After some kitchen counter noogie and the promise to talk more that evening, Diego left to finish up some loose ends and check into a hotel. I should have felt guilty that I’d given him the reason for the loose ends, but I didn’t. My demented mind told me that had I not knocked him off, Diego’s client, would be making plans to go back to his own hemisphere soon – Talking Diego with him. Always look on the bright side!
I spent the afternoon installing my phone taps and setting my workshop for some serious chemistry. I’d decided to use a simple poison for the mole. It was colorless, odorless and instantaneous. Kind of like a sodium pentothal shot for when you put down your pet. After all, Mole Man was family. And I at least owed it to Richie, Lon or Phil to make it somewhat quick.
I’d ruled out Coney, Dak and Paris. Coney may be odd and frightening to children, but I just didn’t feel in my gut that he’d turn in the family. No, it was definitely the creepy cousins.
The phone tap/iPod was set up in my lab and plugged into my laptop. It would remotely cover all six phone lines, recording the data on my computer. Okay, that was done. Liv was going to need a few days to get the financial information, so I went to pick up Romi from school.
After plunking her in front of cartoons with cookies and milk, I decided to wash my sheets. Diego was coming by for dinner, and I wanted the bedroom to look a little better than it had earlier.
I grinned, thinking of how the two of us had managed to get all the sheets and mattress pad off the bed without really trying. It was a good thing my cousins weren’t surveilling me, because I bet I looked pretty stupid standing in the laundry room with my face buried in the sheets, trying to pick up Diego’s scent.
Romi barely made it through dinner. She was so tired from all the travel and a full day of school that she actually excused herself to go to bed. I tucked her in then joined Diego in the kitchen where he was putting dishes in the dishwasher. My dishwasher! He looked like he lived here already. I tried to calm myself down. Slowly. He wants to take it slowly, Gin.
“You pay for dinner and clean up too? You’re too good to be true!” I said, planting a kiss on his lips.
“Mum raised me that way. Can’t really help it, I guess.”
Diego smiled.
“See?” I said, “You’d be a great asset around here. Not to mention a good role model for Romi.”
“Hmmm.” he laughed. “Are you pressuring me?”
“Absolutely. I want you here. What reason could you have for leaving?”
Diego frowned. “I don’t want to leave, but there are reasons. I don’t have a job, for one thing.”
I wanted to scream, But I’m rich! I have a huge trust fund! You’ll never have to work again! But I didn’t.
“Money isn’t an issue,” was all I said.
“It is to me. Of course, maybe I could work with you. Or we could start our own company together.”
I froze. I’d forgotten that he thought we were in the same line of work. While the feelings we had for each other were solid, I’d lied to Diego about my job and my family, and that was enough to screw everything up.
“Diego, I have to tell you something.” I looked him right in the eye to see how he would handle it. “I’m not a bodyguard.” He arched his right eyebrow, and I completely chickened out. “Not . . . anymore, that is. I haven’t worked in a while.” Lies filled my head where the old lies used to be, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Ed left me a lot of money. I don’t have to work.”
Diego smiled again. “I don’t care about that. I wouldn’t care if you were an axe murderer . . . that’s not why I feel the way I do.”
I was pretty sure I flinched. No, I wasn’t technically an axe murderer. Well, there had been that one time with a claw hammer, but I really didn’t care for blades too much. Of course, Diego said he wouldn’t care if I were an axe murderer, so maybe we’d have something to work with here.
How would he handle the news I was an assassin? If I got down on my knees and confessed everything to him, would he connect me to his client? And what if he really liked his client? I was pretty sure I’d be screwed.
“Whew!” I feigned wiping a sweaty brow. “It’s good to get that off my chest.”
The kitchen was cleaned up, so we grabbed a couple of bottles of beer and went into the living room.
“Have you ever lost a client?” Diego asked me.
“How are you holding up?” I dodged.
He took a long drink from the bottle, then turned toward me. “Reasonable, I suppose. It was quite a shock.”
I put my hand on his thigh, “Tell me what happened.”
Diego began with the day he came by, looking for Vic Jr. He stepped out of the shower to find a note saying his client had taken a walk. Diego tried Turner’s cell, but got no answer. He’d waited twenty minutes to see if his client would return. Then, he drove around the neighborhood and thought of stopping by my house. After leaving me, he searched the neighborhood but came up with nothing. He spent the rest of the day calling work contacts, anyone connected to Turner. He ended with confirming his client’s identity at the morgue.
“The zoo?” I lied, feigning shock.
Diego nodded. “I just had this weird feeling when I watched the news that morning. So I went to the police department and later identified the body.
I remembered that the body’s head and neck had been mauled, “How did you identify him?”
“He had a Rolex with a personal engraving that was still on the body when they found him.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment or two. It had to be very, very hard to admit he’d lost a client. No matter what I said, it wouldn’t make him feel any better.
For the first time in a long time, I felt remorseful for a death I’d caused. It wasn’t like I was a psychopath or anything. I had a conscience. I just didn’t usually feel bad about the lives I’d taken. They were all assholes, hurting innocent people for profit. But I never thought of them as having family, friends or colleagues who’d miss them after. I never really saw the impact my work had on other people’s lives.
Granted, Diego wasn’t a perfect bodyguard, or this wouldn’t have happened. And I was merely a lucky assassin in that Turner had showed up unannounced . . . hell, practically gift-wrapped. But I’d done something that had hurt Diego, made him feel bad about himself. A reputation isn’t a tangible thing, but when messed with, it can really screw you up.
“It’s all right, Gin.” Diego seemed to be reading my thoughts. “It was a freak thing. I can’t protect my client if he sneaks off to do whatever it is he had to do.”
“Does the company expect you to resolve the situation?” I had to know if Diego was going to hunt me down.
“No. Turns out he was laundering their money for terrorists. He never told me about his secret life. If he had, I would’ve resigned.”
“Oh, come on. Aren’t they all bad?” I joked.
Diego’s smile faded just enough to let me know I’d screwed up. “I don’t do the bad guys. I kind of have a thing about that.”
Uh oh. “What do you mean?”
“I try to screen my clients. I’m not religious or anything, but I draw the line at those who have connections to killers, terrorists, that kind of thing.”
A cold wash swept over me. People like me. “Not all killers are bad guys. What about soldiers, SWAT snipers, stuff like that?” Damn. The question popped out before I could think about it!
He laughed. “Oh, I concede there are reasons to kill on a rare occasion. I just think of the others as nothing more than assassins. Killing for money. They’re bad for business.” Nothing more than assassins? I knew what I did was wrong on many levels. But it was a time-honored tradition in our family. We kept things level. Maintained the balance for the circle of life and all that shit. Weeded out the wheat from the chaff. The scum from the good guys. Didn’t we? Nothing more than assassins? He said it like it was a bad thing.
I couldn’t focus. I’d go crazy trying to decip
her things, but it appeared that my relationship with Diego could never work unless he warmed up to the idea that assassination wasn’t necessarily bad.
“Come on, Gin,” he swept a stray curl from my eyes, “I won’t have a philosophical discussion on this.”
He was right. “So what now?”
Diego relaxed, “I figured I’d give us a go. I’m not in any hurry to find another job.”
I arched my eyebrow. “Give us a go?”
He responded by taking me into his arms and kissing me. After a few minutes, I came up deliriously for air.
“I’ve never felt this way before, Ginny. You’re different from any woman I’ve ever known.”
I nodded, pulling him by the arm toward the stairs. After all, I had clean sheets and everything this time. I checked to make sure Romi was dead asleep, before pushing him into my (newly cleaned) bedroom and locking the door.
Diego kissed me as he lowered me to the bed, “That’s why I’m staying. At least for two weeks, that is.”
Even though I was drowning in pleasure, this phrase hammered through my head. Why the hell did everything have to happen in two weeks?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Contracts . . . neckties . . . high voltage! Done Dirt Cheap!”
- AC/DC, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
I tried to put Diego’s negative juju out of my mind when I woke up the next morning, alone, in my now-not-so-clean bed. After dropping Romi off at school, I decided to put my head where it should have been all along and get with the assassination program.
I was delighted to discover that Missi’s phone bug really worked. Lon, Phil, Coney, Dak, Paris and Richie had all made calls or answered the phone in the last 12 hours.
Unfortunately, none of the conversations had the words, “I’m talking to the FBI and the Yard.” And one of Richie’s calls was to a 1-900 number for transsexual dwarves (I’d need a lot of beer to scrape that from my brain – shudder) but I figured something would turn up.
I called Liv, but she was neck deep into some serious computer hacking, so I let her go with the promise we would get together for lunch the next day. That left the old standby – breaking and entering.
I guess it wasn’t really breaking and entering when you already had a key to your brother’s condo. But I didn’t want the Council to think I’d slacked off on anything where my brother was concerned. Dak had called in the morning to tell me he was going to Chicago for an overnight with a blonde something or other. Isn’t that cute? As backup, we always let each other know when we were going to be out of town.
Anyway, I let myself in, waving at the old lady next door. She probably thought I was picking up his mail. She actually was a great neighbor for my brother. Completely deaf with an obsession for baking, Estelle took good care of him. I guess his charm was intergenerational.
I put the mail on the hall table and headed inside. Dak was surprisingly neat. He’d always been that way. Maybe to keep the bachelor pad looking good for the ladies. I walked through the apartment, checking for anything out of place.
Seriously. How did one go about looking for something incriminating on her brother? Especially when I didn’t think he had anything to do with this mole thing. After a little floundering, I told myself to just search it like a regular hit, convincing myself that this would be excellent practice for when I searched my other cousins’ places.
Carefully, I went through all the drawers in his room, pulling them all the way out to see if there were hidden panels or something taped to the bottom. Grandma would have been proud of me.
I tackled his closet, going through every pocket and shoe, looking for something I was convinced I wasn’t going to find. The bed came next, as did the nightstand and the floorboards beneath the expensive Oriental rug.
I was relieved to have found nothing, which surprised me because I didn’t expect to find anything. The bathroom and office were next. I went through each file meticulously. Nothing there but his diplomas, insurance, and health information. The living room and dining room were also clean. The sofa yielded only thirty-two cents and a stash of condoms.
All this clandestine searching made me hungry. No wonder! It was one-thirty. I found a Diet Coke and leftover pizza in the fridge. Hell, he wouldn’t notice it was missing. I nuked two slices and opened his spice cupboard to find the garlic salt.
Odd. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Dak hated parmesan cheese. So why were there two large jars of it in the cupboard?
I snickered out loud. “Duh, Gin! Maybe it’s for his guests.” For some reason, I looked around. “Well,” I said to absolutely no one, “I’m a guest.”
I opened the first container and shook. It was very light, which normally would have told me it was empty, except for the weird rattling sound inside. Hmmm. Unless I was wrong, parmesan cheese rarely made a clunkety-clunk sound.
Maybe it had clumped up and hardened after sitting there for so long. I pried off the cap and looked inside. A small memory stick was all that was in there.
Okay. Lots of people backed up stuff. Family photos, important documents, that kind of thing. And hell, everyone in the family had secret hiding places, so it made sense Dak kept it hidden in the cheese can.
After convincing myself that was indeed the situation, I grabbed the other can from the shelf. After all, I still wanted parmesan cheese. My heart sunk as I realized this can was also hiding something. A very thin cell phone popped out. It wasn’t his standard phone, but hey, it was always good to have access to a wireless phone in an emergency. I replaced both items in their containers and sat down to eat the pizza.
The phone and memory stick stayed in the top right hand corner of my head – like a weird computer icon. Even after I’d left Dak’s house to pick up Romi, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. And that was starting to piss me off.
Goddamned Council. They’d messed me up with this assignment. Believe me, there was nothing worse than an assassin who’d lost her nerve. They’d turned me into a suspicious, nervous wreck! If anyone searched my house . . . and I mean really searched it . . . they’d find some weird shit too. It was just the way we Bombays operated. For two years, I’d kept Romi’s baby photos on microfiche hidden in a fireproof vault in the garden. Eventually, I’d come to my senses and stopped doing that, but it was a perfect example of how nuts my family was.
After picking up Romi, we collected Poppy from Dad. He seemed sad to let her go. But I missed her, and Romi needed her. We’re not a normal family. So I reasoned we should do things that seemed normal. Like having a dog.
Diego came back for dinner again, this time bringing Italian carry out. Romi squealed with glee. Spaghetti was her favorite food. She’d eat it for every meal if given the chance. During dinner, I thought I saw Diego wink at her. Ahhhh. It worked. He’d achieved godlike status in her eyes.
I dropped the assassin subject from the night before because, well, because I didn’t want to think about it. I loved everything about Diego. He was perfect! And we clicked. Same sense of humor, perfect chemistry in bed, and he loved Romi. He even read her a book at bedtime.
“She’s a great kid,” he said as he joined me in the kitchen a half hour later. Diego wrapped his arms around me from behind. He smelled wonderful. I leaned back and closed my eyes. I could really get used to this.
“Thanks. And nice job with dinner. How did you know it was her favorite?” I turned around and grinned.
Diego laughed. “Oh, she might have mentioned it at some point.”
“So you’re trying to win me by bribing my daughter?”
He shook his head. “I want to win her too. Remember, I love kids.”
This time, we sat in the living room and talked for a couple of hours instead of going straight to my bed. We slipped into conversation comfortably. As we talked about hometowns and family, I realized how much I missed having someone to end the day with. With a start, I remembered that Ed and I had ended every night this way. Diego easily filled that role. The
conversation steered to Romi and her school and I was thrilled that he was so attentive. Apparently, Diego was just as interested in joining the family as I’d hoped he would be.
Of course, there was that rather sinister side of joining the family. But for now I focused only on the three of us.
“I’d love to take your family out to dinner some time.”
“I’m sure Romi would love that.”
He laughed. “No, I mean yes. You and Romi, but also your mum, dad and brother.”
“Why?” I said before I could stop myself.
“Well, the circumstances I’ve met them under weren’t exactly ideal. I’d like to get to know them. What do you think?”
Whoa. I guess he hadn’t been kidding about the two weeks. Okay, why was this bothering me? He’d already met them. And I was pretty sure he would charm them to death. Hmmm. That might be worth exploring. I wondered if you really could charm someone to death. What a pleasant way to die.
I forced myself back on topic. “Alright,” I said, “How about tomorrow night?”
“Great! What’s your mum’s favorite place?”
I loved him hard right there. “Taschetta’s. On Third and 22nd.”
“What is it with your family and Italian food?” he teased.
“I don’t know. We’re Greek originally. Go figure.”
Of course, the night ended in the bedroom. It’s hard to describe how incredible Diego was in bed. Every time he touched me, I felt like the most desirable woman on earth. Our bodies moved together as if they’d been made to do just that one thing.
But while the sex was great, I found him even more mouth-watering because he loved my kid. He wanted to impress my mother. He wanted to meet my family. And he knew his way around a dishwasher. I wondered if I could wait for the two weeks to be over before I proposed.
As I watched him walk out to his car at 3:30 in the morning, I mentally wrote (in really girly handwriting) Gin & Diego Bombay, 4-ever. I bet I could get the Council to give me a year off after this assignment. Then I could take my time and tell my future husband everything. And we’d live happily ever after in a castle far, far away. Romi would be a princess, Diego would be the king, and I would be the queen of death.
Greatest Hits Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-4) Page 15
