“God help you if you try and leave me,” she warned, scowling for emphasis.
“No,” I agreed.
“You know—” She paused to make sure she had my full attention. “I tried tracking you down once, about a year ago, but my resources and privacy were both limited by then. I was being watched and didn’t want to compromise myself… Looking back, it was probably a stupid risk, but I asked my contact to try and get a message to Croy Graves for me. I knew it’d take longer, giving him your family name, but I didn’t want to lay an easy trail to you since I never knew who might be listening.”
“Your last name is Graves?” Dallas asked me.
“No, it’s not,” I assured him. “It’s Esca.” To Ella I said, “Once we get you a new phone, I’ll put my number in there for you.”
“And you’re going to explain yourself and what’s been going on in your life in great detail.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Okay,” she said, taking a breath. “Good. And don’t leave again.”
“I won’t,” I promised and then looked at Dallas. “I won’t leave.”
“You do that?” Dallas asked cautiously. “You just disappear?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“You swear?” Ella chimed in.
“I do,” I said, looking first at her and then turning to Dallas. “I swear.”
“These are promises you’re making,” Dallas pointed out.
“Without question,” I assured him as Ella sagged into my side.
Thirteen
Lane Stanton did not know much. She’d been visiting friends, as we knew, when she was kidnapped by Suárez. She spent a couple days with him and was then taken into custody by the DEA, or so she thought, and stashed in a villa that she soon realized was nothing more than a luxury prison complete with a butler, a maid, and a cook. When Ella had arrived to escort her to Vegas, Lane had wept tears of joy. From her standpoint, Ella was her liberator. She was being flown to a safe house the following day, to be with her family until Andrew Murray was captured and his organization no longer a threat. But at the moment, she was sitting at the FBI field office with Brig and Eric, making a full confession to her brother as she was debriefed by Montez and two other FBI and four DEA agents.
In the next room, Ella was on a video call with her boss, Lincoln Dobbs, as well as several others in Virginia, and Dallas, Lund, and their boss, Alexander Higa. I was sitting out of range of the camera, as I was not with the DEA or the FBI, but Ella was fragile and insisted I attend. Her life had changed in a blink, and she was having trouble finding her equilibrium. I was there to help with that, and, I was certain, she wanted to keep an eye on me. She was taking no chances that I’d disappear on her again, despite my many assurances to the contrary.
She explained about the people Murray killed, her original team, many other DEA agents, as well as Rojas, his latest law enforcement victim. Files were put up on the screen that she walked everyone through, the money trail, the drug trail, and the fact that there were photos was mind blowing. She hid her pictures, amazingly enough, on Flickr, in her private Photostream. Who would have thought to look there, or would believe she’d hide something so sensitive on a community platform? It was risky as hell, but it worked, so along with beautiful sunset photos from years before she was with the cartel, there were pictures of drug deals in progress and crystal-clear black-and-white shots of ledgers, shipping manifests, and contact information for a whole variety of people that had not been, until now, on the DEA and FBI radar. It was a mountain of evidence that would ensure a conviction and a long stay in a federal prison. The issue at hand was figuring out where Murray was. His whereabouts could not be confirmed, and an hour later, Dobbs made the official announcement. “Murray is in the wind,” he informed the room, but directed the comment to Ella. “We were able to empty your apartment there in Sinaloa, as well as your original place in Guadalajara, of all personal belongings before anyone else arrived.”
She jolted in her chair. “He doesn’t know my real name, does he?”
Dobbs squinted at her. “Unfortunately, we had a breach. We believe someone in the organization got hold of a hacker on a terrorist watchlist there in Cancun.”
She started to hyperventilate, and I got up and crossed over to her, squatting down beside her chair as she turned to face me, both hands in mine.
“Breathe,” I told her gently. “I mean”—I cleared my throat—“what would Javi say?” Instant scowl, and I winced in reply, my face clenched up like I was embarrassed for her. “Because, you know,” I said, laying it on, “maybe this is too much for you.”