Page 100 of The Last Promise You Made

“What?” It was Enrique who released the shocked question into the room.

Gia swayed as she stepped into the living room, and I took two steps toward her, but it was McK who put an arm around her.

“I’ll let Rory explain,” she said, sinking onto the couch and putting her phone on the coffee table.

A woman’s voice spoke to the room over the line. “I’ve been scouring the internet for Anna-Ravyn’s code. I told Gia this morning that I found a bunch of places she’d scrubbed clean, erasing someone from existence. It took me most of the day to unwind it, but I did. She was born Natalia Emily Laredo to Emiliano Rodrigo Lopez and Maria Rosalinda Laredo. She’s six years younger than her brother, Jaime Emiliano Lopez Laredo. She was sent away to boarding school at twelve, spent her life amongst the wealthiest children in the country, and then went to MIT, where she stunned her professors with her computer skills. Both parents are dead. Maria Rosalinda’s death was deemed a drug overdose, whispered to be a suicide. Emiliano Senior crashed in a Venezuelan jungle on a small plane, and the body was never found.”

“So, their father was involved in the cartel?” Enrique asked.

“I don’t think so. The plane crash happened as the Lovatos were just moving up in the underworld,” Rory said. “I think this has to do with Jaime’s time in California. He’s got an IQ off the charts and had a place at the University of Boulder in their engineering program, but instead, he was shuffled off to California to work in the fields alongside some cousins from Mexico.” She hesitated. “Why didn’t this flag us before?”

“It did,” Enrique grunted out. “My time in Lexington was to see if I could tie him to the gang of foot soldiers they had there. But Laredo has friends in high places who insist he’s nothing but a wealthy rancher.” The DEA agent looked at me as if I’d been the one to insist on it. I would have. I would have bet more than I could afford to lose on Jaime being a decent human. “Any time I even suggested getting closer, I was told to back off.”

Silence settled for a moment as the implication of what he was saying ran through all of us. Gia’s voice was tortured from more than a bruised windpipe as she said, “You think Leland is covering this up?”

“Someone kept us from following any leads that hinted in his direction. Weren’t you supposed to spend time at his ranch?” Enrique asked Gia.

She nodded. “Yes, but when we got the lead in D.C. with Rory’s dad, they pulled me back.”

“Who pulled you?” Enrique asked.

Gia swallowed, and I could see the doubts that were spinning through her about her boss. “Is the line secure on your end right now, Rory?”

“I’m at my desk.” There was shuffling on the other end. “Let me call you back.”

She was gone, and silence filled the air. Gia pocketed her phone, a grim look on her face.

The truth settled over me. Jaime was behind this, pulling strings with a suave, confident smile that had fooled everyone, just like he’d fooled me. I’d trusted him, and by doing so, I’d handed Ravyn over to the wolves she’d been trying to escape. My chest felt as if I’d had a knife shoved into it. “I showed him a picture of her a few weeks before the wedding.” I rubbed my hand over my face. “Fuck. She was hiding from him, and I led him straight to her.”

“You are not responsible for her,” Maddox bit out. “Damnit, Ryder, she lied and kept secrets. If she’d been honest with you, we could have protected her. But she wasn’t. So don’t take this on. There is nothing you could have done differently.”

The man in the chair snorted, a dark and unforgiving sound, and all our eyes swung toward him. “No one is safe from the wolf. No one. I’m as dead as all of you are now.”

“What does he want with my daughter?” I lunged at the man, but Enrique held me back, only to pick up one of the guns from the table, spin it around, and aim it at the man.

“Talk, and we might be convinced to try to save your sorry-ass life.”

The man darted his eyes around, struggled at the zip ties, and then dropped his head. “The key. She has the key to the code he’s trying to finish. The box that will allow him complete access to any system in the world.”

“She doesn’t have it. She has nothing,” I snarled just as Gia reached me, pulling at my arm and drawing me away from Jaime’s henchman. My eyes met hers. The Switch. The encryption on the Switch. There was definitely something there.

“Even if she doesn’t have the key, he believes she does. Worse, he believes she belongs to him by blood. He won’t let you have her,” the man said with a careless shrug. “He’d rather she die first.”

My heart couldn’t take it. My heart was going to implode.

As I stared at the man, a red dot appeared on his forehead—a strange little movement that seemed like I should recognize it. As my mind was trying to place it, Gia’s already destroyed voice screamed, “Sniper!”

She dragged me into her with a fierceness that caused us to lose balance and had us tumbling to the floor just as the man’s head kicked backward. A hole appeared, blood gushing out, and his eyes rolled back.

In an instant, Maddox had McKenna on the ground, buried under him as he shouted orders into his radio.

Enrique jumped through the broken glass, heading for the woods.

In the silence that followed, I realized I was lying on top of Gia, her thin body having cushioned my fall instead of the other way around. I slid off her, staying low to the ground and assessing her body for injuries that I might have caused.

“Go,” she said, shoving at me. “Stay low and get the hell out of this room.”

Gunfire echoed through the woods behind my house, and I moved. I stayed as low as I could, clamping Gia’s hand in a viselike grip and dragging her with me. She hauled me to stop at the table, reaching up and grabbing both weapons before allowing me to continue tugging her into the entryway. Maddox and McKenna had made it to the hallway and were crawling toward my office doors.

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