Onyx (K19 Security Solutions Book 10)

by Heather Slade

  “But—”

  “Nope, you have to start at the beginning.”

  35

  Onyx

  This was our story. It began the day Blanca came to my family’s place in California, looking for answers about her twin sister. Answers I still hadn’t given her, but I would.

  She wrote about the tour boat in New York City, running through Central Park, visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame, and our time here at the camp and in Lake Placid.

  I was familiar with that part of the book, and since she was reading over my shoulder, my angel suggested we go inside for it.

  “Yeah?” I asked, hoping she was suggesting what I thought she was.

  “Definitely.”

  I held open the door and waved her inside, remembering then that I had the other surprise in clear sight. “Blanca, wait.”

  When I heard her gasp, I knew it was too late. She’d seen it. I followed her in and wrapped my arm around her waist.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked, carefully picking up the music box that sat on the dining room table. She ran her hands over every detail I’d hoped she’d notice, from the pink roses and ribbons that adorned the carousel horse to its blue eyes that Al insisted should be brown but I wouldn’t relent. It was the one thing wrong with the music box Sofia gave her. On the actual horse, the eyes were blue.

  She looked from it up to me. “Where, Montano?”

  “I made it.” Her eyes were questioning. “Well, Al made it, but I helped.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was surprised you didn’t know this. Al’s family owns the Jones Carousel Company. They built your favorite ride at Sherman’s. More than that, though, Al’s grandfather’s name was Sherman Jones.”

  “I never knew.”

  I pulled her over to the sofa. “The year Sofia gave you the music box, she spent hours and hours working for Al, helping clean up his shop, whatever she could do to make enough money to be able to afford your gift.”

  “He told you that?”

  I nodded, and when she started to cry, I pulled her into my arms. “There’s more, angel.” I held her as close as I could and told her the story Jimmy told me about how Sofia had paid the back taxes so they didn’t lose the camp.

  “It didn’t end there, though. She kept paying them right up until she died.”

  Blanca looked stunned, so I gave her a minute to process what I’d told her. When Ranger said he’d done more research and discovered the taxes had been paid every year until last year, I’d been as surprised as Blanca appeared now.

  “Thank you, Montano. You don’t realize the gift you’ve given me.” She stood, picked up the music box, and sat beside me. “Not just for this. Not for the swing or fixing up the camp. Thank you for giving my sister back to me.”

  And now came the time I had to take Sofia away once again. It would break Blanca’s heart, but I had no choice. I couldn’t keep what happened the day of the plane crash a secret any longer. I took the music box from her hands and set it on the table beside me.

  “I’m not finished, angel. There’s more you need to know.”

  She shook her head, moved away from me, stood, and walked over to the front door. She turned the lock, closed the front draperies, and flipped the switch for the outside heaters.

  Instead of sitting beside me, Blanca held her hand out to me. I stood, and she led me into the bedroom.

  “Don’t forget our book,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Blanca, wait. We need—”

  She spun around and put her fingers on my lips. “No more about my sister, Montano. Not tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow. We need to finish reading our book, and Sofia isn’t in it.”

  “Tell me this much,” I said, standing beside her near the bed. “Do we make love?”

  “Oh, yes. In almost all the chapters.”

  36

  Blanca

  Montano and I spent most of the night making sure the scenes of our book worked as well in real life as they sounded on paper. My opinion, and his too, was they were far better. Just to be sure, though, we acted some of them out several times.

  He had been right about us waiting until we were both ready for our lives to change forever the first time our bodies became one. I’d felt it last night and knew he had too.

  I slipped out of bed and went into the kitchen. When we were in Lake Placid, Montano got up before me. He even brought me coffee in bed. Today, I’d do the same for him. I filled the teakettle, turned the fire on under it, and while the water came to a boil, put the coffee grounds in the bottom of the French press.

  As I waited, I walked over to my music box, wound it up, and set it on the table, mesmerized by its beauty. I didn’t think I could treasure it more, but knowing Montano helped make it, I did.

  Like when Sofia gave me the same gift, it wasn’t about going shopping, buying something that looked okay. This was about knowing the person the gift was for and doing everything to see to it they got it. In this case, I would cherish the love behind it as much as the gift itself.

  And that was what it was truly about. Love. For all our disagreements, as different as we were, my sister loved me. Montano loved me too. He hadn’t said the words, but he didn’t need to in order for me to feel how much he cared about me.

  The camp, the swing, the music box were all ways he showed me what words could never accurately convey.

  Did he know I loved him too? I said it in the book, but I wanted to say it, to show him, like he’d done for me.

  I raced over to the teakettle and took it off the heat right before it whistled. I poured it into the press, and while it steeped, I opened the curtains and looked out at the lake. When I arrived here yesterday, I didn’t want to stay. Now, I never wanted to leave.

  This was the view I wanted to see every morning when Montano and I woke naked in each other’s arms and eventually started our day.

  I looked out on the glassy water at the pair of loons cutting through it without leaving as much as a wake. There were few sounds more beautiful to me than that of a loon’s cry.

  “Good morning, angel,” said Montano, putting his arm around my waist and his chin on my shoulder. “The loons have come to welcome you home. I haven’t seen them in several days.”

  “I was just thinking there are few sounds I find more soothing.” I looked over my shoulder and kissed him. “Hearing you call me angel is one of them.”

  “There are many, many sounds I can think of I love more, and I heard them all from you last night.”

  I reached up and put my hand on the side of his face. “There’s one thing you didn’t hear that I want you to.”

  He studied me.

  “I love you, Montano.”

  He moved my hand from his face, but held onto it as he took a step back. As I waited for the words that didn’t come, it felt as though a slow crack was working its way through my heart. “Blanca, we need to talk.”

  37

  Onyx

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  What I was about to do, I knew I had to, no matter how much I wished I didn’t. Until I told her everything, I couldn’t say the words I’d felt within days of meeting her. It’s why I hadn’t said it before now.

  “I made coffee,” she said, wriggling out of my grasp and walking into the kitchen. I watched, hoping she’d make eye contact, but she didn’t.

  “Let me get that,” I said when she raised the press to pour the coffee but spilled it instead because her hands were shaking.

  I poured two cups and set them on the coffee table. “Come and sit with me.” I pulled her over to the sofa. When she sat too far for me to touch, I inched closer so the bare skin of our thighs kept us connected.

  “Whatever you need to say, please just get it over with.” Blanca folded her arms, but I pulled them from her body.

  “I need to tell you what happened the day your sister died.”

  Her eyes opened wide and filled with tears. “Oh, God.
No. I don’t want to do this.” Again, she tried to move away, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “We have to, angel.”

  She shook her head, but I had to get through this.

  “We were both working a mission on behalf of K19 the day it happened. We’d been in Miami, waiting for word to deploy when the call came in on Thanksgiving morning, saying the two agents we were assigned to transport would be arriving within the hour.”

  Her eyes stayed focused on mine, even through her tears. I let out a deep breath and continued.

  “The flight from Miami to Bogotá was routine until three hours in, when we hit bad weather over Aruba. The plane was getting tossed around pretty good, and when I tried to alter our course, I realized our radar system was down along with communication.”

  “You were flying the plane?”

  “I was.”

  She nodded so I continued.

  “Sofia reported there was a power grid failure in Venezuela causing us to lose our means to communicate with anyone on the ground, but something felt off to me. A few minutes later, she had manually entered our coordinates, and we were able to get ourselves out of the storm. At that point, I’d say we were less than an hour from Bogotá, and I needed a break. I turned to ask her to take over and came face-to-face with her gun.”

  “What?”

  This was the hardest part because once I told her the last words I spoke to her sister, she’d never believe them when I said them to her. I had to do it, though. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. If I lost her because she couldn’t forgive me, I would be devastated, but neither of us could move forward with our relationship if I kept this secret any longer.

  “Sofia’s gun was pointed at me, and I knew that any second, she was going to shoot me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told her I loved her, and she pulled the trigger.”

  “Wait. You didn’t shoot her?”

  “No. I did not.”

  “But she died.”

  “As I should have.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was unconscious, but from what I’ve been told, one of the men we were transporting heard the gunshot and stormed the cockpit. Before Sofia could shoot him, he shot her. Given it was pilot-less, the plane took a dive. We all should’ve died that day. However, only Sofia did.”

  This time, when she tried to wriggle from my grasp, I let her.

  “All along, you knew,” she said, standing by the window and not looking at me. “You pretended like you didn’t.”

  “You’re right.”

  “But why?” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  I wanted to pull her into my arms and beg her forgiveness, but this wasn’t about me. I’d told Blanca the truth, the only secret that remained between us and would’ve threatened our future. Whatever conclusion she came to about us, I’d have to accept.

  “Answer me.”

  “At first, it was because I couldn’t. The details of what happened on that plane are classified. It’s the reason no one you spoke with could tell you anything about the crash.”

  “You said at first.”

  “Things changed. While the mission remains top secret, I began to have feelings for you. And then, I wanted to protect you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When I promised to protect you, it wasn’t just from danger, angel. It was from pain too.”

  “I see. You were protecting me.”

  “I told myself I was.”

  “Were you afraid I’d blame you?”

  I shook my head. “I did nothing to warrant it.”

  “Do you know why she shot you?”

  “What I’ve learned, only recently, is that your sister was a double agent. Her mission that day was to kill me along with the other two men on the plane with us. If everything had gone according to her plan, she would’ve landed the plane, probably in a remote location where the people she worked for would hide or destroy it.”

  “Do you believe my sister would’ve murdered three people in cold blood?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve subsequently learned she’d done it before.”

  “From what was on the SD card?”

  “Yes.”

  “She left behind proof that she’d killed people?”

  “What I believe is that she collected evidence in order to keep the people she worked for from killing her. It was an insurance policy of sorts.”

  “Why today, Montano? Why did you decide now was the perfect time? I mean, God, I just told you I loved you.”

  “I couldn’t say it back to you until you knew the truth.”

  “You said that if my sister had lived, you wouldn’t still be together. Is that because you would’ve found out she was a double agent?”

  “No. It would’ve been because I’d already realized she and I weren’t meant to be.”

  “Why did you tell her you loved her, then?”

  “Because I believed those were my dying words. As close as she was to me, the shot should’ve killed me. Maybe somewhere deep in my soul, I wanted her to know the depth of her betrayal. Honestly, I don’t know if I had time to think that much about it. I can’t be sure why I said it.”

  “I’m going to ask you one question, and I want you to think about it before you respond. Tell me the absolute, God’s honest truth, Montano. Do you love me?”

  I walked over to where she stood, cupped her cheek with my palm, and looked into her eyes. “Blanca, I love you with every breath I take.”

  “I believe you.”

  “That simple?”

  She pulled me back over to the sofa, and when I sat down, she crawled onto my lap. “You wouldn’t ask if you heard the conversation I had with myself this morning.”

  “I wish I would’ve.”

  “I’ll paraphrase. When I opened my eyes, everything I saw had your love in it. It isn’t about fixing up my camp or building me a swing or even the music box. It’s why you did those things. You did them because that’s how much you love me.”

  “It is. It’s exactly why.”

  Blanca rested her head on my shoulder. “Thank you for telling me about the plane crash.”

  “I had to.”

  “I know and I understand. More, I’m as glad as you are that we can put it behind us.”

  I hoped the day would come sooner rather than later when I stopped marveling at the ease of my relationship with Blanca compared to her sister or anyone else I’d been with. There was no comparison.

  I’d said those words to her on the day I first called her my angel. Then and now, I felt them as much as I meant them.

  “I think today we should finish our book.”

  Her eyes opened wide. “Finish it? It isn’t yet?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. There’s one more chapter we need to write.”

  “Okay. Something beyond ‘and they lived happily ever after’?”

  I nodded. “You neglected to mention a very important detail.”

  “I’m so curious what that might be.”

  “The part where our hero asks our heroine to spend the rest of her life with him, to raise a family, and grow old together.”

  “What did she say when he asked?”

  “She threw her arms around him and said, ‘Yes, Montano, I will marry you.’”

  “I will marry you, Montano, and I’ll love you, with every breath I take.”

  We spent the rest of the day and night in each other’s arms. We made love again and again, saying the words to each other as much as we showed them.

  I checked my phone only once, to make sure I’d left it on, and was as relieved to find I had as much as I was that there were no messages.

  There were things Blanca and I needed to talk about, including whether she wanted to return to Italy, but I didn’t think it had to be decided right away. At least not until she brought it up.

  “I want
to live here,” she blurted as we sat side by side at the table, eating a makeshift dinner.

  “Yeah? I could get behind that idea.”

  “You could? I mean, could you live here too?”

  “You said you’d marry me. That means you have to live with me too.”

  She rolled her eyes, something I found adorable. “What I meant is could you live here and still do your job?”

  “I can,” I said without hesitating. It was something Ranger and I had discussed more than once, and both of us believed it would be a good solution. “What about you? Can you write as well here as you did in Italy?”

  Blanca popped an olive into her mouth. “I’ll miss the food. Then again, I put on too much weight, staying with Sorcha and Laird.” Even with her saying so, I didn’t notice.

  “Laird,” I muttered, shaking my head.

  “I know you call him Burns.”

  My eyes opened wide. “You do?”

  She ate another olive and nodded. “Doc told me.”

  “You’re practically a member of the family, then.”

  “They make everyone feel that way.”

  “Not everyone. Back to Italy. All you said was you’d miss the food.”

  “On the other hand, you can’t find a good fish fry to save your life.”

  I smiled but leaned forward and looked into her eyes. “Blanca, you aren’t answering my question.”

  “I can’t say I’ll never want to go back. I also can’t say I’ll ever want to leave Canada Lake.”

  I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant.

  The next day, Doc sent a message that he and Merrigan would be stopping by midafternoon and wanted to meet with the rest of the “team” and me. I assumed that meant Ranger, Wasp, Cowboy, and Swan, although I had no idea who of the others was still in town besides Ranger and me.

  If I was going to head up the shadow operations unit, knowing each member’s twenty would be imperative. However, I was sure everyone would grant me grace for my last twenty-four hours of ignorant bliss.