Page 61 of Matthew
He settled onto the seat, his elbows braced on the table, the bags lined up in neat rows beneath the fluorescent glare.
Carter gestured toward the bags. “While you were out playing cowboy Casanova, I ran the preliminary scans.”
Matthew sobered instantly. “And?”
Carter flipped his tablet around. “Definitely HPC. Pharmaceutical grade. Traces of residual compounds—one of them matches a known binding agent used in counterfeit oxy. Not enough to bust anyone on the spot, but enough to confirm what we suspected.”
Matthew nodded once, his jaw tight. “Not only are they cutting corners,” he said. “They’re faking the whole thing. It’s made to appear to be real oxy—same size, same stamp, same coating. You hold one next to a legit prescription pill, and you can’t tell the difference.” He glanced down at the resealed bag. “But it’s not oxy, not even close. Most of the time, it’s fentanyl—or worse—pressed with fillers like HPC to give it weight. Cheap to make. Sold at full street price. And deadly as hell.”
He knew because he’d seen it before.
South of Juárez. Night op. SEAL team insertion into a suspected weapons cache that turned out to be a pill press operation. Bags of the same fine white powder stacked floor-to-ceiling in what was supposed to be an abandoned church. Rows of counterfeit pills—stamped to mimic oxy, Xanax, Adderall—all destined for U.S. streets.
Only that mission hadn’t ended clean.
One of their own had tipped off the cartel.
A teammate. Someone Matthew had trusted.
The fallout had been ugly, the investigation worse.
He could still remember the moment he found his name on the list of those under scrutiny—as if he might’ve been part of it and looked the other way.
He clenched his jaw and tightened his fingers on the edge of the worktable, before he let go.
The idea that his loyalty, his judgment, could be questioned had cracked something deep inside him.
They’d cleared him. Eventually. But the damage had been done.
That op had been the beginning of the end. For his team. For the life he thought he wanted.
And now?
Now it was showing up again, in a town that didn’t deserve it, in the hands of people like Callie who’d never signed up for this kind of war.
He thought of her standing in the sun that morning, spine straight, eyes full of fire. The weight of it all pressing on her shoulders, and still, she didn’t flinch.
Callie Morgan didn’t run.
An unexpected warmth flooded his chest. The beautiful, stubborn woman assessed. She planned. She stood her ground. But, dammit, she shouldn’t have to.
Not for this.
Not for the kind of war that came with bodies and betrayals and powder that looked harmless until it wasn’t.
He’d seen too many good people get burned in the crossfire. Too many towns turned into shadows of themselves because someone decided to use them as cover.
He wouldn’t let that happen here.
He wouldn’t let it touch her.
Not the woman who made him believe he wasn’t broken anymore. Not the woman whose smile told him he was more than what the job had left behind. The woman who’d leaned into him that morning as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
The kind of closeness he hadn’t let himself hope for in a long damn time.
She’d said thank you without the words, and he’d felt every single part of it. And heaven help him, he wanted more. More mornings. More rainy afternoons. More of whatever this thing between them was becoming.
Before any of that, though, he had to make sure nothing got past them. Nothing slipped through the cracks.
