Page 11 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

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 aman 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 hewantto 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.” AnRcarved 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.”