Page 121 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name

“His contact details,” he said softly.

She stared at him, searching his eyes with hers.

He exhaled, and she was close enough to him to feel it wash over her face. “Daniel Castaño’s.”

Something brushed down her spine. Like fingertips, sending shivers all over her body. “But he’s dead,” she whispered.

Ryan shook his head. “He’s not. Neither is his brother Sebastián.”

She opened her mouth and tried to make it work. “What?”

“They both entered the witness security program roughly eleven years ago. Right after Daniel agreed to testify against members ofLa Mano Negra.”

She shook her head, not able to make any of this compute. “But he didn’t testify. He refused to cooperate with the DEA. He’d told me he’d rather die than become a snitch.”

“I guess something changed his mind. Because it was his testimony against Terry Bidois and the rest of his crew that brought the whole thing crashing down. He agreed to testify against Borya Sokolov, too, but that case was more complicated, and they couldn’t get an indictment.”

She continued to just stare at him, his words bouncing harmlessly off her brain. “But she told me he was dead. Belinda Weck, the DEA agent. She told me he got stabbed in prison. And Sebastián, she said he died after surgery.”

Ryan shook his head again. “Sebastián survived his surgery. Straight afterwards, he was taken to a neutral site in Chicago, along with his brother. After the trial, they were both relocated to Texas and given new identities.” He shrugged. “I guess they told you they were both dead for your own protection. And for theirs.”

She was still reeling from the news, but it was finally sinking in. “How do you know all this?” she whispered.

“I got sent his whole file. It was all in there. The only stipulations he made before agreeing to the DOJ’s terms was that his brother be kept safe.” He paused, then added, “And he insisted that you be accepted into the program, too.”

She realized she was shaking all over and had to take a step back and sink down on the mattress. She looked back down at the piece of paper he’d given her. Ran her thumb over the handwritten address. In Texas.

She swallowed down a sudden uprising of tears. Then she glanced back up at him, realizing that this was why he was here. That he’d come all the way back to Florida, at huge personal risk, just to give her another man’s address.

It caused her heart to squeeze. “Ryan…” she whispered. She didn’t know how to continue that sentence. Didn’t know how to say both thank you and I’m sorry at the same time.

His eyes went to the ring on the chain around her neck. When his gaze met hers again, they were full of feeling. They contained sadness, pain, regret, and maybe even something like love.

They were two broken people who, for a heartbeat, had imagined that they could make each other whole again. And maybe they could have.

They’d never know now.

“Goodbye Jessica,” he said softly. Then he turned and walked away, down the hall and out the open front door.

She followed him and watched from her porch as he jogged across her yard, his hoodie pulled up over his head.

“Ryan,” she called after him.

He stopped and turned back to her.

“Jessica is not my real name.”

He nodded once, then kept jogging toward the road.

She watched him as he turned left, then rounded the bend and was gone.

EPILOGUE

The GPSin Jessica’s rented Corolla announced she was nearing her destination.

“If you say so,” she muttered back to it. She had no idea where she was. Thirty miles west of Corpus Christi, and somewhat south of Agua Dulce—a town comprising little more than a Dollar General, a grain silo, a gas station, and an auto shop.

When Jessica glanced in her rearview mirror, a trail of brown dirt stretched behind her as far back as the farm road. Ahead, dust and heat radiating off the baked earth obscured the view. The land was so flat it could have been ironed.