Page 12 of K-9 Justice

“Those other women’s deaths you investigated, you theorized they were all trying to get out of the cartel’s grip, and that’s why they were targeted. To send a message to deserters.” The chief’s gaze bounced around the house, as though the walls were listening. “You think that’s the case here?”

“I’ll be in touch.” She nodded thanks. Carson followed her out of the house. It wasn’t until they’d pulled away from Dr. Piel’s home that she had the guts to break the silence between them. “It’s him, Carson. The medical examiner confirmed a connection between Dr. Piel’s murder and the case we worked back then.”

“We’re going to find him.” Confidence resonated in every word. He reached across the center console and took her hand in his. Warmth spread up her arm from the contact and chased back the chill that had taken hold from searching that cold, empty house. “He’s going to pay for what he’s done, and we’re going to finish this. Together. I give you my word.”

His reassurance was enough to ease her denial of Dr. Piel’s involvement in her own demise. For now. They’d potentially uncovered the scene where Socorro’s physician had been killed, but there were still so many questions they didn’t have answers to. And Ivy wasn’t sure she wanted those answers. She stared out the passenger-side window as the houses in the neighborhood ticked by, begging her mind to switch off. To forget the outline of a pool of blood stained into the tile of her friend’s home. Her only point of grounding contact was the hand still in hers. “Is it hard for you to be undercover?”

He didn’t answer for a few breaths. “In some aspects. Not so much in others.” She’d resigned to not getting more than that from him, but Carson went on. “There were things I missed at first. My own bed being one of them. I was never alone. The lieutenants exerted power any chance they got with orders and privileges. Metias Leyva—the lieutenant your forward observer went up against to protect Leyva’s ex-wife—was probably theworst. Our meals were cold and few and far between. We mostly slept on cots or the ground or in the back seat of our vehicles. We’re tools to be used. Nothing more.”

Everything he’d described stabbed deeper than she expected. The conditions he’d suffered would’ve broken any man, but Carson had held on. For this assignment, for their agreement to not let theSangre por Sangrevirus spread. She studied their interconnected hands resting on the center console. That was one of the things she’d loved about him. His loyalty. His commitment. No matter how much risk came with his decision, he’d always been one to stick through it. “What aspects weren’t so hard?”

“There were things that made taking orders easier. Knowing why I was there, knowing our end goal, helped. After a while, I started to get to know some of the other recruits. Some of us got…close.” He brought the back of her hand to his mouth, planting a kiss there. “Most of all, I guess the thing that made everything not so bad was knowing, sooner or later, I was coming home to you.”

A battle ensued within. Warning spiked in her gut at his mention of the other cartel recruits with such…fondness, countered with the warmth of his simple assurance. But Ivy couldn’t trust her instincts right now. Carson’s theory concerning Dr. Piel—that one of her own people might’ve been involved with the cartel she’d taken an oath to dismantle—was starting to make sense.

Ivy directed her attention out the window. And started planning her next move.

* * *

Carson had gonethrough the crime scene photos a dozen times.

Nothing had changed.

The FBI had done nothing more to find the man responsible for three women’s deaths once Carson had agreed to goundercover withinSangre por Sangre. The case had been abandoned on their end. No new evidence. No witnesses coming forward. It was as though the federal government had simply given up. The victims’ bodies had been released to their families, the evidence cataloged and filed away in some storage locker that would take an act of the director himself to release.

Exhaustion blurred the reports in front of him. They’d come back to the cartel safe house to regroup, but they were getting nowhere. No matter which way they looked at it, they were right back at square one. Just as they had been before he’d gone undercover. The medical examiner was in possession of the most recent body. There was little chance he and Ivy would be allowed anywhere near it, and he couldn’t risk taking the chance the cartel already had eyes on Dr. Piel’s remains. All he and his partner knew was there was a solid connection. The man who’d killed those victims two years ago had come after a Socorro physician. But why now? After all this time, the son of a bitch Carson had been hunting had lain low in the cartel’s ranks. Was this about Dr. Piel? Or was this about Ivy?

“Anything new?” Her voice had lost its assertiveness in the past couple of hours. Draining with every dead end they came across.

He pushed back away from the kitchen island. Crime scene photos, initial reports, his own handwritten notes from another lifetime ago covered every inch of the quartz surface. None of it had done him a damn bit of good. “I’ve been through everything. Twice. The house we cornered the killer in two years ago has since been sold and bought by an elderly couple with clean background checks, and the two soldiers I fought that night trying to get to you in time are still serving time in prison.”

He scrubbed at his face. How long had it been since he’d slept? Twenty-four hours? More? He couldn’t tell anymore. Adrenaline reserves had run out a long time ago, and the pancakes they’dhad this morning had already been spent. This was the part of the assignment he hated the most. The dead end. Serving the drug cartel had been simpler, in a way. He’d taken orders and carried them out. There’d been bullets occasionally, but for the most part, he’d been secure in knowing he wasn’t the one responsible for any kind of loss of life. Not like he had been with the FBI.

“I’ve been through every piece of paper the cartel left behind in this safe house. There’s nothing here.” Ivy moved in close, directly over his shoulder, and invigorated his senses with a hint of vanilla and soap. It was enough to keep him from spiraling in the moment, but the effect would wear off the more he starved himself of sleep and calories. “What about the intel you gathered within the cartel? Anything that might give us a lead? You said you got close to some of the other recruits. Maybe one of them mentioned someone within the organization that liked to strangle his victims before carving messages into their backs?”

She was fishing for information, and hell, Carson didn’t blame her. It was in Ivy’s nature to have a plan worked out in her head before she took the next step, but a defensiveness that had no business coming between them surged. The people he’d gotten to know within the cartel’s ranks had been sources. Nothing more. And yet there was a part of him that needed to protect them as much as they’d protected him since he’d joined their ranks. “I’ve kept records of everyone I came into contact with since the moment I joinedSangre por Sangre, but the people I worked with were foot soldiers. Grunts who didn’t know anything. It was the lieutenants that issued the orders. The founder of the cartel kept his identity in the dark by making us go through them.”

His mind went straight to the one man who’d gotten him through most of the assignments that’d left his hands covered in too much blood. Sebastian Aguado had been with the cartelnearly his entire life. Saved Carson’s life on more than one occasion. And was rewarded for that loyalty with the loss of his wife and children—violently—after a rival cartel had abducted and killed them in retaliation.Sangre por Sangrehadn’t done anything to stop the slaughter. Leaving Sebastian with nothing. There was a chance his old friend might want to even the playing field by helping him and Ivy root out the head of the cartel. Hell, he might be the only resource they could rely on.

Ivy’s exhalation brushed the back of his neck. Too close. Too familiar. Too dangerous at a time like this. Because the moment he took his eyes off the end goal, the cartel would strike. He couldn’t risk making any mistakes. Not when it came to Ivy.

She shifted her weight away from him, as though sensing his need for space. “And from what you’ve reported…”

“They’re all dead. Socorro made sure of that.” He hadn’t meant the statement to take the shape of an accusation, but there it was. They were in an impossible situation. One he didn’t know how to fix.

Other memories, of Carson having to step up and be the man of the house when his father had left him and his mother high and dry, surged forward. He hadn’t been able to fix anything for his mother either. It didn’t matter how good the grades he earned were or how much money he contributed to their expenses when he was old enough to get a job—he couldn’t fix other people’s mistakes. And now the one person he had left in this world—the one person he trusted—was caught in the result of his own failure. There’d been a time when all Carson wanted was to do something good with the second chance he’d been given after his mother had donated a kidney to save his life. Then again when he’d lost that kidney in a fight for Ivy’s life and taken on one of hers. But this… Nothing concerning this case gave him hope this could end in anything but misery. “I’m going to get some fresh air.”

Ivy didn’t respond as he shoved away from the kitchen island and headed for the back door. He clocked the cameras positioned at the exit, but he’d ensured the cameras installed around the perimeter of the property had been taken off-line weeks ago.

Carson wrenched the sliding back door open with a bit too much force, earning himself a bark from Max. She followed him out the door beneath the covered porch. New Mexico had a peculiar habit of being too hot and too cold at the same time. Or maybe it was just his brain playing tricks on him as he stared into nothing but a fenced yard of dirt and weeds in the middle of January. Every piece of evidence, every witness statement, every lead jumbled through his mind. Out of order, upside down.

Despite years of undercover work—of following orders, of taking out every target required, of watching his fellow soldiers bleed out beside him and giving up everything he’d known in the process—he was nowhere near closing in on the killer who’d nearly taken Ivy from him. Who’d killed those women.

His phone weighed heavy in his pants pocket. There was still one option left. Sebastian had been able to avoid being buried six feet under with the rest of the cartel. Within the past month, whatever remained ofSangre por Sangrehad scattered, “every man for himself” style, and his mentor had been no exception. Carson had heard whisperings the lifelong soldier in his fifties had fled back to his hometown of Aztec, but they’d just been rumors.

Carson forced himself to take his next breath slower than he wanted. Reaching out to anyone in the cartel directly—even with his cover intact—could unleash a hell neither he nor Ivy was prepared to deal with. Not to mention it could give Ivy reason to distance herself from him even further.

But what other choice did they have at this point?

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