“Maybe an agency took it?”
“Nope, wait until you see this.” Caleb pressed buttons until a cam came online, showing a beautiful old house, palm trees in the courtyard, and a gate. “Those transfers made on the daymatch the same shell corp that pays the property tax on a Bel Air house owned by Harrow Gate Holdings.”
“So, a cartel base in LA.” Not unheard of.
“Better than that!” Caleb raised an eyebrow. “Guess who we have on cam at the residence?” He zoomed in on a figure climbing out of a flashy black Mercedes, timestamped at six p.m. last night.
Doc.
Alejandro.
My heart stuttered once. “The fuck?”
“Who’s that?” Frank asked.
“That’s Alejandro, your boy’s boyfriend,” Caleb smirked. “Facial match off the gate cam. Big house, old money, quiet street—private security, hidden cameras, manicured lawn. Not the kind of place you rent. The kind you hide in.”
The photo showed Doc stepping out of his car. Jeans, jacket, medical bag in hand. Calm. Confident.
A cartel kid who’d survived. Money vanishes the day after a massacre. What was the connection?
Frank gestured at the photo. “Who else lives there?” Thank god he was here because I was having a hard time stringing words together.
Caleb clicked open another file. “Marisol Harper. Two teenage kids, Bradley and Molly Harper. Clean records, private school, normal suburban bullshit. No mention of a husband.”
“Marisol? LuciaMarisol—is this the sister?”
“Hard to tell, but that’s my best guess.” Caleb spun the laptop toward himself again, scrolling with the kind of irritated focus that meant he was digging through poorly formatted databases. “Okay,” he said, tone flat. “Here’s what we’ve got on Doc’s family. Nothing earth-shattering, just background.”
I leaned against the counter, arms folded. “Go on.”
“So,” Caleb continued, “as you know,GaelAlejandro Varga has one sibling. Lucia, likely this Marisol who has two kids,” he said, tapping the screen. “Twins. Bradley and Molly Harper. Fourteen years old. Birth records show they were home births roughly six months after the Águilas massacre, which tracks, given the data on her being pregnant, and a potential early birth for twins. There is no father listed. Nothing that jumps out as suspicious in the family beyond the usual ‘domestic trauma plus no resources.’ This is standard for people escaping cartel shit.”
He clicked another tab.
“The kids are in private school,” he went on. “Looks like they’ve been enrolled there since age four or so. Molly’s the academic. Excellent grades—teachers rave about her. Quiet, focused, one of those kids who reads everything. Bradley’s the sporty one—football. His school reports are basically: ‘bright, distractible, brilliant athlete, talks too much.’ Funding for the school is routed through the same holdings company as the house. Marisol runs a home business that actually does okay: handmade soaps, candles, spa gift sets. Boutique stuff. Sells okay, small income.” He scrolled some more, then shrugged. “No drama. No CPS flags. No police reports. No financial weirdness. Just… a family. A normal one by comparison to the rest of what we look at.”
“Is Alejandro a named guardian to the children?” Frank asked.
“Nope, Marisol is the primary guardian. Although her brother’s name shows up a couple of times—emergency contact, that sort of thing.” Caleb nodded and closed the laptop partway. “We don’t have anything dramatic. Just the basics. Sister, two kids, normal life. Well—” he paused, “normal enough considering where they came from.”
I let out a slow breath. No twists. No hidden surprises. Just context.
I stared at the image for a long moment. Doc—the man who stitched killers back together, who watched people die without blinking—walking through a front yard that looked as if it belonged in a real estate brochure. It didn’t fit. Nothing about it did. Unless it was Doc moving organs through the old network. A medic turned cleaner, the perfect cover for someone who could strip a body and disappear the evidence. The pieces fit in all the worst ways. I’d had him right there, at the scene of a murder, as he watched, and I’d let him go.
What the fuck had I been thinking?
I pushed off the desk. “Send me the address.”
“Sendusthe address,” Frank corrected.
I placed a hand on my partner’s arm, grounding him before he could step forward. “Not this time. I need your detective eye on Caleb here. You’re the one who actually sees the shit the rest of us miss.”
“No, I—” he started, bristling with the instinct to follow.
“Sandy would kill me if something happened to you,” I cut in, softer but firmer. “Stay here this time, yeah? Keep Caleb focused. Keep digging. I’ll call the second anything shifts.”
Frank didn’t like it—jaw tight—but he stayed put, giving me the kind of look that saiddon’t make me regret this.
