Never met him in person before, only know the face from the news broadcast, that composed, measured authority of a man who runs things from the top. In person, he is taller than expected and considerably more tired, carrying the exhaustion of someone who has been running something enormous for a very long time and is only now seeing the end.
He takes in the room in one sweep, his eyes darting to Quill, whose weapon is on Clemente and Hawke standing beside him. The Mexican federal police follow in behind him, professional and purposeful, moving toward Clemente with handcuffs already out. Not FBI. Mexican authorities. Sam’s coordination had been running longer than any of us had known.
“Stand down,” he says to Quill, directly and without ceremony. “We have everything we need to put him away for the rest of his life. Multiple counts, multiple jurisdictions.” He holds Quill’s gaze. “Don’t do this. Don’t spend time in a cell for him. Not away from your family.”
Quill looks at Clemente for a long moment, at the man who had trafficked Lexi, sold women like inventory, and run the operation that had taken Tracker from all of them.
Then he lowers his weapon.
The federal police move in, and as they pull Clemente’s hands behind his back and snap the cuffs on, as this man who had considered himself untouchable for decades feels the cold metal at his wrists for the first time, Quill leans forward slightly.
“Every day you spend in that cell…” he says, “… remember that we came for you. Remember that we found you. And remember that the people you hurt are still standing.”
Clemente says nothing.
They take him out.
Sam looks at me across the room, and I look back, two men who had been orbiting the same secret for months from completely different directions, him protecting it from the Bureau’s end and me carrying it from the club’s, standing in a hacienda in Mexico at the end of something enormous.
He gives me a single nod, and I give him one back.
Finding Trigger in the east corridor, sitting against the wall with Torch crouched beside him, one hand is pressed against his shoulder, jaw tight, and blood seeping through his fingers with the steady insistence of a wound that isn’t fatal but isn’t done making itself known.
“How bad?”
“Through and through,” Torch says. “He’ll live.”
“I’m fine,” Trigger says through his teeth.
“You’re bleeding.”
Crouching beside him, I tell him, “We’ll get you out. There’s transport waiting.”
Trigger looks up with those steady eyes. “Lawrence?”
“Done.”
Something moves in his expression, deep and settled, the relief of a man who took a bullet for something and has just been told it counted.
“Good.”
Cable’s voice comes through the earpiece again. “Tate. North villa. Luke and Flame have someone contained. Something’s not right.”
“On my way.”
Hearing them before reaching the villa, voices low and tense, Luke and Flame by the sound of it, and someone else who isn’t arguing or fighting but talking in a low, steady voice that can’t be made out from the path. Pushing the villa door open, Luke and Flame have him against the far wall with one arm each, the professional grip of men who know how to hold someone who doesn’t want to be held, except he clearly doesn’t want to fight, standing completely still between them with his hands open at his sides and his head slightly lowered. The woman from the meeting room stands a few feet away with her arms wrapped around herself.
Flame looks up. “Prez, this guy came straight here, and we followed him as you said. He reached for a weapon, and we grabbed him, but he just stopped. Hasn’t fought back at all. Won’t say who he is.”
Crossing the room, I stand in front of him, and he lifts his head. Dark beard, an expensive shirt, and that way of holding himself, contained and controlled, the stillness of someone who has been trained to give nothing away.
“Who are you?”
He looks at me and says nothing, but something in his eyes, green at the edges and familiar in a way that makes no sense and then makes every sense, stops me before I’ve finished the question.
The beard. the build, that particular stillness…
Stepping closer, looking at him properly, and feeling something shift in my chest that has no name. “Tracker?” My voice barely makes it out. “Tracker, is that you?”
