That made her smile, the expression soft and private and entirely her own, blooming against the rough blanket as she slowly drifted off, his warmth still surrounding her, the jungle still breathing beyond the walls, the lantern burning itself down to nothing.
For the first time in a very long time, Gabriella slept without fear—curled into the arms of the most dangerous man she'd ever known and the only one she trusted.
CHAPTER 19
BEATLE
Troy, aka Beatle, and his wife, Casey, moved through the small Panamanian village as if they belonged there—just another happy couple of tourists chasing sun and scenery instead of ghosts and intel. Their fingers were laced together, her thumb brushing over his knuckles, and they smiled at each other as they strolled. Anyone watching would see an affectionately absent-minded pair of lovers, too absorbed with each other to pay attention to the world around them.
And that was the point, wasn't it, Beatle thought.To appear blissfully unaware of anything aside from each other?
The village breathed around them, humid and close, the air thick with the smell of frying plantains, diesel exhaust, and something floral—a bloom that grew wild along the crumbling stucco walls, purple and insistent, spilling over the edges of window boxes in complete indifference to the world beneath it. The midday sun pressed down on the crown of his head like a hand, relentless, baking the packed dirt of the market lane until it was pale and cracked. Vendors called out in rapid Spanish, their voices layering over the tinny radio music bleeding from a shopfront to his left. A dog nosed through the gutter. Childrendarted between adult legs, shrieking with the joy of kids who had no idea what the world was capable of.
Beatle appeared calm, laughing at her jokes—and God, she made it easy, Casey always made it easy—despite every one of his instincts screaming. Beneath the relaxed tourist facade, he clocked everything.
Man at the fruit stand. Been there too long. Darting eyes.
Pickup truck. Grey. Cracked left headlight. Second pass in ten minutes.
Conversations dipping—not stopping, just softening—whenever we walk too close.
Tex's intel hadn't been vague. He had picked up another distress call with coordinates and had spent nights searching the dark web for more information on the missing woman. Eventually, he found a trail. There was going to be an exchange soon, and it had listed a potential asset that needed transporting. Everyone knew what that meant—some type of trafficking or movement, human cargo wrapped in the language of logistics. Their assumption had been that it had to do with the missing marine biologist.
Gabriella Valentino. Forty years old. Brown hair, green eyes. Disappeared from Tortuguero National Park. No ransom demand. No body. Yet.
The file had sat in his head ever since then and somehow Casey had picked up on it despite his best intentions.
He could still recall the way her eyes had pleaded with him when the news of the missing biologist went live. He'd been talking with her about something—dinner, he thought, something mundane and domestic and perfectly ordinary—when he'd caught the headline scrolling across the television screen behind her head. His hand had gone slack around the glass he was holding.
She'd caught it. She always caught it. That was the thing about Casey—she watched him with the same intensity he watched the world around him.
So he'd fessed up, laid it out in the flat, careful language he used when he needed her to understand something serious, and watched her face move through half a dozen emotions in the span of ten seconds.
Casey had seen the headline and gone still in that distinct way she had—the way that meant she was back there, back in the dark place, the dank hole, the overwhelming stench of rot around her. When she'd looked at him, eyes wet with unshed tears, and whispered that another biologist might be in trouble just asshehad been—possibly the sameway—there hadn't been a choice.
There is never a choice. Not when it comes to her.
Even as they boarded the plane together with Tex’s intel providing support, Beatle knew this was potentially a suicide mission. How could he not? He was here without backup, without clearance, and with the one person he would burn the entire world down to protect at his side.
What kind of man brings his wife to a suicide mission?
The kind who couldn't say no to her. The kind who had looked into those eyes—wet and wide and begging him without a single word—and found that every tactical argument he'd assembled dissolved on contact.
His jaw ticked as he adjusted his grip on her hand, subtly shifting her to the inside of the walkway and away from the street, away from the grey pickup truck and the man at the fruit stand and every other variable he hadn't neutralized yet. His free hand brushed the hem of his shirt, checking the weight of the concealed weapon resting at his back—solid, warm from his body heat, exactly where it should be.
Good.
Unsanctioned ops always came with consequences. He'd signed enough after-action reports to know exactly what the language looked like when command wanted someone to carry the weight of a bad call. He'd written a few of those reports himself. He knew which words they used when they wanted to bury something quietly.
Still, Beatle didn't like variables he couldn't eliminate. Inside, beneath the easy tourist smile and the loose shoulders and the unhurried pace, he was mapping exits, counting bodies, calculating angles and distances and how fast he could turn this sun-soaked market lane into a battlefield if he had to. The wooden stall frames would offer minimal cover. The alley to the north was his best egress point. The vendor with the machete for cutting coconuts was seven feet to his right and posed a secondary threat only if things deteriorated badly.
Don't let things deteriorate badly, he heard Tex say with a chuckle.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, forcing his shoulders to stay loose, his expression to stay neutral. To anyone watching, he was a man on vacation with his wife. Sunburned. Unhurried. Somewhere between relaxed and bored.
Beside him, she tugged on his hand and broke through his thoughts like sunlight through storm clouds—sudden, warm, welcome, and undeniablyher. “Oh, look at the food over there! I amstarving!”
A slow smile curved his mouth, easy and genuine and exactly the kind of expression that disarmed suspicion, because it was real. She always made it real.