Once our skin started to cool, Rhett pressed a kiss to my forehead and levered off me to take care of the condom. When he came out of the attached bathroom, I rewrapped my sarong to fit like a dress.

He planted a swift kiss on my lips before surveying the interior of the safe room. When he’d arrived, he was wholly focused on me, so I supposed it wasn’t surprising that he was taking in the details.

“Do you want to hear all of it?”

He nodded. “Absolutely. Lay it on me. Don’t leave anything out.”

I proceeded to tell him everything I knew and everything I didn’t. By the time I got to the end of it, I didn’t feel like I had a better handle on the situation.

“I don’t know why he targeted me. I really don’t. It doesn’t make sense, unless he was after my technology.”

Rhett’s expression darkened. “What kind of technology do you have that the cartel would be interested in?”

I shrugged and considered my pipeline. “I have a few pet projects that I mess with when I have time.”

“Like?”

“Facial-recognition software that works with wearable cameras and can be synced to any database. Information about the subjects recognized by the software can be relayed through an earbud. It’s not ready for use, but it’s not far off. I was playing with stuff I thought could make cops safer on the streets. You know, for people like you and my brother.”

Rhett closed his eyes for a beat before opening them. “Who knows you’ve been working on this?”

“A few people. I haven’t made a big deal about it, but R&D knows because several of them contributed ideas when I got stuck, and they helped me get unstuck.”

“It could be valuable to the good guys and the bad, so that’s a possibility. What else?”

“Some other products that don’t seem to have much useful commercial application, except maybe the advanced scent-blocking technology. It’s better than what’s available now. Even drug dogs can’t sniff . . .”

Rhett’s eyes lit up. “That could be it too. I know the cartels have advanced tech, but something that could help them move more product over the border with fewer seizures would be of interest.”

“You think so? It doesn’t explain why they’d blow up your parents’ house.”

Rhett’s shoulders stiffened and his mouth pinched tight. He shook his head. “That doesn’t have any connection to you. My dad got involved with them somehow, and I don’t have the answers about why and how. But it started a long time ago, before my brother was killed. Just because there’s cartel involved on two different ends doesn’t mean it’s the same people or even related.”

It seemed unlikely that there was no relation at all, but I wouldn’t push it because I’d been trying to find a correlation all afternoon and I’d come up empty. God, I hated this. Hated bringing up what I knew was incredibly painful for Rhett, especially because he didn’t have any more answers than I did.

“Then what do we do? How do we handle this?” I asked.

“First, we figure out how the security footage was wiped. Could someone else have been on the property at the same time as the guy who threatened you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess.”

“You have to realize that they have resources you can’t even imagine. If they’re able to get in here, they’re able to do just about any damn thing.”

“So you don’t think Carver would’ve done it?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying there’s more than one possibility, and we need to look at all of them.”

“Occam’s razor says when you hear hoofbeats—”

“Think horses, not zebras. Yeah, I know. But guess what, Red? The cartel is a zebra, not a horse. They don’t play by the rules of simple logic.”

I let that sink in. “Okay, so throw out logic. How do we confirm it? I’m never going to feel safe with Carver around until I know he wasn’t involved.”

Rhett was quiet for several long moments before his lips curved up in a smile. “We go old-school.”