Hemingway - Zoe Dawson Page 0,93

bitch, and I’m afraid you’re going to meet with a terrible accident, just like your sister. Move.”

He dragged her to her feet and pushed her through the jungle, back to the cliffs. “Climb.” She did what she was ordered, and when they reached the top, he said. “You should have minded your own business, just like your damn sister. It was easy to get her out on the wharf. She was so dedicated to the Navy.”

She couldn’t help it. She punched him in the face, and he reeled back. He’d actually murdered her sister! She grabbed his gun hand and twisted his wrist, breaking bones, and kicked his legs out from under him. “I’m not going to be as easy to kill as my sister, you bastard.”

She shoved him down to the ground, setting her knee hard into the middle of his shoulder blades, pulled out her gun and racked the slide, then set the cold steel against the back of his head. Her whole body shook.

“I have money. You’ll be set for life.”

“Do you think I care about money?” she bit out

“Shea.” She turned to find Hemingway standing there. “Babe, don’t. He’s not worth it.”

“Please,” Bates whispered. “Listen to him.”

Shea stared blindly at the back of his head, thinking how the bullet would rip through his skull, and he would cease to exist. But would he take the very best of her with him? Every barrier she had erected was in pieces at her feet. She had convinced herself that she was getting revenge for her sister’s death, but that had been her protective cover, her excuse, something to hide behind.

She couldn’t use that excuse anymore. She’d already let the grief in last night, her tears a homage to her sister and their love. Maddy would want her to be happy.

And, at this moment, Maddy was the only person who mattered. She set the safety and pulled the gun away. “Flex cuff this bastard,” she said and climbed back down the cliff.

She breathed in the steamy air, closing her eyes as her heart slowed. When she opened them, the sun glinted off…metal? She frowned and walked toward it.

Crouching down, she dug the object out of the soil, brushed off the caked dirt.

Her heart lurched to a stop and she closed her eyes, certain that her mind was playing tricks on her. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Her legs suddenly trembling, she dropped down to her knees, her heart hammering so hard, it felt like a stampede in her chest.

Hemingway said, “What’s going on, babe?”

She turned toward him and held out the object. His face changed as he recognized what she was holding.

A dog tag.

It read:

PALMER

J. L.A POS

224 45 6789

USMC L

NO PREFERENCE

Jason. Oh, God, what happened to you?

17

Shea sat across from Pedro Gomez. Still reeling from finding Jason’s dog tag. They came in pairs, but the chain must have been broken. She couldn’t help wondering if he was dead or alive. In the same vicinity, they’d found his ragged, bloody and torn BDU top, his name stitched above the pocket.

Gomez stared at her, his dark eyes so cold, she could feel it drop ten degrees in the room. “Why did you murder Thomas Schellenberg and torture those other two Marines?”

In heavily accented English, he spat, “They are thieves. During the earthquake in my country, Laguna Blanca was devastated, and the Marines were sent in two years ago. They got tipped off about our stash house at Laguna Naick Neck, also devastated, and stole two hundred and fifty million dollars. We only discovered their identities after the traitor was found out, and we tracked them here. The gringo died because he wouldn’t tell us where the money was and as incentive for the other two to give us the location.”

She rose and closed the file. She left the room and said to the Agent Miles. “He’s all yours.”

She walked a few short steps down the hall to the next interrogation room. Unfortunately, Taggert had been killed in the assault at the farmhouse, which left only Bates’s nephew, Brendon Hanson. His uncle was currently cooling his heels in the Asunción jail, waiting for an NCIS escort back to San Diego where he was going to be charged with treason and murder.

Saint had patched Hanson up, as Taggert had taken the brunt of the torture. When she opened the door, Hanson barely looked up. He knew his career and his freedom were over and that he was going to be incarcerated and disgraced