Page 35 of Raven's Mark
"Javier Alvarez."
The color leaves her face in stages. "My supervisor?"
"Former supervisor." I nod toward the fallen log at the edge of the clearing. "Sit down."
"I'm fine standing." Her jaw sets hard enough that I can see the muscle working beneath the skin. "Tell me."
I pull up the surveillance photos and turn the screen toward her. "Alvarez is in Fredericksburg. These were taken yesterday."
Raven steps closer, her eyes narrowing on the screen.
The first photo fills the display. Alvarez outside a warehouse, gray hair swept back, wearing a suit that costs more than a federal supervisor's salary should allow. He's talking to two men in designer jeans and leather jackets, watches that catch the light even in a grainy surveillance photo. Cartel money, cartel posture, cartel confidence.
"When was this taken?"
"Yesterday afternoon. Your uncle's team has been tracking cartel movement in the area. They spotted Alvarez at the warehouse and followed him from there."
I swipe to the next photo. Different angle, same meeting. Alvarez is gesturing with one hand, making a point, and the cartel enforcers are listening with the kind of focused attention that men only give to a person they consider an equal.
"Your uncle's team photographed him meeting with known cartel members." I keep my voice level and let the facts do the work. "He's not being careful, which means he's either confident in his protection or desperate enough to stop covering his tracks."
Raven stares at the screen. Her breathing has gone shallow, but her eyes are moving across every detail in the frame the waymine did twenty minutes ago—cataloging faces, clothing, body language, exits.
I swipe to the next photo. "Same day. Different location."
Alvarez at a roadside diner, caught in profile with a coffee cup halfway to his lips. The man sitting across from him wears a tan sheriff's uniform with a star badge visible on the chest pocket.
Raven's breath catches. Her hand wraps around my wrist to steady the phone, and her knuckles go white against my skin.
"Sheriff Harlan," I say.
Her voice comes out level when she speaks, and the control it takes to manage that is visible in the rigid line of her shoulders. "Well. That leaves very little doubt."
I nod. "Your uncle confirmed the ID. Body language between them reads comfortable. Familiar. This wasn't a first meeting."
I zoom in. Alvarez has his elbows on the table, leaning forward. Harlan's set his coffee down, hands folded, listening with the patience of a man hearing an update rather than receiving instructions for the first time.
"How long?" Raven's voice has dropped low enough that I have to lean in to hear her over the wind. "How long has this been going on?"
"Your uncle doesn't know yet. Probably years."
She takes the phone from my hand and pulls it closer, her fingers swiping through the photos again. Warehouse, enforcers, diner, Harlan. Back to the warehouse. Back to the diner. She's searching for a detail that will rearrange the picture into one that doesn't mean what she already knows it means.
"Alvarez signed off on every operation I ran." Her voice is quiet and precise, each word placed with the care of a woman dismantling her own history in real time. "Every briefing. Every debriefing. Every piece of intel that went up the chain." Her eyes lock on the photo of Alvarez with the cartel enforcers. "Heknew where I was. Who I was meeting. What evidence I was collecting."
"Yes."
"And he's meeting with the cartel now." Her voice stays flat, clinical. "Morrison tried to kill me, and my supervisor is in Fredericksburg drinking coffee with a dirty sheriff and shaking hands with the people who ordered my death."
"That's your uncle's assessment. The photos support it."
Raven hands the phone back to me. Every line of her body has gone rigid, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet like she's bracing for impact.
"Sheriff Harlan." Her voice has dropped to a murmur. "The same sheriff who ruled every rancher death in this county accidental."
"Yes."
Her gaze tracks across the tree line where her targets hang in tatters, and I can see the connections forming behind her eyes, each one clicking into place like tumblers in a lock. "How deep does this go, Jesse? How many people knew where I was?"
