by Evan Graver
Chapter Thirty-One
There was something about the look that Oscar gave her and how he’d replied that made Emily believe he was lying. She hadn’t liked this situation from the start, but she had given Oscar and Ryan the benefit of the doubt from the very beginning. The Venezuelan had told a fantastic and convincing tale of being ambushed in the jungle, but she had always felt there was something missing from the story. Yes, he could have gotten lucky by stepping away to relieve himself just as the boat with Mendoza’s team had swept in to kill everyone, but the story made no sense to her.
She walked away from the table and stretched out on a lounge chair as the rest of the team talked about how Oscar would contact Colonel Estevez.
Oscar had said the boat had used grenades and heavy rifle fire to kill the team. She tried to picture the ambush of Oscar’s team in her mind. Having worked investigations up and down the Florida coastline, she knew just how heavy the underbrush and mangrove swamps could be along a riverbank. As the ambush team had approached in the boat, they wouldn’t have known how Oscar’s team was dug in, where the drugs were, or even where the prisoner, Diego, would be. She knew enough about Special Forces to know that when they were in the bush, they didn’t let their guard down, and if they suspected other forces were close, they wouldn’t light a fire and have a pig roast. Admittedly, these were Venezuelan Marines who had been on patrol for a long time, but something still didn’t add up. And to top it off, everyone Ryan and Oscar had gone after so far had turned up dead.
Sliding off the chair, she motioned for Jennifer to join her in the kitchen. She poured them each a glass of lemonade, then asked, “What do you think of Oscar?”
Jennifer thought for a moment. “He seems all right.”
“You don’t think something is off about his story?”
“Maybe, but we live with guys who are a little ‘off.’ I guess being in the military will do that to you. Why?”
“I’ve been trying to piece together his story about the ambush. It sounds too convenient.” She leaned closer to her friend and put a hand on hers. “Can you do me a favor and keep him occupied while I snoop around?”
Jennifer cocked her head. “Okay. But be careful.”
Emily looked out the patio doors to the team gathered around the table. “You go out there and keep him from coming inside. I’m going to search his room.”
While Jennifer went outside, Emily went to Oscar’s room. It was almost identical to the other rooms in the villa, decorated in tastefully bright Caribbean colors with matching fabrics for the curtains and the duvet. A small carry-on suitcase sat on top of the dresser, with the top open and leaning against the mirror. She rifled through it, careful to replace everything as she found it, but there was nothing unusual amongst his clothing. Next, she moved to the backpack sitting on the floor beside the bed.
She unzipped the main compartment and found his pistol, extra magazines, and a large knife. It was all gear Scott had supplied Oscar with when they’d prepared to invade Rincone’s house. Under them was a pair of cargo pants, a shirt, and a change of socks and underwear.
In the pack’s front zippered pocket, she found Oscar’s wallet. Flipping it open, she removed a Carnet de la Patria. It looked like a driver’s license, with Oscar’s picture in the bottom right corner, and above it was a QR code. Next, she pulled out a picture of a man in an old military uniform, followed by three credit cards. She laid them on the tile and photographed the fronts and backs with her phone. There was an assortment of currency, scraps of paper, business cards, and a picture of a beautiful woman with long black hair and smiling brown eyes. She snapped pictures of these, too, then placed it all back in the wallet as she had found it.
Rooting through the backpack’s other pockets, she found the passport that Ryan had gotten for Oscar from the forger in St. Thomas and another credit card. This one was blue, like the one Ryan had found in the bushes.
Voices in the hallway startled her, and she glanced at the door before taking two more photographs and jamming everything back into the pack. She heard Oscar ask Jennifer why she was asking him so many questions when all he wanted to do was use the bathroom. Emily glanced around and knew that if the door opened, Oscar would catch her in the act. The window was out of the question. She couldn’t get it open and climb out before the door opened.
The doorknob turned.
She dove under the bed, pulling the backpack into place and sliding to the far side of the bed. All she could see were Oscar’s feet as he crossed the floor and stepped into the bathroom. He had left the bedroom door open and closed the bathroom one. Quickly, she got up and padded across the tile, thankful she was barefoot.
Jennifer gave a sigh of relief when she saw Emily come out the door. The two women went to the kitchen and retrieved their glasses of lemonade. As they returned to the pool area, Jennifer whispered, “Did you find anything?”
“I’m not sure,” Emily said. “I’ll check it out later.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was late in the evening when the group returned from eating dinner at a local restaurant and Emily cornered Carmen before they went into the house. She showed her the photos she had taken of Oscar’s things and asked if she could dig into the Venezuelan Marine’s past.
As Carmen scrolled through the pictures, she stopped on the image of the blue card. “This looks like the card Ryan found.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Emily concurred.
Carmen emailed herself a copy of the photos, then handed the phone back to Emily.
“Did you ever get anything off his phone?” Emily asked.
“No. The only people he called was us. You didn’t see a burner in his bag, did you?”
“No, but I got interrupted in the middle of my search.”
“I’ll look at this stuff and talk to you later.” Carmen headed for her bedroom.
Emily found Ryan and Mango sitting by the pool, drinking beer. She debated telling them about her suspicions. Her investigator instincts told her there was more to Oscar than met the eye. It was her job now to steer Ryan in the right direction, so Oscar’s possible treachery didn’t blindside him.
She had seen Ryan lose it after Kirshen had died, and while she knew he had a closet full of ghosts, she’d accepted it and wanted to help him in any way possible. If Carmen had a bombshell to drop about why Oscar carried around a prepaid card that might be connected to the same account as the sniper, she wanted her man to be unfazed by the news.
After helping herself to another glass of lemonade from the fridge, she went out to join them and sat down on the end of Ryan’s lounge chair.
“When you guys were in Panama, how did Oscar act?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Mango asked.
“Did he make phone calls to someone you didn’t know or try to do things secretly?”
Ryan gave her a quizzical look. “Where are you going with this?”
She debated with herself about telling him of her clandestine visit into Oscar’s room. “How much do we really know about Oscar? The two men you went after died before they could tell you who The Armorer is, and Oscar looks like the common denominator.”
Mango raised his eyebrows and looked at Ryan. “She makes a point, bro.”
“Yeah. It’s not the first time we’ve talked about that.”
“Have you checked him out?” she asked.
“When I asked Landis for help with the Langstons, I also had him check on Oscar, but there wasn’t much other than that he was a Venezuelan Marine. That part fit with what he’d told us, and I figured he needed help to avenge his team.”
“Why do you trust him?” she pushed.
Mango also looked quizzically at Ryan.
Ryan stared into the night for several moments before he answered. “I’ve walked a mile in his shoes.”
“Because of Greg?” Emily asked.
“No.”
“Then why?”
Again, he was silent
, and she could see something was weighing heavily on his mind. He took a drink and closed his eyes, then let out a sigh. She couldn’t tell if it was in annoyance or resignation.
Eventually, Ryan said, “I’ve been betrayed and left for dead by someone who I thought had my back. I know how he feels and right now, he needs us to have his back.”
She could see there was much more to the story that he might never tell her. While Emily wanted to know everything about Ryan’s mysterious statement, she continued to press on about Oscar. “What if he’s working for the same people as the sniper who shot Rincone?”
“Then why involve us?” Mango asked.
“Because he hit a wall in St. Thomas,” she said. “We had the documents he needed, and he told us a fanciful story to get us to trust him when, all the while, he’s been playing us.”
“Who is he using us to hunt?” Ryan asked.
“The people who have crossed The Armorer,” she said.
The three of them clammed up when they heard the door to the patio open. Emily saw Carmen come out of the house. She wore a silk robe that fell to her knees, and her dark hair hung long and loose. She motioned for Emily to join her on the far side of the pool.
Emily glanced at Ryan, who was staring at the ocean, almost oblivious of his surroundings, but she knew from experience that he was aware of everything that was happening around him. She rubbed his leg and went to join Carmen.
“I ran the details of that card you found in Oscar’s backpack,” Carmen whispered. “It came from the same batch as the one Ryan found, but it’s never been used and still has twenty thousand dollars on it.”
Emily felt her heart sink. Ryan trusted this guy, and now she thought she had proof that he was in bed with The Armorer. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Ryan watching them. With a wave, she motioned him over. He stood and walked around the pool, giving Mango the finger. It was such a crass gesture.
“What’s up?” he asked and sipped his beer.
“I found a prepaid card in Oscar’s backpack that came from the same batch as the sniper’s,” Emily explained.
The news didn’t seem to faze him. “I know. He took it from the safe deposit box when we grabbed the docs on The Armorer. Has he used it?”
“No,” Carmen said.
Ryan chuckled. “He probably can’t figure out the password.” He stared at Emily for a long moment. “Why were you in his pack?”
“I’m an investigator. I go where my head says the next lead will be.”
After another long moment, he nodded. “Okay. I understand why the guy is suspicious to you. What else did you find?”
Emily showed him the pictures she’d taken with her phone.
“His Fatherland Card identifies him as Oscar López, and he was a Marine,” Carmen said.
“What’s a Fatherland Card?” Emily asked.
“It’s the card that looks like a driver’s license. The Carnet de la Patria,” Carmen said.
“So,” Ryan said, “Oscar is who he claims to be, and now that we’re done witch-hunting our friend, we can get back to figuring out who The Armorer is, right?”
“I just want you to be careful,” Emily told him. “This entire thing is predicated on him telling you that he lost his team, and I think we need to verify some facts.”
“I think some of those facts are being born out in front of us because every time we get close to someone with more information about The Armorer, that person ends up dead. Whether or not Oscar is telling us the truth, The Armorer is laundering a serious amount of money out of Venezuela and is killing people to keep it a secret.”
“Whoever he is, he has to be involved in the oil industry or drugs, irrespective of his code name,” Carmen said.
Ryan tapped his empty bottle against his thigh. “Why don’t we ask Oscar in the morning?”
“Do you really trust him?” Emily asked.
“He’s trying to avenge his team and that’s something I understand,” Ryan said.
Emily shook her head. Ryan hadn’t said that he trusted Oscar, and that confirmed her suspicions. There was much about Oscar that they didn’t know, but for now, she would trust her instincts about him, and her gut told her that Oscar wasn’t who he said he was.
To discover the truth, she’d have to keep digging.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ryan spent most of the night tossing restlessly in bed. He’d gone down this rabbit hole based on a story that Oscar had told them. When he’d first appeared on the scene, he had been trying to steal a box of documents from Paul Langston. If he was working for The Armorer, then why was he so eager to find the person who had paid Terrence Joseph to kill Diane and Paul? Wouldn’t he already know? If that were the case, was Oscar backstopping his story and using Ryan and his friends to hunt down the men who The Armorer believed would talk about his business?
Were they unwitting pawns in Oscar’s game?
He got up early and made coffee. As he sipped his first cup of the day, he decided he needed to know more about Oscar and his background before they continued the hunt for The Armorer. He went upstairs and picked up Emily’s phone. She had shown him the pattern she used to unlock the screen, and he swiped his finger over it. He smiled when the phone opened to a selfie of them cheek-to-cheek in the cockpit of Windseeker. She was a beautiful woman, and he was punching way above his weight class by dating her.
Opening the photos she’d taken of Oscar’s personal items, he slowly scrolled through them. He wondered if Carmen had checked the other credit cards as well as the prepaid. He stopped at the faded picture of Simón Bolívar in his dress uniform. From his time in Margarita Prison, he knew that Venezuelans were proud of their heritage and often carried a portrait of the country’s founder. On the back of the photo was a set of numbers that could have been a lock combination or a credit card pin. The scraps of paper contained notes about the investigation. He stopped on the picture of the woman. Who was she to Oscar?
He needed more information on the mysterious Venezuelan man that they were helping. Thinking back to when he and Oscar had met Barry at his house on St. Thomas, he visualized the computer screen Barry had open, displaying his and Oscar’s pictures. The hacker had plenty of information about Ryan, but none about Oscar. In fact, Barry had been quick to swipe Oscar’s photo off the screen and move on to the banker, Valdez.
Ryan went to Carmen’s room and stepped in without knocking. She was under the covers with a sleeping mask over her eyes. He sat on the bed and shook her shoulder. Carmen stirred and lifted a hand to remove the mask.
She had a puzzled look on her face. With sleep and disdain in her voice, she asked, “What do you want?”
“When Oscar and I came to your place on St. Thomas, Barry had been running a facial recognition scan on us. What did he find out about Oscar?”
Carmen rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Five-thirty. Tell me about Oscar.”
She let out a sigh and pulled the mask down before rolling over. “Talk to me when the sun’s up.”
He threw the covers off her to encourage her to get out of bed. Carmen snatched the covers before they got below her waist, and Ryan turned away when he saw she was sleeping in the nude.
“What the hell, pendejo?” she hissed. “Get out.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to … Shit, I just need to know what you learned about Oscar.”
“Fine.” She sat up and pointed at the door. “Get out, and I’ll be downstairs in a minute.”
Ryan closed the door behind him and went to the kitchen. He poured another cup of coffee and walked outside. Ten minutes later, Carmen joined him at the patio table with a mug of tea. Her hair was wet from showering, and she now wore a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.
She sipped her drink but wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, sincerely.
“Okay, stop, Ryan. Don’t be pathetic. You had a good look. Now let’s get down to business.�
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He nodded, and she launched into her story. When Ryan and Oscar had walked into the garden at Barry’s house, the security system had taken photos of them with its hidden cameras. They had matched Ryan’s photo with those from his military service, U.S. passport, and his North Carolina driver’s license, which she told him had expired over a year ago.
Oscar, on the other hand, was an enigma. There was no record of him in the databases they had rapid access to, including the FBI’s Next Generation Identification system.
“Did you look further?” Ryan asked.
“No,” Carmen said. “You vouched for him, and that was good enough for us.”
“What about now?”
She smiled mischievously. “I’ll need to have a good look, just like you.”
“Oh, come on. How long is this going to last?”
“Not much longer. I just like to see you blush,” Carmen said, laying a hand on Ryan’s.
He knew his face was crimson, but said, “How did you access the NGI?”
She pulled her hand from his and waved it dismissively. “Please. Barry and I are hackers.”
“Have you looked at the other information Emily retrieved from his kit?”
“I sent everything to Barry. We’ll have to wait and see what he comes up with. By the way, this place is nice, but I’d like to sleep in my own bed. How long are we going to stay here?”
“We can go back to St. Thomas. There isn’t anything else we can do here.”
“Good. I’ll go pack. You get us an airplane.”
“Wait,” Ryan said. “What about his phone? You looked at it yesterday.”
“The only calls on it were to you guys.”
“What do think would happen if we emptied the prepaid card that Oscar took? Would it trip an alert somewhere?”
“Maybe,” Carmen said. Her phone chimed as she stood. After reading the message, she turned the phone for Ryan to see. “Barry emailed me a video from a bodega in Miami of the guy who bought the prepaid cards. His name is Webster Griffin.”