Page 9 of Deadly Scandals

“Oh, this is all my fault? It was your dumbass idea to make a false confession to secure his release. Had you not done that, he would still be behind bars.”

“All you had to do was make sure you watched him when he was released. If I’d left this up to you, by the time he’d gotten out of jail, my son would be dead! Who knows where he is now.” I ran down the stairs. “I’ll find them. Get the fuck away from me. You’ve caused enough problems.”

Her hand reached to grab me as her heels clicked behind me. “You aren’t going anywhere. You’re released to my custody, and you have a hearing at Captain’s Mast for your stunt. If you’re going after Joaquín and Mia, I’m going with you. Otherwise, I’m happy to escort you back to the Naval Amphibious Base, where you will be placed in a holding cell.”

I turned to Kyle, my eyes pleading, knowing I didn’t have a leg to stand on. “Please, sir. Please let me go after my wife. You can lock me in the brig forever once I get my family.”

Kyle shook his head. “Sorry, Carrion. The only way I’ll let you go is if you take Special Agent Pierce with you.”

Fuck, she had me by the balls. “Thank you, sir.”

“And when you’re back, you report straight to me. Is that clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Good luck, brother.”

Kyle left the building, and we followed behind him.

I turned to Ashley. “We need to stop at my place and get my gun. And I’m going to find out where Mitch is so he can go with us.”

I didn’t have my truck, so I climbed into Ashley’s car and grabbed my phone out of the paper bag to call Mitch. He picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, man. What the fuck happened?”

“I went to pick up Joaquín, but he’d already been released. I bolted back to your place, but Mia was gone. Her purse was missing and her phone was shattered on the ground, but the rest of her stuff was there.”

Fuck. But then a realization hit me. Her ring. It had a tracking device. All I had to do was activate it.

I used my phone to log into the site the jeweler had given me and traced her ring.

When a map popped up, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Dude, she’s about two hundred miles up the coast. They just passed Carpinteria.”

“How the fuck do you know?”

“I installed a tracker in her ring.”

“Nice, bro. Hey, I’m in Carlsbad. I’ll hop in my truck and keep driving north until you catch up.”

“Good. We’re on our way.”

“We?”

I glanced over at Ashley. “Yeah, we. Autumn’s coming with me.”

Mitch didn’t even bother to ask why. Maybe he knew who she was. I didn’t care at this point. I just needed to get to Mia before Joaquín tried to touch her again.

We made a quick pit stop at my place to get my gun. As we drove up the coast, I considered what Ashley had said—that this was my fault for pulling that stunt. Well, if she hadn’t lost sight of my son in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to do it.

It didn’t matter who was to blame. I was going to fix it.