Page 99 of The Verdict

When we returned to Sherwood, the first few days were spent in quiet recovery. Rhys, from his shoulder wound, which he eventually let Dr. Nilsen clean and rebandage. Dare, who’d walked away from that night with a slice down his cheek from Mercury’s knife. And me, from the bruising and swelling where they’d hit me.

Meanwhile, Ty and Harm handled a different kind of recovery—one that erased their role in the slew of deaths thatnight, delivered Mercury’s confession to killing Wheaton to the police, and then returned the diamond to its rightful owner.

But once all those weeds were cleared away, we had to face what was left.Saturn—Ivans.

The knowledge that he was alive—that he was the ringleader of all of this—still shook me to my core. I’d always known he was a criminal; he was part of a band of thieves. But this… it was so much more. He’d not only orchestrated it all, but he was the mole in the department that Saba had been trying to root out.

And that was what today would confirm.

Rhys tipped forward and kissed my head, and then we continued the rest of the way to Ty’s office. The door was propped open, everyone’s voices spilling into the hall from inside. They quieted as soon as we entered. Harm and Dare on the other side of the room, Dare’s face bandaged. And Ty behind his computer.

“Merritt,” Ty greeted and stood.

I stood tall. “You have the photos?”

He nodded and with the press of a button, a collage of photographs appeared on the screen.

Coordination between international law enforcement agencies took time—a few days minimum—before Ty was able to get the Mossos to forward over employment records and photographs for all the departments in and around the city. It took some convincing, proof that the Cosmos Gang had been killed in a stateside operation, and the return of the stolen diamond for them to finally agree to send the information.

And now, it was up to me.

I moved in front of the large TV screen, folding my arms and scanning the photographs.

“None of these,” I said, and a second later, another set of nine images appeared.

It wasn’t lost on any of us the irony that I was the only one able to identify Ray Ivans’s new face; I was the only one who knew what he’d become when he’d moved to Spain.

“No. Not them.” The images changed once more, and this time my eyes snapped instantly to the photo in the center of the bottom row. “Him.” I pointed.

The photo got larger, with the nameRaul Iglesiaswritten underneath.

“He was hired as a medical consultant for the department and the city morgue. He had access to every case. All the information. Retired shortly after the Barcelona job.”

“Saba never thought someone in the department was one of the gang,” I said. “He always believed the dirty cop was a silent partner.”If he only knew.

“And you didn’t recognize his voice that night at Wheaton’s party?”

I looked at Dare, who’d asked the question. His tone wasn’t accusatory, it was more curious.

“No.” I rolled my bottom lip through my teeth. “In my mind, he was dead. Even when I saw him standing there in the street, it was like my brain didn’t want to believe it.”

“The mind is trained to put forward the most plausible explanations,” Ty said absentmindedly while he did something on the computer. “Hearing a dead man talking wouldn’t be at the top of the list.”

I turned and met his eyes over his computer screen in wordless thanks.

“So, doctor to police consultant to thief.”

Ty put a document up on the screen. “Looks like Ivans was arrested for larceny several times when he was a teenager. The records were sealed once he became an adult, but I had some help… unsealing them.”

“Why though? Wasn’t GrowTech paying him to be… disappeared?”

“That’s what I’m looking into…” Ty’s forehead crease deepened in concentration. “But right now, I can’t find anyrecord of a Raul Iglesias entering the States, and that name isn’t any of the few files we managed to get from Wheaton’s drive.”

“He probably has another alias here,” Harm said.

“With the same initials.”Ray Ivans. Raul Iglesias.

“I’ll send the photo up to Talon. They have easier access to a few more databases than I do.”

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