Page 7 of K-9 Guardians

Her chin wobbled slightly, out of her control. It wasn’t the aggression that’d caught her off guard. She lived and operated with an entire team of testosterone on the brink of blowing up in her face. She was trained to neutralize any threat—physical or digital—but King’s intensity felt personal. As though she’d hit some kind of button he’d tried to hide away. “I understand.”

“Good.” He dumped his still-hot coffee into the sink and headed for the corridor that ran parallel to the kitchen. “I have copies of Eva’s files. The last few cases she was working right before she died. I’ve been through them a thousand times, but there might be something in there you can pick up on.”

“I wasn’t finished.” Scarlett lowered her tablet to her side as King slowed to a halt. The intensity she’d witnessed had simmered. Still there, but not burning out of control as before. Replaced with a kind of isolation, a loneliness she recognized every time she caught a reflection of herself in the bathroom mirror. “I understand why you wouldn’t want to re-traumatize a ten-year-old boy by interviewing him about his mother’s murder, but if you want me to help you find whoever killed Agent Roday and who killed your partner, you’re going to have to be honest with me. Otherwise, your deal with Socorro ends here.”

King didn’t look at her, didn’t even seem to breathe.

“Every time you talk about Agent Roday, you call her by her first name. Which means you knew her as more than a colleague you were teamed up with ten years ago.” The pieces were starting to fit together. His personal investigation into the cartel that started two months ago, why he wanted to see his partner’s body at the morgue for himself. Why he wouldn’t want Scarlett or anyone else stepping foot near Julien. “And based off of your defensiveness about her son, how old he is and how well you seem to know him, I’m guessing there’s a good reason for that.”

The fight seeped from King’s arms and shoulders. “I didn’t lie before. Eva was called into analyze a device we found during one of the DEA’s cartel raids on Sangre por Sangre. We worked well together in the field. She was smart as hell, to the point I tried to recruit her to work for us. Told her the cartel would roll over the second we brought her on, but she was happy in DC with the ATF. Had a whole life there, but the truth was there was something about her I wanted more of.”

Scarlett braced herself against the obvious grief he’d held on to after all these years. Not just from Agent Roday’s death, but from losing her in the first place ten years ago.

“Once our case was finished, we went out to celebrate with a couple drinks. One thing led to another, and in the morning, she was gone. Back to DC.” A scoff escaped up his throat. “No goodbyes. No note. Nothing. I reached out a couple times but never heard anything from her again. Until two months ago when a ten-year-old boy who looks exactly like her shows up on my doorstep with a social worker in tow. She tells me Eva is dead and that I’m responsible for Julien now. That I’m his father.”

Her blood pressure spiked. “You had no idea?”

“None at all.” Life breathed into his rigid frame as King turned to face her. Devastation—so familiar and gutting—carved into his handsome face. “Listen, I know you’re just trying to do the thing that makes the most sense. Talking to the only witness who was there the night of Eva’s murder is standard protocol, but that little boy is finally coming to terms with having his entire world ripped away from him.”

He took a step toward her. “And I won’t let you or anyone else mess with that. He’s my son, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect him.”

HISSON.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever said the words out loud. Not in passing. Not even to Julien. Pathetic, wasn’t it? His entire world had shifted in the course of weeks, but he hadn’t even been able to put a name as to why. Until today.

King checked his smartwatch for the dozenth time. They weren’t getting anywhere with Eva’s investigation file. They sure as hell couldn’t prove Muñoz was even remotely connected to her murder or to Adam’s today. And now he had mere minutes before he had to be back in Albuquerque for school pickup.

This was his life now. He’d gone from pulling all-nighters and chasing every lead until he had nothing left, to cutting his days short in time to make sure Julien would see a familiar face when he got home. It was an adjustment. One King was still trying to get used to. It wasn’t about him anymore. Hell, none of this was. It was about giving his son a future free of fear, of suffering and maybe a little bit of justice in the process.

He scanned through Eva’s file for the thousandth time. Nothing had changed. No light bulb moments or new leads. He wasn’t sure what he’d been hoping to uncover with Scarlett’s help. Just...something.

King scrubbed his face. They were out of time. He checked his watch again.

“You keep doing that,” she said.

Scarlett was everything he’d expected from a Socorro operative, but at the same time nothing like he’d imagined. She’d read through the investigation file without so much as a change in expression, which made King wonder what horrors she’d seen to make this case seem like basic training. The woman hadn’t slowed down for a minute, charging through page after page. Photo after photo. Hadn’t even stopped to eat. She was dedicated. He’d give her that. Either that, or a straight up workaholic.

“Checking your watch,” she went on. “Either you’ve got some place to be, or I’m not living up to your ideals of a good partner.”

“School pickup.” He shoved to stand.

The conference room they’d taken over looked like the aftermath of a back to school warehouse sale. Note cards, highlighters, reports discarded across the oversize table. Felt like he was back in college cramming for an exam in a class he hadn’t shown up to all semester.

Drug cases were simple. The crap they pulled off of street corners could be traced. Find the exact combination of poison and trace it back to a dealer. Force the dealer to flip on the supplier, then do it over and over again until there wasn’t anyone left. The cartel would fall the same way, but homicide?

Ivy Bardot had been right. He didn’t know how to do this.

King grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. “If I leave now, I’ll only be five minutes late. Which is better than my fifteen to thirty minutes late most days.”

Scarlett shoved straight out of her chair and stretched. Her shirt slipped free from the front of her cargo pants as she reached overhead. A dark line cut across her abdomen. Jagged. As wide as a pencil eraser, but before King had a chance to follow it to the end, she was pushing her chair back under the table. “I’ll drive you.”

“Not sure if you know this, but DEA agents are trained and licensed to operate motor vehicles,” he said.

“Did you forget I’m the one who brought you out here?” Scarlett gathered the file spread across the table back into a single stack, crisscrossed in sections for easy access.

Oh, hell. He’d left his SUV back at the morgue. And he didn’t have time to get it. King threaded his arms into his jacket. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Then let’s go. I just have to make a quick stop.” Her smile flashed wide, and an instant jolt shifted in his gut. There was something light and genuine about that smile that didn’t make sense in their line of work. Something she should’ve lost a long time ago.

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