Wicked as Lies (Wicked & Devoted 3)

Zy couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t. “Okay.”

“Then One-Mile and your bestie took that trip to Mexico in August that went to shit before it even started. And Walker got taken while Trees walked away with hardly a scratch.”

“He explained that.”

“Yeah.” Hunter raised a brow. “He had a story and everything.”

One they didn’t necessarily believe.

“We’ve been watching your buddy closely, waiting to see what else materialized. But September rolled around, and we got the info that allowed us to go in and rescue One-Mile. Everything went off perfectly. It couldn’t have worked out better if we’d drawn a fucking picture.”

“Exactly,” Logan jumped in again. “And remember who wasn’t on that mission because of truck-stop sushi?”

“That’s a damn coincidence.”

“Is it?” Hunter asked. “It looked fishy”—he smirked at his own pun—“but we were willing to believe it was possible his absence had nothing to do with our success.”

“Until this past weekend.” Logan sent him an acidic smile that said the SOB had the proof they’d been looking for.

Zy wracked his brains for something that had gone down the past two days. “What happened?”

“We sent Walker on an errand for us week before last.”

They had. Zy didn’t know much about it. The bosses had been pretty hush-hush, and he hadn’t cared enough to be nosy. “And?”

“Recently, Emilo Montilla was spotted just a couple of miles from his estranged wife’s safe house.”

Zy leaned in. “He came onto US soil?”

Logan nodded. “Alone. To find his wife and son. How could he possibly have known to look in St. Louis?”

Suddenly, Zy remembered a snippet of news he’d caught over the weekend. “Did he have anything to do with the five dead cops at that precinct in St. Louis?”

“Bingo. Someone get the guy a prize.”

“Shelve the sarcasm,” Hunter demanded. “It doesn’t help.”

“Fuck you.” Logan scowled at his older brother.

“The only ones getting fucked right now are us if we can’t get it together,” Joaquin snapped. “Finish your damn explanation.”

“Fine.” Logan crossed his arms over his chest. “Walker moved Valeria, her son, and her sister, Laila, to a new safe house in another state. He was supposed to stay with them for a week and ensure they weren’t followed. But you know Walker…”

They all did. He had a big mouth and really piss-poor listening skills, especially when it came to authority figures. “He didn’t stay a week?”

“Not even close. He decided he’d rather bait Montilla, so he hauled ass back to St. Louis and set a trap. He already knew we suspect we have a mole in this office, so he took it upon himself to kill two birds with one stone.”

“How?” Zy knew the sniper was crazy, but that sounded beyond insane.

“He decided to send Trees an email as a ‘professional courtesy’ because he was on that mission in which he was captured. In it, he told Trees the location of the St. Louis safe house and even helpfully provided a floor plan. And Montilla showed up for his wife, with murder on his mind.”

Hunter nodded. “Prior to that, Montilla had sniffed around for days. But the minute Trees got that email, Montilla showed up to Valeria’s abandoned safe house in the middle of the night, sneaked in the back door, and went directly for the master bedroom—without a second of hesitation or a flicker of light.”

“Then Walker, that crazy motherfucker, knocked him out, hogtied him, put him face down in a bathtub, and started the water—after threatening to hook him up to a car battery.”

Yep, that sounded like Walker.

“That’s all circumstantial. It doesn’t mean Trees is the mole,” Zy argued. “What about a hacker? That Stone guy was here a few months back.”

“Stone didn’t put anything on our network. He was here for a favor.”

“It’s still possible we have some virus that allows someone to spy on our communications? Maybe they can read all our instant messages and emails.”

Logan gave a halfhearted shrug. “Anything is possible. In theory. But if someone else had done that, shouldn’t Trees have eradicated it?”

Since Trees was their tech guy, yeah. He’d put a metric shit-ton of security on the platform. “Nothing is foolproof.”

Logan turned to his brothers, who both shrugged.

“Fine.” Hunter stood. “We’ll have Stone scan it from top to bottom and see if there’s any digital trace of an information-stealing virus. But since we’re ninety-nine-percent sure that’s not the issue, you need to do something for us now—before anyone else gets hurt.”

Zy dreaded where this was going. He didn’t believe Trees would sell them out. He wouldn’t until he saw it with his own two eyes, and even then, he knew there would be extenuating circumstances. “What?”

“You keep insisting your buddy is innocent.”

“Because he is.”

“So we won’t make you look for clues that he’s guilty.” Hunter sounded almost magnanimous. “You just have to prove he’s innocent.”

“What? Why me? It’s your fucking company.”