Page 20 of Huck Frasier (Seals on Fraiser Mountain #5)

Marley

T he desert heat didn’t let up after sunset. It clung to everything—my skin, my lungs, my nerves.

I parked the rental car on a side street near an abandoned convenience store. The place looked like it had been swallowed by the sand and spit. Cracked windows. Burned signage. Graffiti in Spanish and English.

Exactly the kind of place you’d meet someone when you didn’t want to be seen.

My contact was supposed to be a woman named Reina. Said she worked for a local non-profit that tracked missing kids—mostly migrants. She’d reached out through back channels two days ago. Claimed she had proof a trafficking ring was operating near the border. Said the cops were compromised.

I believed her.

Because I remembered the last raid. The look in that little girl’s eyes when we pulled her out of a locked trailer.

This was real.

I wore jeans, a faded T-shirt, and kept a switchblade in my back pocket—not exactly regulation, but this wasn’t regulation work. my gun was in a holster, and I knew how to use it.

I waited. Watched. The street was too quiet. A single streetlight buzzed overhead, casting shadows across broken pavement.

8:45.

8:50.

Where the hell was Reina?

A door creaked open to my left.

A woman stepped out of the shadows. Long dark braid. Loose clothes. Face half-hidden in the dim light.

“You Marley?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You came alone?”

“Of course.”

She gave a slow nod. “Good. Come with me. We need to move.”

Something about her voice was off. Not the words—but the way she said them. Clipped. Flat. Like she was reading lines. Like she had no feelings about the children she claimed to save.

I didn’t move. “Where’s Reina?”

“She couldn’t make it.”

My stomach went tight.

She was lying.

I took a step back, casual, like I was adjusting my weight. “And who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter. I have what you want.”

Wrong answer.

I turned slightly—like I was reaching for my phone—and caught movement in the corner of my eye.

A second figure. Across the street. Standing too still. Watching.

I backed up again, this time deliberately.

“Listen,” I said. “If Reina’s not here, this meet’s over. I don’t walk into unknowns without confirmation.”

The woman’s smile was thin and humorless. “Too late for that.”

She reached behind her.

I moved.

My body dropped low, fast. Years of training with Lark and her stoem friends kicked in like instinct. I rolled behind a concrete barrier just as something metal flashed in her hand.

Gun. Not drawn. But close.

I popped up, blade in hand. “You don’t want to do this.”

The second figure was moving now—across the street, toward me. Another guy, built like a linebacker, probably backup.

I ducked around the corner and ran.

Not far. Just enough to get out of line of sight. I vaulted a rusted fence and landed hard in an alley littered with beer bottles and burned mattresses.

I crouched, heartbeat thudding in my ears.

They hadn’t followed. Not yet.

They didn’t want to shoot me.

They wanted to take me.

And that was worse.

I pulled out my burner phone with shaking fingers and dialed the only number I could trust not to question me.

Lark.

“Hey,” she answered, like I hadn’t just bolted from the world. “Please tell me this is a check-in and not an ‘I need you to hide a body’ call.”

“Close,” I whispered. “The contact was fake. I’m being followed. They are only feet from grabbing me.”

“Shit. Where are you?”

“South side. Near old Route 79. I’ll text you the address. Don’t call Frasier.”

“What? Are you kidding me? He’s—”

“Lark. Please.”

She went quiet.

Then: “Fine. But if you die, I’m telling him anyway.”

I ended the call and sent the pin drop.

Then I sank down behind a dumpster and took a deep breath.

Okay.

So someone had set me up. Someone who didn’t want me poking around missing kids.

That meant I was getting close.

Which also meant…

I was exactly where I needed to be.