by Shandi Boyes
Besides, the wide-open spaces make it easier for the agents staking the perimeter to keep watch. With the frosts of winter arriving early, the grass is dead and close to the ground. There’s no place to hide—except outbuildings like the one Melody just entered.
My focus returns to Isabelle and Hugo when Isabelle says, “We need all the bags.”
Hugo’s slit gaze darts between Isabelle and me for several tedious seconds before they eventually settle on me. “Do you have a death wish?”
When I shake my head, hoping it will hide the curl of my lips, Hugo slants his head to Isabelle. “He doesn’t have a death wish… so I guess we’re staying at a hotel.”
“Brandon’s mom said it’s fine for us to stay here.”
“Oh, okay, since Brandon’s mom said it’s fine, I guess it’s fine.” Hugo’s sarcastic tone reminds me of the tone Phoenix used anytime Joey pissed him off. “Where’s the phone Isaac gave you in case of an emergency.”
Isabelle takes a step back, disgusted by Hugo’s request. “This isn’t an emergency.”
Their squabble gets interrupted by my mom squealing my name at the top of her lungs. “BJ!”
With her arms spread wide, she gallops down the front stairs of the porch, smiling a blinding grin. I won’t lie, and I don’t care if you call me a momma’s boy, but my heart thuds extra hard when our eyes collide. The last time we were here at the same time, we were saying goodbye to someone we loved dearly. I also haven’t seen her in almost three years. Life got busy, and in all honesty, I got slack.
That’s done with now.
When my mom leaps into my arms, I spin her around and around and around like Joey always did. It floods my eyes with moisture, but her beautiful laugh ensures not a single droplet glides down my cheeks. They’re the giggles of a woman finally on the road to recovery after a few hard years.
“Okay, enough spinning before I bring up the cookie dough I gobbled down before you could sniff it out.”
My mom’s smile doubles when I set her back onto her feet with a pout. I thought I could smell more than cow dung in the air. My mom has been baking, and my stomach is more than ready to make up for lost time.
After whacking me in the gut, intuiting what its hungry grumbles are about, Mom shifts her glistening baby blue irises to Isabelle and Hugo. They, along with my wonky grin, are the two features I didn’t get off her. My hazel eyes are a recessive gene from my grandfather, and regretfully, my smile is one hundred percent accredited to my father, but other than that, I’m a male version of my mother.
“Isabelle! It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you.” I scrub a hand down my face when my mom wraps Isabelle up in a tight hug. “You’re even more beautiful than Brandon described.”
Don’t misconstrue. Until you’re a man of ‘prime reproductive age’ desperate to add names to a guest list that filled up over a year ago, you can’t judge anything happening right now. I swore until I was blue in the face that there was nothing going on between Isabelle and me. Did my mother believe me? No, she didn’t. She just did the weird coughing thingamabob she did the morning she tidied up my room after Melody and I slept together for the first time before telling me she’d keep my ‘relationship’ with Isabelle a secret.
If you haven’t worked this out yet, my mom would make the worst spy.
The heat creeping across my cheeks jumps to Isabelle’s when my mom inches back to assess every inch of her face. Its coloring has nothing on the red-hot fury that floods Hugo’s eyes when my mom shouts, “Oh my goodness, my grandbabies are going to be beautiful.”
I’m about to jump to my defense, but before I can, the quickest flurry of color in the corner of my eye stops me. Madden has his shoulder propped against the pole holding a new verandah up. His eyes are locked on Isabelle. They’re brimming with the same interest they held anytime he gawked at Melody when we were kids, and have me moving away from preparing my defense to signing a guilty verdict in under two seconds.
“Mom, she hasn’t even walked through the front door yet, so don’t scare her away with baby talk.”
Madden is a creep, but even creepers have standards. He won’t mow his little brother’s turf. That’s against the bro-code Phoenix, Madden, Joey, and I swore never to break. Moseying in on another brother’s girl was rule number one. Although Isabelle isn’t my girl, something is telling me it’s okay to lie this time around.
I suck in my first breath in what feels like minutes when Madden spins on his heels and walks away. I want to say it’s because he remembered our bro-code as readily as me, but I’m doubtful that’s the case. He only left after his eyes locked on Hugo. Not even the cockiest guy wants to stand across from the man he pinned a rape on.
With Hugo’s glare icy enough to be felt, I rub my hands together before shifting on my feet to face him and Isabelle. As suspected, Hugo is eyeing me like he’s mentally processing my death certificate.
Mercifully, Isabelle’s stare isn’t as dire. She’s frustrated but not enough to deny my silent plea for her to follow along with my ruse. I understand that this puts her in an awkward predicament, but I’d rather have her tussling with Hugo than Madden, which is odd considering one of them is related to me by blood.
I lose the frigidness of Hugo’s wrath when one much more disturbing steals his focus. My mom is staring at him. I’m not talking a hello-there-young-man stare, I am talking do-you-need-a-sugar-mommy stare. It churns my gut enough I’m certain I won’t eat for a week.
“Ma’am,” Hugo greets, as uncomfortable by her gawk as me.
A hope my mom hasn’t completely fallen down the rabbit hole surfaces when she asks, “What squadron were you in?” I thought she was eyeing Hugo like he was her lunch. I had no clue she had noticed a tattoo on his forearm he has attempted to conceal with many.
Hugo tugs down the sleeves of his long-sleeve shirt while replying, “American Hornets, ma’am.”
“Oh…” My mom looks as anxious as I was when I spotted Madden watching our exchange from the sidelines. “That’s nice.” After straying her wide eyes to Isabelle, she says, “How about we leave the boys to unpack the car while we freshen up?”
Not giving Isabelle the chance to reply, she grips Isabelle’s hand in hers then hotfoots it up the front porch stairs. The screen door has barely swung closed when Hugo is up in my face. “What are you playing at, Blondie?”
“I’m not playing anything.” I am, but since it has nothing to do with him, I’ll keep him out of it. “My mom often gets the wrong idea.”
Hugo scoffs, calling me out as a liar without words. “She wouldn’t have gotten the wrong idea if you hadn’t led her astray.” When I drag one of Isabelle’s suitcases out of the trunk, he snatches it out of my hand, shoves it back where it was, grabs mine, then tosses it onto the porch like he’s taking out the trash. After slamming down my trunk with enough force my teeth feel the impact, he growls, “I don’t need to unpack. We won’t be here long.”
Seconds after he traces the steps Isabelle and my mom took five minutes ago, Madden’s car rockets out of the awning attached to the garage. The dust of a dry ground soon hides his flee, but no amount of mooing can conceal the thrashing he gives his engine. Madden doesn’t respect anything, not even his pricy ride, because he doesn’t know the meaning of the word.
After roaming my eyes over the Gregg family ranch for the quickest second, I follow Hugo’s hasty retreat. I find him in the kitchen, towering over Isabelle like a tactical response strike is imminent, and his body is her shield.
When the scent of freshly baked cookies become too much for me to bear, I attempt to snag one off the cooling rack. I pout like a child when my mom slaps my hand away. “You’ll spoil your dinner.” Her tone reveals she’s annoyed about something more than childish exploits. I’m given time to look into what is bothering her when Hugo requests to have a word with Isabelle in the hallway.
I wait for them to be out of earshot before saying, “Spill the beans, Ma. I haven’t seen yo
u this worked up since…” I stop just before I remind her of the time she walked in on her husband fucking his secretary. Like my father could get any more cliché, he took it to the max the year he won office.
After coating her hands with flour so the dough won’t stick, Mom commences rolling the remaining cookie dough into balls. “Madden—”
“Just left,” I interrupt, knowing her well enough to know she won’t speak unfavorably about someone if they’re close by. That’s why my interests are too piqued to bookmark this as it seems more about Madden than an additional weekend guest she wasn’t prepared for. I didn’t know Hugo was coming with us until I arrived to collect Isabelle this morning. “Is Madden staying here?”
Mom shakes her head. “He came to collect some things for your father.”
As anger trickles through my veins, I work my jaw side to side. “Is he the reason you’re worked up?” The way I snarl ‘he’ ensures she knows who I’m talking about—my father. He’s always the cause of my mother’s dismay lately.
My annoyance takes a back seat when she says, “No. I haven’t seen your father in months.” Acting ignorant to the dough on her palm, she pats my hand, doubling the assurance in her eyes. When she spots my grimace from the tacky residue coating my hand, she pinches a dash of flour before sprinkling the tip of my nose like she did when I was a kid. It’s supposed to help me grow. “It’s good to have you back here, BJ. I know it’s hard without Joey, but there are as many good memories here as there are bad.”
“I know,” I reply, stepping closer to her. “It’s our home. It always has been. It always will be.” When she nods, agreeing with me, I slant my head, so our eyes are better aligned. “Just like you’ll always be my caring, kindhearted mother. Time and distance will never change that… and neither could anything you’d ever tell me. I’ll always love you, Ma.” As I hope you will me when I tell you Joey’s death is my fault.
“Mom…” I push out breathlessly when a single tear rolls down her cheek. “What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing. I just—” She stops talking when the vibration of my cell phone overtakes the brittle crackle of her fragile voice. “Are you going to get that?” she asks when I dig my phone out of my pocket to silence Grayson’s second call in a row.
“No. It can wait. You’re more important.”
She cups my cheek in a nurturing, loving way only a mother can. “Take your call, BJ. I’m not going anywhere, and neither is my news.”
I don’t want to hold-off a conversation years in the making, but my phone is hard to ignore when it immediately commences ringing again. Grayson agreed to adhere to strict radio silence while I was in Saugerties, so he wouldn’t be reaching out unless it was urgent.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Unease highlights my tone. I use to get so angry when my dad pushed my mother aside for work, yet I’m doing the same thing. I’d be pissed if my emotions weren’t being swamped with unease.
The crippling weight on my chest slackens when not an ounce of disappointment is heard in my mom’s tone when she replies, “I’m sure. Just promise me one thing.”
“Anything,” I answer without pause for thought.
Guilt rains down on me when she whispers, “Please be careful. My heart barely survived losing one son. I can’t lose another.”
I wrap her up in a firm hug before pressing my lips to the shell of her ear. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise you that.”
Recognition on how hard my vow will be to keep smacks into me when I give my mom one final squeeze before connecting Grayson’s call and squishing my phone to my ear. “Dimitri moved before we could. We have reports of multiple casualties.”
His words impact me like a punch to the stomach. I’m wholly and utterly shocked. “Dimitri agreed to wait. He fucking shook on it.”
“He got desperate. Can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing if I were handed the news he was.” He’s right. Doesn’t make it any easier to swallow, though. “We’re preparing to move in. You coming?”
“How far out?”
Grayson releases a chuckle between frantic breaths. He sounds like he’s running. “I’ve seen you drive. You could be here in ten.”
“That close?”
My stomach gurgles when he replies, “It’s practically in your back paddock.” If Castro is that close, my plan to catfish him with Isabelle was a woeful waste of time. No one lives in this part of Saugerties anymore. It became a ghost town not long after my family moved to New York, so Castro didn’t choose this location for no reason. He wanted privacy, and the many horrid reasons as to why he needs that privacy has me mentally suiting up for battle.
“Send me the deets.”
“Will do,” Grayson replies before disconnecting our call.
As I slide my phone back into my pocket, I pivot to face my mom, taking in Isabelle talking on the cell phone she refused to hand Hugo earlier. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t.” Mom’s stern glare cuts me off better than her snapped reply. She doesn’t usually have the face to pull off snarky, but she’s got it down pat today. “Go do what needs to be done, then get back here. We have a lot to talk about.”
“All right. Thank you.” I press my lips to her cheek before lowering my eyes to her keys resting on the kitchen counter.
Smiling, she rolls her eyes before agreeing to my request to borrow her car with the dip of her chin. My trunk is filled with Hugo and Isabelle’s luggage. If the portions of their conversation I overheard while talking to my mom are anything to go by, they’ll want their belongings when Hugo forces Isabelle to the hotel I’m confident Isaac booked for them.
“I won’t get a scratch on it,” I promise while snagging up the keys and hotfooting it to my mom’s swanky new ride.
Much to my dad’s dismay, she purchased a brand-new Genesis G80 with cash so she could drive herself to her divorce attorney’s office. Its eighty-thousand-dollar price tag barely made a dent in my parents’ joint bank account, but my father is still demanding for the value of the car to be taken out of my mom’s side of the settlement before he’ll sign their divorce papers. That’s how cheap he is. He won’t give up anything of value. Fortunately for all involved, he has no clue just how valuable my mother is.
Eight minutes later, my mom’s car skids to a stop at the back of the surveillance van Grayson’s motorbike is parked behind. “I thought you were waiting for me to arrive?” I say to Grayson when the sound of heavy combat fire booms into my ears.
“That’s not us. It’s a turf war we’re about to break up, and we need to do it quickly. Word is CIA is honing in. If you want to speak with Castro before them, we need to move fast.”
I accept the bulletproof vest he’s holding out to me before joining him next to a table full of maps. With the CIA on their way, we have to storm the recently formed Castro compound via the front door. It’s the quickest and safest entrance point.
“Shoot to kill is activated, but the less casualties, the better. We want Rimi Castro brought in alive.” Grayson double taps his surveillance video. For a man who spent the last year and a half hiding, he looks dog-tired. “If you can show caution, use it, but if it’s you or them, always place money on yourself. We good?”
When a collective hum of agreement vibrates through the makeshift command center, Grayson claps his hands together two times. “Suit up, we’re heading out in four.”
“Where’s Phillipa?” I ask Grayson while following him to a fleet of Escalades rigged with blinding spotlights and bulletproof windshields. My scan of the agents preparing to head into battle with me failed to locate a woman with eyes as dark as her raven locks.
Grayson shrugs before climbing into the passenger seat of the first Escalade. “I tried to reach her a few times. She hasn’t gotten back to me.” He unlocks the safety on his gun, slides it into the waistband of his pants before straying his eyes to me. “I can’t hold out for her, BJ. If the CIA gets Castro before us, we’ll never get the chance to
talk to him.”
Agreeing with him, I jog around to the driver’s seat of the Escalade before sliding in behind the steering wheel. As adrenaline pumps through my veins, Grayson taps his out on the roof on our car. It’s as if the past twenty-two months never occurred. We’re once again on the field prepared to take down a syndicate with such fucked-up morals, they view women as nothing but babymakers.
“Ready for payback, punk?”
Smirking, I fire up the ignition, answering Grayson’s question without words.
Thirty seconds later, we’re rolling over untouched land with another thirty or so agents tailing us. The landscape is different than we faced in New Mexico, but the adrenaline high is exactly the same—as are the sound of bullets pinging off the windshield.
Grayson takes down two spotters on the gate before the tires of our Escalade ensure they remain down for the count. If a bullet between the eyes didn’t kill them, five thousand pounds of steel will get the job done.
“Go, go, go,” Grayson shouts at the agents piling out of the line of Escalades at the front of the eerily quiet farmhouse mansion. The silence is off-putting, especially considering the amount of gunfire I heard on arrival only minutes ago.
I lift my chin when Grayson signals for me to head left with half a dozen men while he climbs the front stairs. It’s so quiet, I can hear the raging hearts of the agents behind me when we creep across floorboards in desperate need of repair. The scent of gun powder and blood is obvious, but no amount of deadly smells could prepare my eyes for what they stumble on when I push open the back-side door of the property.
The warped wooden floorboards of the basement are littered with dead bodies. Some have been shot, others have been knifed, and one is chained to a boiler heater. Although the dark-haired man has a large knife wound stretched from one side of his stomach to the other, his wide and terrified eyes are open and locked on me, begging for assistance.
