Page 79 of South of Justice

She appeared in the hallway, barefoot, shirt unbuttoned, hair still tangled from sleep.

“They’re gone,” Ryan said. “Noah. Gates.”

“Gone?” She blinked, like trying to clear a fog from her mind. “Why wouldn’t he wake us?”

Ryan didn’t respond, just strode past her and yanked open the front door.

Outside, the pre-dawn haze clung to the scrubland. Ryan crossed the dirt lot in long strides, his bare feet kicking up dry dust. The SUV was still there—Gates’s.

He yanked open the driver’s side door. Keys still in the ignition. A half-empty bottle of water in the cupholder. The map they’d used to plan the compound breach lay folded on the passenger seat, edges curled from handling.

Lucía caught up to him, breath uneven. She took one look and frowned. “Wait. He left the vehicle?”

“Looks like it.”

She moved around to the passenger side and opened the door slowly, as if something might leap out. Her brow furrowed. “He couldn’t have gone on foot.”

“No.” Ryan stepped back, thinking. Faint tire tracks trailed toward the road. “He had help.” He crouched near the tire grooves, fingers tracing the shallow tread. “They didn’t rush. Didn’t peel out. No signs of struggle.”

Lucía stood still, arms wrapped around herself. “Then it wasn’t a kidnapping.”

“No,” Ryan muttered. “This was a decision.”

He rose, jaw flexed, rage flickering behind his eyes. “Three of us went into that compound,” he said, voice low and cutting. “We got the kid out. We got him safe. And Gates just…decides to disappear without a word? Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t explain. Just takes him?”

Lucía crossed her arms. “He was never going to let you keep him. You know that, right?” Her voice turned gentle. “He’s not your son. He has a grandmother. A legal guardian. A home?—”

His voice dropped again, low and sharp. “You think I don’t know that? I was ready for that,” he said. “What I wasn’t ready for was this. A nighttime extraction like we’re the problem.”

Lucía swallowed hard. “Maybe he thought he was protecting the kid.”

Ryan laughed bitterly. “From what? From us?”

“No. From Javier. From whatever’s still coming.”

Ryan shook his head, the fury cooling into something else. Disgust. Betrayal. “He just…left.”

Lucía looked away, toward the horizon, her voice quiet. “Maybe he thought we’d try to stop him.”

Ryan didn’t answer. He just stood in the doorway. The wind picked up, stirring the dust in ghostly little spirals. In the distance, the faint glint of daylight began to creep over the horizon—bright, merciless, and indifferent.

He yanked open drawers. Pulled aside throw pillows. Kicked open a cabinet door. Not looking for anything in particular, just something. Something tobreak.

Lucía stood near the front door, still silent, watching him unravel in real time.

He opened the last cabinet near the kitchen.

And froze.

There it was. The burner phone. The one he’d left behind in the Sierra Norte cabin. He’d left it on the table, as a finalfuck youto the men who’d been using it to order him around. He knew he’d left it.

But it sat there now on a folded dish towel like it had been waiting for him. Screen dim but blinking.

He picked it up. One message. Timestamp: two hours ago. From: Unknown

He opened it.

If you ever want to see the boy again, bring the woman. Hotel Punta Roja. Room 6. Noon today.