“Oh my God.”
Burton looked down at the table again.
“It damn near killed me watching Sam Talley suffer all these years believing she walked away from him.” His voice roughened. “But the Feds made it clear Clara would die if anybody knew where she was.”
Rain whispered harder against the windows.
“She testified?” Burke asked quietly.
Burton nodded.
“She did.” A bitter pause followed. “But Vicente Varga walked.”
Everybody sat stunned.
“The organization stayed active,” Burton continued. “And Clara had already testified. Which meant she could never safely come home.”
Izzy looked stricken.
“All this time…”
Burton looked down at the table for a moment.
“A few weeks ago, I got a phone call I never expected to get.”
Everybody stayed quiet.
“It was the DEA.”
He looked toward Burke now.“They knew somebody had started asking questions again. Asked me to convince you to let it go without tipping anybody off.”
Burke leaned back slowly, realization washing across his face.
“That’s why you kept pushing me to walk away.”
“Yes.”
Burke looked down at the five-pointed star pinned to his own uniform shirt, the metal suddenly heavier than it had ever felt.Twenty-seven years of somebody else’s decisions sat on him like a bruise. He looked back at his father.
“So the Feds froze you out,” he said quietly. “And you let ’em. They took a scared mountain girl’s whole life and left Sam living in a graveyard for three decades.”
Burton didn’t flinch.
“Without WITSEC, Clara'd be dead,” he said. “Men like Varga don't leave witnesses. They saved her life—but they buried her in the same breath.”
He swallowed.
"They told me she had to disappear. That the case was more important than letting her say goodbye or come back home."
His jaw worked once.
“They protect cases, not people. And I’ve had to live with what that cost her—and Sam—every damn night since.”
Then Izzy asked softly,
“Do you know where she is?”
“No.”
