Page 5 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)

CHAPTER

FIVE

Zeyla ran to a bend in the path, then jumped over a bush into long grass and ran between the trees. Ramon raced after her, trying to see if there was a clearing or any kind of structure up ahead. All he saw was trees. But if this guy was half as paranoid as she’d said, maybe that was the point.

He spotted a smear of blood on the bark of the tree he passed.

Zeyla sped up.

Ramon caught up to grab her elbow. “What are we looking at here?”

She barely slowed, breathing hard. “I need to get in there.”

He pulled her all the way to a stop. “Talk.”

“It’s a shipping container in the hillside. He lives inside. Composting toilet. Natural cave spring in the back for showers. Real off-the-grid type stuff.”

“Lead the way. But don’t run headlong into the place and get yourself killed if someone is still inside.” He let her go, and she jogged to a spot between two trees, tucked against the hillside.

This guy had to have constructed the place years ago in order to get the vegetation to grow over it and disguise the whole thing in this way. All Ramon could see were trees and vines, bushes and grass. It must have taken a lot of work to render the residence basically invisible.

Zeyla ducked her head, and he heard the metal door swing open.

He followed her into the darkness, instantly smelling the tang of spilled blood and other bodily fluids. The kind of messy death that came with terror and fear.

She navigated her way in the dark, then flipped on an overhead light. This was bigger than one shipping container. It looked more like he had welded two side by side. At the back, there were more rooms beyond what he could see.

A ratty couch along one wall was partially covered in clothes and blankets.

If there was any ventilation for the small camping stove, Ramon didn’t see it.

A minifridge and chest freezer stood side by side.

A small folding card table with a linoleum top had only one chair, which had been dragged to the middle of the room.

Zeyla stood looking at the man tied to the chair.

Hands bound behind his back. Feet duct-taped to the legs of the chair. His shirt had been cut away, and his torso was a mess of cuts and abrasions. The blood had soaked his pants and the floor underneath him.

“His name is Milo Hargrove.” She managed to say it with zero emotion in her voice. But that was Zeyla, pushing out all connection or feeling so that the horror in life didn’t reach the soft places in her. If she had any left.

Ramon would have said he didn’t have any soft places left either, but then he’d met Maizie, and everything in him melted.

“Confirm it’s him,” Ramon said. After all, the man’s head was tipped back, his neck at a painful angle.

Zeyla grabbed a dishcloth from the kitchenette that didn’t look exactly clean and used it to lift Milo’s head by his hair.

Ramon winced, recalling the times before when he had seen a man in this condition.

Now that he had been out of the cartel for years, it almost seemed inhuman, something that had been practically commonplace back in those days when he took orders and did as he was told.

“It’s him.”

“Does he have any family that you know of?”

She lowered the head back but kept hold of the towel. “His mother died a few years ago, and he never had any children.”

“At least there’s that.”

“Right,” she said. “Because if there’s no one to remember you, then your death doesn’t matter as much.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.” Ramon moved closer to the man, surveying the wounds on Milo’s torso, while Zeyla moved around the room. “Someone had questions, and this was how they decided to get answers.”

Most likely, the man’s heart had simply given out.

This kind of intense torture didn’t last very long.

If a person had weak organs or preexisting conditions, they weren’t likely to survive for hours bleeding slowly out.

Not with their heart beating so fast and all that adrenaline running through their veins.

All of which he knew because he’d been involved with stuff like this many times. Okay, so he probably needed to see a shrink about how he didn’t always want to admit to being the kind of person he’d been in that cartel. Or the extent to which he’d become what the FBI branded him as.

But why would he want to remember the man he used to be?

The past lived like a straitjacket wrapped around him—one he couldn’t get rid of. Was it such a big deal that he tried to ignore it as much as possible?

He’d never done this to an innocent person. Usually, it was about getting information from people who had ripped off the cartel, and none of them were guilt-free.

Ramon circled around behind Milo and got a look at the inside of his forearm, above the bindings holding him to the chair. He hissed out a breath.

“What is it?” Zeyla sounded distracted.

“The person who did this to him left a calling card.” An R carved into the skin of his arm.

Trying to implicate Ramon in this death by using something they had done in Mexico? All so that the boss knew who had done the job, and no one could take credit for someone else’s work. This was definitely Miguel’s handiwork, but he wanted Ramon to see this.

Probably on an interrogation room table, when the FBI showed him photos of the dead man with Ramon’s calling card carved onto his arm. Something that was part of the FBI files from during his cartel time.

Evidently, Miguel was determined to either kill Ramon physically or get him locked up in prison for the rest of his life. Either way, his freedom would be ruined.

“You know who it was that killed Milo?”

Ramon would tell her, but not here.

She said, “We should get out of here just in case someone shows up.”

He nodded. “Good idea.”

She kept looking around, shaking her head now. “All of these hard drives are destroyed.”

Ramon wandered to the wall, a rack of computer equipment he didn’t understand. “They don’t look damaged.”

“Trust me, everything has been erased.” She wiggled a mouse beside the keyboard in the center of four monitors. The screen flashed to life with a small box around the words purge complete .

“Any way to recover the information?” He figured it was a long shot, but it never hurt to ask.

“Given how paranoid he was, I doubt it. But hopefully, he left something for just in case.”

He was about to ask her where to look when she wandered to the back and disappeared. Ramon followed and saw her messing with the lid of the toilet tank in a grungy bathroom. She flipped it over and frowned.

When she crouched and looked behind the toilet, he spotted a reaction.

“Got it.” She pulled her hand out from behind the toilet tank and showed him a tiny flash drive.

“Anything else?” He didn’t want to risk being discovered here any more than she did. Even if he doubted Miguel was still here to see the aftermath of his handiwork, that didn’t mean he hadn’t told someone where to find Milo. Perhaps Milo’s enemies might show up and pick through what was left.

She shook her head, passing by him in the small space. “We need to regroup somewhere else and figure out how to hit back at them.”

Ramon probably wouldn’t have put it like that. At least not when they had no idea who ordered Miguel to kill Milo Hargrove. He figured this complicated things for her on finding this Count of Shadows person that he wasn’t sure even existed.

“I need to go and find my friend Miguel.” Ramon followed her to the entrance, and they stepped outside. “Then, I’ll be finding whoever hired him to kill you and your friend here. Then, I’ll be asking them why.”

“Does it matter?” She shrugged, stepping outside and scanning the area around them. Alert for approaching danger. “Why not just eliminate the threat? Do we always need to know why they do what they do?”

She started walking.

He moved with her, keeping pace and trying to wrestle with her comment. “You have to understand that it makes you sound like you have something to hide when you’re all gung ho about taking them out rather than finding out why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

Zeyla said, “Or I’ve spent too many years trying to figure out why and never got any answers. I realized they are just going to keep doing what they do, and I’m never going to resolve things. At least not before they manage to kill me.”

Months ago, she’d been captured by Dominatus and had several of her organs removed to be used for members of the organization who needed healthy replacements.

Zeyla now had one kidney, and her liver would regrow the part that had been cut out.

She might have recovered, but he doubted that she would ever be over it.

Ramon scanned the trees as they walked. “Milo was definitely killed before Miguel intended to shoot you on that roof. But he didn’t go after the hand, so either he didn’t know their secrecy had been breached in that way or they aren’t interested in recovering the hand. This isn’t about containment.”

“No,” Zeyla said. “It’s about getting rid of an annoyance.”

Someone had hired Miguel to kill Hargrove for information, and perhaps as a result of that conversation, he came after Zeyla. Which made Ramon wonder what the dead man had told Miguel.

“Who wants you dead, and why?” Ramon asked her as they neared the car.

She shrugged. “That’s not why we’re here.”

“No,” he said across the roof of the car. “We’re here because you want to find this Count of Shadows guy.”

He saw her flinch, but she covered it well. Zeyla asked, “When did I tell you about that?”

“Last night, when you were falling asleep on the couch in my hotel room.” He lifted his chin. “Be careful that you aren’t so focused on whatever your mission is that you miss the fact you could be shot by a sniper at any moment.”

She tipped her head to the side. “You really think I need to lie awake at night worrying about that?”

“It’s worth losing some sleep over.”

“I disagree. Because it means I’m close enough they consider me a threat to their operation. If I wasn’t getting somewhere with this, they wouldn’t need to kill me.”

What could Ramon say to that? “You want to die like your friend Milo?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Now what did that mean? “You have some kind of plan in the works?”

“Let’s just say I won’t be alive long enough to answer anything. If they catch me—which I’m going to make sure doesn’t happen.”

It sounded like she intended to die by suicide before the worst happened to her.

Again.

“As long as I’m here, how about we try to work together to keep you alive?”

Zeyla shrugged again. “Suit yourself. It’s less boring than working alone.” She pulled open the car door. “Let’s go see what’s on this flash drive.”

Ramon slid into the driver’s seat. “Do we want to make an anonymous tip to the police that there’s a dead guy out here?”

Zeyla shook her head. “Let’s leave him to be buried in the same place he lived. The one place where he felt safe.”

“I guess we can’t argue with the man about that.”

Even if, in the end, the fortress he had built didn’t keep him safe at all.