(LANCE )
The safe house smelled of blood, salt air, and broken glass. I sat on the floor with my back against the overturned table, the signed deferred-prosecution agreement spread across my lap like a death warrant that had just been rewritten. My head throbbed where the Salazar sicario had pistol-whipped me. Blood trickled down my temple and dripped onto the crisp federal letterhead, staining the ink.
Eliona was gone.
My phone lay beside me, the last video from Diego Salazar still playing on loop — her hooded figure in the back of a black van, his calm, cultured voice promising exactly how they would break her if I didn’t deliver Ghost and every piece of Elena’s testimony within twenty-four hours.
I wiped blood from my eyes and forced myself to read the plea deal again, line by line,
