Page 48 of The Verdict

But Les didn’t take any medication.

I grabbed the tiny container and popped the lid, the metal inside shining up at me like a trophy.The flash drive.

My heart started to pound as I quickly turned on the computer. The bright screen made me wince even though the morning light started to stretch its fingers through the window into the room.

“Come on,” I murmured and plugged the drive in, knowingit was a fifty-fifty shot that there would be some kind of password on it. My exhale whooshed out when a folder fanned open, more folders nestled inside with initials and dates.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Were they birthdates or surgery dates?I scoured over them, quickly determining all the dates spanned only the last decade.Surgery dates, then.

It made my task a little easier. I scrolled back to his cases from five years ago and started to work my way forward. Jupiter would’ve had the surgery after the botched Barcelona job, so that narrowed the list, but there were still at least two dozen folders from those immediate years.

D. S.

M. T.

J. P.

I opened folder after folder. Initials and dates became pieces of a larger puzzle. Documents piled up on top of the screen. Intake forms. Medical histories. Pre-op and post-op photographs—all taken while his patients were sedated.

His insurance policy.

The text started to swim in my eyes. Words bleeding together until my head started to ache.

M. R.

My finger hesitated a split second, staring at the file like it was a dark cloud ushering in the thunderstorm. And then it opened, everything sharpening right in front of me.

The birthdate was right.

The name was Spanish.

Miguel Ramos.

Height. Weight. The physical chart notes fit with my memory of Jupiter. The initial visit date and date of surgery were both not even six months after Barcelona.It had to be him.I pulled out my phone; the service was turned off, but thecamera was all I needed. I quickly snapped photos of the information in the chart, my eyes catching on an address listed for him in the city.

Les must’ve kept his files updated.

My teeth locked together as I scrolled. Air lodged in my lungs like a bullet in the chamber, and when I reached the pre-op photo, it fired out in relief.

Miguel Ramos wasJupiter.I’d found him.Later, I’d figure out if Miguel Ramos was Jupiter’s real name or his new identity. What mattered was his address—and what he looked like now.

I started to scroll through the procedure notes. Documentation. Brutal images immediately after the surgery when Jupiter’s face looked like a swollen Frankenstein.Almost there.

“Knock. Knock.”

I froze.No.My gaze lifted above the screen, meeting twin slices of obsidian, their soulless depths glinting in the morning light.

“Hello, Venus.”

I cursed myself for being so laser-focused on the computer—on finding the information that I hadn’t heard him slip in.Hadn’t heard the snake slither close, and now it was too late to move out of its strike.

“I have to say, I thought you’d find this place much quicker,” Mercury drawled, stepping through the threshold. He looked just as he had at Les’s house. Dressed in all black, his dark hair slicked back so there was no mistaking the vicious hollows of his eyes. A grim reaper, and he’d come to collect. “You’re getting slow. I’m disappointed.”

Shit.

I straightened slowly, refusing to let Mercury see any hint of fear on my face.At least he wasn’t holding a gun.But it was a small consolation. Of course, he had a weapon. Probably a gun. Definitely a knife. Mercury preferred weapons that made a mess.

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