My jaw clenched. “You saying the sheriff is in bed with them?”
“I’m saying someone with access to his systems is,” Aaron replied. “Could be him. Could be a deputy. Could be some idiot tech consultant who likes fast dark money.”
I stared out into the dark smear of trees. Somewhere out there was the mine. Somewhere out there were men who thought they could set up a war in my hometown.
“And Julia?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Your detective?” Aaron said. I could hear the smile in his voice. “She’s not on any suspicious lists. Background is clean. Service record is solid. She’s been flagged twice for pushing too hard on cases, but that just tells me she’s stubborn as hell.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “She is.”
Aaron’s tone shifted, softer. “Keep her close, Jensen. Whoever’s feeding intel to the cartel knows you brought a team in. They’ll move faster now.”
“Already planning on it.”
“I’ll be wheels down in a few hours,” he said. “Me, Miles, and Jace. We’ll keep a low profile, but from the moment we arrive, this is under a different umbrella. You understand?”
“Presidential,” I said. “Got it.”
“One more thing,” Aaron added. “Trust no one wearing a badge unless you’d trust them with your life. And even then, double-check.”
The rain gusted sideways, spitting across the porch.
“I’ll send you coordinates when we’re en route,” he said. “Try not to start the war without us.”
“No promises,” I said, and hung up.
For a minute, I just stood there, letting the rain soak through my shirt, the cold biting into the heat coiled in my chest. Copper Cove wasn’t just a cartel staging ground. It was a chess piece on someone’s D.C. board.
And Julia was standing in the middle of it, thinking this was just about one mine and some bad men with guns.
Not anymore.
When I stepped back inside,the warmth and noise hit me all at once. Boone was arguing with Logan over the best ingress route, and Russ had started using my dad’s old coffee table as a filing cabinet.
Logan looked up. “That our friendly neighborhood spook?”
“Delta Five,” I said. “The president asked them to dig into who’s backing the cartel from our side of the border.”
Boone let out a low whistle. “If this has the President's fingerprints, we’re past small-town trouble.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed a towel off the back of a chair, scrubbing rain from my hair. “They traced calls from a government server to Colombia. Path runs through the sheriff’s department.”
Russ sat up straighter. “Through, not to?”
“Could be anyone with access,” I said. “Sheriff, deputy, clerk, janitor. Somebody with a password they shouldn’t have.”
Logan’s expression hardened. “You telling Julia?”
I hesitated. She’d already been stretched thin—betweenthe mine, the dead cartel shooter, and the fact that someone tried to turn her into target practice twice in forty-eight hours.
“She deserves to know,” Logan said quietly.
“Yeah,” I said. “She does.”
I pulled out my phone again, thumb hovering over her contact. Before I could hit call, the screen lit up—Julia Marlow.
I answered. “You must be psychic, Detective.”
