He took the lead as he pushed open the front door all the way. Silence filled the air. He walked inside the foyer, which opened up into the living room. The place was a mess. Tables overturned, sofa cushions taken out, and everything was strewn around. Someone had been on the hunt.
They cleared the first floor room by room before heading upstairs.
“I don’t hear anything. I don’t think Diaz is home,” Cass said.
“We need to check everything.” He wasn’t going to make any snap judgments.
When they got to the top of the stairs, he turned right and walked down the hallway and into the first room. The smell hit him. A smell he knew all too well. John Diaz lay in the middle of the bedroom floor in a pool of crimson blood. His throat cut. Zane muttered a curse.
Cass’s eyes widened as she entered the room. “Oh no. We’re too late.”
They had to get the Feds in there ASAP. Zane pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts. He pushed the button and lifted the phone to his ear.
“Mason, it’s Zane. We’ve got a major problem.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Sunday evening, Layla sat at her kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea and trying to stay focused on the task at hand. She had to keep fighting back the emotions that flooded through her from all that she’d gone through in the past forty-eight hours.
There was a loud knock on her door, and she jumped up from her seat. Picking up her side arm, she walked to the door and looked through the peephole. Zane’s bright blue eyes stared back at her. She opened the door and realized Zane wasn’t alone. He’d brought Cass with him.
And Hunter.
“Hunter? What’re you doing here?” The words came out more harshly than she’d intended, but she didn’t know what was happening right now.
Hunter’s eyes widened. “I didn’t expect to see you either.” He turned to Zane. “Layla’s your CIA team member?”
“I didn’t know the two of you knew each other,” Zane said.
“We went to law school together,” Layla said quickly as she exchanged a look with Hunter. She didn’t want to get into their past with Zane and Cass. It wasn’t relevant to the issues in front of them. “Come in and have a seat.” She showed them into the living room and offered them some water and coffee, then tried to steel herself for what was to come. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on and why Hunter is here with the two of you?” Her tone was stern, but she wanted answers. Could it be that Hunter wasn’t a PI anymore?
Zane and Cass exchanged an uneasy glance. “I’m sorry,” Zane said. “Before we talk about Hunter, there’s something else. We have news. Bad news.”
Like she really needed more bad news.
“There’s no easy way to say this.” Cass reached out and grabbed Layla’s hand. “John is dead.”
“What?” Layla’s stomach clenched. That was more than bad news. It was devastating.
Zane’s eyes met hers. “We found him at his house with his throat slit. The place had been tossed. Just like what happened to Cass’s place.”
Layla looked at Hunter, who sat with a deep frown on his face. She still didn’t know how Hunter was involved in this mess and how he had the security clearance to be having this conversation. And until she knew his role, she couldn’t talk about the Mejía cartel. “I can’t speak freely in front of Hunter.”
Hunter and Zane shared a look. A look that let her know she was in even more trouble than she had thought.
“That’s what we need to talk about,” Zane said. “Hunter is a contractor for the DEA. He has TS/SCI clearance and has specific permission to be read into our op.”
Layla clenched her fists. “I’m sorry, what?” Hunter had top secret security clearance? She didn’t even know where to start her questions.
“Basically, I’ve been doing freelance work for the DEA for over two years,” Hunter said. “Before I started working with them, I had to go through the whole security clearance process.”
“How does your work fit into what is going on now?” Layla asked as she tried to put the pieces together as quickly as possible.
“Our team is obviously being targeted,” Zane said. “How did the cartel figure out it was us? We’ve been compromised, and Hunter will be working on figuring out who sold us out. We needed someone from outside our agencies who could step in and be objective.”
She frowned. “Does he know all the details of the op?”
“Not yet,” Cass responded. “We figured we’d brief him here to make sure we were all on the same page.”
Layla nodded but didn’t really know what she was agreeing to. How had her world changed so suddenly in just a few moments?
Zane looked at Hunter. “The DEA got intel about a Mejía safe house that was full of drugs and cash. The safe house was going to be the storage area for a large shipment headed north to our border. We had a narrow window to act to secure the safe house, neutralize any cartel activity there, and seize the drugs and money.”
Hunter cleared his throat. “This is all about Mejía?”
“Yes,” Layla responded.
Hunter turned back to Zane. “You must have had some help in the field. The four of you couldn’t have done that alone—no offense.”
Zane nodded. “None taken. We had some DEA muscle with us, but the four of us did all the strategic planning, and we were at the safe house with our guys, watching and monitoring every step of the way.”
Hunter leaned forward. “I’ll need a list of everyone involved, no matter how tangentially, so I can run deep background on all of them.”
Zane started typing on his cell. “Won’t be an issue. You’ll have it in your inbox within the hour.”
“The actual op went off without a hitch,” Cass said. “We were patting ourselves on the back,
