her vest, and King suddenly found himself wanting to untangle it. She leveraged her foot against the bottom and held the door open for him.

One step. One leap of faith was all it would take to bring him into her world. The DEA didn’t play small, but Socorro? Private military contractors like Scarlett operated on a whole new level. And she wanted him to come along. “Why’s that?”

Her mouth flattened into a thin line. “Seems anyone who partners up with you ends up dead.”

Chapter Three

There wasn’t anything she could do to take the pain out of his eyes.

But the internal drive she fed more often than not—the one that’d led her to Socorro—told her this was how she bought back her right to be here instead of a dark hole where she was referred to as a number instead of by her name. How she got rid of the guilt slowly eating away at her from the inside.

Scarlett dragged her finger from the bottom of her tablet screen up to review the file that hit her inbox a few minutes ago. Eva Roday’s murder file.

Reaching for a steady breath, she tried to take in the overwhelming amount of information stuffed into one document. The detective who’d investigated the ATF agent’s death had done a good job interviewing everyone in her life. Every detail seemed to jump out. Including the fact her ten-year-old son, Julien, had been left behind after her death. Her mouth dried. “Give me the basics.”

“Agent Roday—Eva—was found with a blade similar to the one the ME pulled out of Adam this morning in the morgue.” King settled that lean frame against the counter across from her in the too-small galley kitchen, a mug of fresh coffee in hand.

He needed it from the look of him. Dark circles had deepened past exhaustion and straight into night of the living dead. He’d run his hands through his hair one too many times, breaking up the careful sections of curls. The DEA agent with the eyes of steel turned out to be human after all.

“Six inches, serrated, with a patterned carbon fiber handle. No fingerprints left on the blade or the handle, but the medical examiner did manage to pull DNA off one of the blade’s teeth. Problem is, they have nothing to compare it to.”

Scarlett lost her grip on composure as the first crime scene photo filled her tablet screen. The spike in her heart rate could’ve been heard from across the room, she was sure of it, and she couldn’t help but look up at King for confirmation. She tightened her hands around the edge of the screen. Pressure led to nausea, and a surge of acid tried choking her from within.

Patterned tile—new from the looks of it—supported the body as a pool of blood slipped out from the wound in the woman’s chest. Cotton pajamas soaked up a lot of it. Not a suit. Nothing to suggest Eva Roday had been in the field during her murder. No. Whoever had done this came into her home. Located her badge, positioned it over the agent’s chest and plunged the blade straight through. “She was found in her own home. Who called it in?”

“Her son. Julien,” King said. “He’s ten.”

His voice did that. Caught on names. She’d noticed it earlier, and Scarlett couldn’t help but imagine him doing the same with hers. Not with her last name as everyone addressed her. As Scarlett.

King crossed one ankle over the other. So relaxed in this place, somewhere he’d never even stepped before. That confidence bled off of him and settled deep in her bones. “The detective who caught the case didn’t get a whole lot out of him that night. Medics couldn’t find anything physically wrong with him, but...”

“You think he was there. That he saw what the killer did to his mother.” Her heart constricted at the thought. There were some things in this world no one should ever have to see. Least of all the person you loved most in the world taken from you so brutally.

“Police found him beneath a pile of towels on the couch not five feet from where they found Eva’s body. The killer would’ve done his research before stepping foot inside an ATF agent’s house. He would’ve known she had a kid, and the son of a bitch went there anyway.” King stared down into his coffee mug. The drop in his voice told her he was trying for detached—same as she was—but there was no amount of distance that could calm the rage boiling in that tone. “They thought Julien might’ve been injured, given the amount of blood on him, but none of it came back as his.”

“He tried to save his mother?” Scarlett kept scrolling. To drain the dread growing in the pit of her stomach. To give herself something to do. A distraction. It didn’t help. Because beside the agent’s body was a too-small handprint. Made with blood.

“Yeah. He did.” King set down the mug. There was no point trying to force it down when you couldn’t physically stomach the aftermath of a case like this. Something he had to live with every day working for the DEA, she imagined. “Julien has been nonverbal ever since that night. He can’t or won’t tell police what he saw, if he noticed anything specific about the killer or the order of events. He’s been seeing a child psychologist for the past two months, speech therapists, you name it. They all say the same thing. He understands his mom isn’t coming back. He knows he can help police find her killer, but there isn’t anyone in this world who can make him speak up until he’s ready.”

“Trauma-induced mutism.” Scarlett made a note straight into the investigation file to read up on the symptom. Because it was something to do. A possible way she could help should she have to sit down with Julien. “It says here Agent Roday wasn’t married. I don’t see any beneficiaries for her life insurance or bank accounts listed other than Julien. Do you know anything about his father? Where he might be or if there were any hard feelings between him and the victim?”

King’s expression hardened in an instant. “They hadn’t had any contact in over a decade. He didn’t even know Julien existed until Eva was killed and he was questioned by DC police. The detective cleared him of any involvement seeing as how the father was on assignment two hundred miles away. I’d say he’s not pertinent to this investigation.”

“Okay. Well, it’s been two months.” Scarlett mapped out a quick order of to-dos. “If he got custody of Julien, there’s a chance we might be able to reinterview the boy—”

“No.” That single word was a bark from across the kitchen. Aimed directly for her. King seemed to catch himself. The tendons along his neck and shoulders dropped away from his ears, but there was no hiding the truth. Protectiveness. He cared about Agent Roday’s son. “I already told you Julien isn’t talking. He’s in a better place now. He’s made friends at schools. His nightmares are becoming less frequent. Bringing all of this up might undo that, and I don’t want to take that chance.”

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