Chapter 6 6

Agent Ramirez, surprisingly, found me a small, sterile room to wait in.

She even brought me a towel and a bottle of water.

"You look like hell," she said, not unkindly.

Through the thin walls, I heard a woman weeping.

Screaming, actually.

"My son... they took my son... Crimson Thorn... they made him..."

The words were choked, raw with a pain I couldn't imagine.

Crimson Thorn. The name sounded evil.

Ramirez saw my expression.

"Cartel victim," she said, her voice tight. "Her son was forced to be a mule, then OD'd on their new product. That's what your father was peddling, Ava."

My father?

I clutched the small, tarnished silver compass my mother always carried.

It was in her effects, returned to me after the "accident."

I remembered her words, years ago, when she gave it to me for a camping trip.

"This will always guide you, Ava. Even in the dark."

The funeral. So rushed. My father, stoic, but his eyes... haunted.

He'd insisted on a closed casket.

"Better to remember her as she was," he'd said.

The compass felt heavy in my hand.

I fiddled with the clasp. It was stiff.

It clicked open.

But not the compass face. A tiny, hidden compartment on the side.

My heart hammered.

Inside, a tiny, almost microscopic flash drive.

I had a nightmare that night.

My mother, lost in the desert, calling my name.

"Scorpion... El Jefe... they know..."

Her voice, fading.

I woke up, gasping.

I had to talk to Ethan.

I fumbled for my phone, his number already deleted but seared into my memory.

Blocked. Still blocked.

I called the DEA main line.

"I need to report new information," I told the operator, my voice shaking. "About Senator Reynolds. And my mother."