Page 41 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

He tried to speak, but the words didn’t even make it to his mouth. What was he supposed to say? He could barely comprehend what had happened here, let alone figure out how to explain it to someone else. But he wasn’t going to be able to avoid the truth for long. Kenna needed to know what had happened to her cousin—the closest thing to a sister she was probably ever going to have. Zeyla’s mother needed to know where to find her daughter’s body.

This was the kind of thing that could tear their team apart. All of them fully aware of how much they had lost out on with Zeyla’s death. No way for them to get to know her. All that time they could’ve spent being a family, nothing but a dream now.

The phone dropped from his hands onto the dirt, and tears burned in his eyes, obscuring everything. Almost as if trying to wash it all away. But there was nothing that could erase what had happened. Nothing that could change the outcome. The team would suffer the blow of losing Zeyla, and Ramon would have to walk away, unable to face them in the light of the reality of who he really was.

He grabbed the phone and ended the call to thumb through text messages, trying to locate the method Miguel had been using to communicate with whoever hired him to kill Zeyla. He swallowed against the lump in his throat and pushed through the sensation.

Whoever had paid the bill on this one and hired a killer to come after them was going to regret targeting him and his friends. Ramon found a secure messaging app buried in themenu, something completely untraceable that he had heard was a new app that a lot of black-market criminals were using now.

Miguel had only been in communication with one other person, and they hadn’t been talking long. Ramon found images of Milo Hargrove and Zeyla Brierson—that last name wasn’t one Ramon had ever heard her use—along with instructions for Miguel to send images of their dead bodies as proof that the job was done.

All the conversation was sparse and clipped, so he knew this wasn’t someone Miguel had known well; otherwise, there would be more rapport between the two of them. For all his faults, Miguel hadn’t worked for these people because he agreed with anything they were doing. In fact, if Ramon had explained it, Miguel would probably have walked away, not wanting anything to do with them.

The image that the killer had sent of Milo left no doubt that the man was dead. Which confirmed that Miguel was the one who had killed the conspiracy theorist in his bunker.

The phone started to ring again, an incoming call from Maizie’s number. Ramon swiped it away and tried to figure out how he was going to find out who was behind this thread. Given the security features on this app, Maizie might not even be able to see the messages stored in it.

He sent a simple message on the thread.

It’s done.

Three dots popped up, and a second later, the response came.

Send proof.

Ramon pushed out a breath that shuddered from him. He couldn’t deviate too far from the instructions Miguel was given, or it would be far too suspicious that someone else was usingthe phone. But if he played this right, he might be able to get whoever it was on the other end to meet with him in person.

He got to his feet and went to the edge, leaning against the tree so he didn’t fall down the steep hill. Zooming in to take the picture was about one of the worst things he’d ever had to do. She still lay there, unmoving. He sniffed back the tears that gathered and sent the picture.

He followed it up with a message.

We meet in person for payment.

The response came back.

Always.

Well, at least Ramon wasn’t going to have to fight too hard to get this person to meet him face-to-face. Unless that was the point, because whoever hired Miguel probably had no intention of paying him and only wanted to kill him so that he could never tell anyone who they were. Which meant this entire thing could be a setup that Ramon wouldn’t be able to walk away from.

Right now, he could honestly say that he didn’t care if he lived or died. After all, what was the point in trying to prolong a life that was already miserable?

A location pin popped up in the message thread. Ramon looked up how long it would take to get there from here and responded.

One hour.

He figured the extra time wouldn’t hurt when he needed to plan what he was going to do. Arriving somewhere early and getting the lay of the land was never a bad thing in a situation like this, and he’d given himself plenty of time to scout out themeeting spot so that he could at least try and have the upper hand.

After locating where he had dropped Miguel’s keys, Ramon glanced back over at the edge. Zeyla was still down there. But there was nothing he could do to help her. Not anymore.

He called 911 on the cell phone, and when the dispatcher answered, he asked for both Life Flight and rescue firefighters. “I saw him. This guy, he shoved a woman over the edge, and she fell down there.”

“Is she alive?” the dispatcher asked.

“I don’t—” He tried to say that he didn’t know, but the words caught in his throat and stuck there. Ramon lowered the phone and ended the call. He tossed the phone on the ground and walked away, leaving it so that emergency services could find the location and recover Zeyla’s body. Maizie was already hooked into the phone, gathering all the information they would need, so there was no reason to take it with him.

He climbed into the car, opened the door, and vomited on the ground.

Before he could think twice about leaving the scene, Ramon drove away, spraying gravel at the trees around him as he turned on the rutted road and put the whole scene in his rearview.