But after all this time, why go for her now? She didn’t pose a threat. The Gonzales cartel had to be defunct by now, there would be nothing to take over. If she was even inclined to go back, there was nothing to go back to.
Then again, Emilio had commanded a great deal of loyalty. Maybe the Cartels that held him in high regard would help the Gonzales scion take back her father’s empire if she wanted. Depending on who was calculating, it might seem like a trivial cost to take her out.
“Assigned?” he sent Alex.
“Negative. Responded to query first.”
“Pay?”
“Are you taking it?”
Nick hesitated. Of course he wasn’t, but he didn’t want Alex to reassign it to someone who would. Then again, he could always burn another identity. He’d been smarter this time. Most of his assets were cash. Of course he wouldn’t be able to use Pete this time, but he didn’t need to. He had sought out other contacts for that very reason.
“Yes.” He sent back.
There was a long pause.
“Twenty five. Happy hunting, Foxtrot. Details incoming.”
The simple text messages conveyed nothing suspicious, and Nick had never justified his query request. Just a face and name to watch for, in case it ever came across the desk. There were only a few such agencies in the world, so it seemed like due diligence.
But his history with Alex’s organization had been markedly different than his history with Lester’s. Now, he was free to weigh the implications of taking down his targets and make a moral judgment about whether or not he would take them. Alex understood, it seemed, that with quality, cleanliness, and certainty came a degree of freedom to choose that was worth putting up with.
Plus, he thought that Alex probably had some kind of moral compass of his own. It was why he’d joined the agency in the first place. They were selective, and reflected the new sense of balance that Nick had sought every day since he’d left Cassandra. Do the most good possible by doing only the necessary evil. His body count was very close to reaching three hundred—he was at two hundred and eighty four contracts closed now—but the last hundred and thirteen targets had been people that the world genuinely benefited from by not having them in it.
He stared at the picture of the boy. Cassandra’s son, clearly. And at eight or nine years old…
It didn’t bear thinking about right now. It was enough for him to know that Cassandra was in trouble; that the carefully constructed veil around her had been breached. Whoever the kid was didn’t matter yet and it wouldn’t have changed things anyway.
At least he’d intercepted the job. When it wasn’t completed, either Alex or someone else would send a follow up trigger finger but at the very least he had some time.
Cassandra. What would it be like to see her again? He’d wondered about her from time to time. He still had the picture Lester had given him years ago, hidden away with his liquid assets. For a while, he’d imagined finding her, bringing her to Venice. But there was always the chance that Lester would find him, or that he’d have to burn another agency.
This time, it would be different. This time he’d take her somewhere far away. Maybe the Balkans, or the Andes. Somewhere remote. And this time, he’d stay with her, if she’d let him. He didn’t even have to be with her—he wasn’t sure he could feel anything real for anyone for any length of time; he never had before. Just nearby.
And if Ramon was his son…
As he packed his bag and cleaned his hardware, he let himself imagine the possibility.
Nick had never seen himself as a family man. A mentor, maybe, at one time. When things were still as good and professional between him and Lester as they ever got, he’d considered passing on the baton, as it were. Taking some young miscreant from his crappy life and handing him the keys to a bloodspattered kingdom.
Not now, though. He could barely stomach this life anymore. It was a taste he’d just gotten acclimated to by long exposure. It digested, but was never enjoyable. Had it been, at one time? It was hard to remember anymore. It wasn’t the life he wanted, exactly. Just the only life he’d ever really known.
Once everything was prepared, he booked a flight, booked a rental car, and laid a careful trail of money to lead whoever came after them in the wrong direction. He hoped it wasn’t Alex. He liked the man, even if they’d never met. He had principals.
But if Nick needed to, he’d hunt him down and put an end to the chase. He wasn’t going to hide for another eight years like he had from Lester. Not if he was going to hold on to Cassandra.
It was possible she wouldn’t want him to hold onto her. If that was the case… well, she didn’t have to see him for him to watch over her. That was a bridge he could cross when he came to it.
There was nothing left to do but ruminate, so he did it in bed. It was a long flight tomorrow. To see Cassandra again. To meet Ramon.
And just maybe, to start a new life of some kind, once and for all.
It was long overdue.
Chapter 8
Cassandra was late.
She knew that was going to be the case the moment the woman in her chair looked in the mirror. The corners of her mouth turned down just a bit as he turned her head from side to side. She examined the slightly orange hue in her highlights and sighed. “It’s not quite what I wanted.” She said.
Cassandra held her tongue before explaining to the woman that this particular outcome was precisely the reason a cheap bleach job wouldn’t work.
“You didn’t leave it in long enough,” the woman pronounced.
“I can see how it might seem like I didn’t,” Cassandra said carefully—she’d taken a workshop specifically on handling these sorts of issues with customers after one of them had walked out of the salon on her—before she spread her hands non-threateningly, “with hair as dark and textured as yours is, that’s why we really need a second toning process. If we left the lightening solution in too long, believe me, your hair would be too brittle to do anything with. If you want, we can do the toning round next.”
“You could have told me that before we started,” the woman said, short and clipped, and clearly on the verge of having a fit. “I got it done for fifty dollars last time and they bleached and toned it at the same time.”
Yes, she’d informed Cassandra of that when she first asked for the service as justification for not paying for a full treatment. She almost asked the woman why she didn’t go back, but that would have only made it worse. “It’s not too late to make it work,” she said instead.
The woman sighed, and Cassandra hoped that she would just pay and leave. No such luck, however. She waved a hand topped with long, elaborately painted nails. “Go head. Might as well fix it now. I’m not coming back here, though. You all are too expensive.”
That didn’t warrant an answer. Instead, Cassandra left her to gather the things she needed. In the store room she waited for the counter assistant to fill the order and messaged the mother of one of Ramon’s band friends. There was a recital tonight where he would be playing the violin for gathered PTA members for a fundraiser and she was probably going to just barely make it in time to see him play. “Running late at work. Will be there. Save me a seat, tell Ramon not to worry.”
Just as Andy, the counter assistant, came back with her order the response came. “Will do. Drive safe. Better late than dead.”
Right.
The toning process took a grueling, tense half hour, but when it was done the woman was at least impressed enough with how it turned out—the shade of blond she wanted but not stiff and breaking—that she left a tip when she paid. Five bucks. Still, small victories.
Once that was done, Cassandra fairly flew around the salon banging out her cleanup duties as quickly as she could, and then barely said a word of goodbye when she launched herself out the door and to the street. Normally she walked back and forth to work—it was only about fifteen blocks—but traffic was clear enough to grab a taxi and not suffer for it.
<
br /> She hurled cash at the driver when they arrived, took the stairs up two at a time rather than waiting on the elevator, and didn’t even check her appearance before she left the house. In ten minutes she was back on the street hailing another cab.
That Ramon had been accepted to a private school in first grade was nothing short of a miracle, although it was a mostly white school looking to cultivate a more diverse student population. The miracle had been that they had used grants to cover part of his tuition, which made the money she’d kept set aside from Nick’s initial gift go a lot further. He’d been exposed to things Cassandra never imagined he’d have access to and among them had been a music program—a serious one, not recorders and triangles and ukuleles like most early music programs had, but strings, woodwinds, the full spread.
His violin was used, and she’d had to learn a lot about how to take care of it with him to ensure that it lasted him long enough until she could afford a better one, but he played it beautifully. St. Peter’s music program wasn’t competitive, instead fostering team work and camaraderie—but he was first chair more often than he wasn’t. Usually he shared it with his friend Angus, the two of them trading first and second back and forth.
Angus’ mother spotted Cassandra when she crept into the auditorium, and waved her over. The lights had just dimmed; she’d made it at the last possible second.
When she sat down, padding to her chair on cat’s feet, and finally was able to relax, she found that she couldn’t. Something was… wrong. What, exactly, she couldn’t put her finger on, but try as she might she wasn’t able to focus on the performance and normally she was riveted no matter what they were playing. This was a collection of semi-orchestral children’s songs.
What was wrong?
“Is there… is someone missing?” Cassandra whispered to Angus’ mother Lela.
Lela glanced at her, concerned, and then looked over the little enclave of junior musicians. She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
Cassandra just shook her head, and tried to focus on the concert.
The feeling stuck with her until the very end. By then, she had begun to grow a nervous sense of recognition. You didn’t live the life she’d lived before Ramon without taking a little trauma away with you, and something had triggered it. Maybe it was someone she saw on the way here. Maybe it was a client she’d seen at work. Maybe it was an unfamiliar face in the PTA crowd—she looked, but while she didn’t know all the names of all the parents yet she didn’t see anyone new.
Still, she became more and more certain.
Someone was watching them.
When the concert was finished, Ramon understandably wanted to hang out with his friends. He was eight, going on nine, and being in school had made him far more independent than she ever imagined he would be. Angus’ mother sympathized. “Every mother thinks they’re going to be reliant and sweet their whole life,” she said when Ramon begged to stay and hang with his friends a little while longer. “It’s a pipe dream, though. I mean, it could be worse — at least at this rate you’ll be free in another ten years, you know? God, I can’t wait to have sex with my husband again…”
Cassandra laughed because she was supposed to, and glanced at Angus’ father. If it was going to take another ten years then at this rate Lena was going to have some digging to do to find the old spiggot—Kevin had put on considerable weight in just the time that Cassandra had known them both.
She gave Ramon another ten minutes, and they were tense, irritating minutes that prickled over Cassandra’s skin as they passed. She kept looking at the rafters of the auditorium, watching the entrances, and re-checking the faces of the PTA members. Surely no one was looking for them anymore. It just wouldn’t make any sense, right?
Once the agreed upon ten minutes were up, she retrieved Ramon and reminded him that they’d shook on it, and that a man was only worth his word. If he wanted more time in the future he needed to negotiate for it. So far that tactic was working out; it led to a few arguments, but generally seemed to be teaching her son that he had to be careful what he asked for—everything was on the table, but the price might be higher than he was willing to pay. He thought long and hard about asking for anything.
“Fine,” Ramon sighed. He fist-bumped Angus. “I gotta go. Hey! Bring that Naruto game tomorrow and you can come to my house after school.”
“Is that so?” Cassandra asked, glancing again at the exits. They’d take the back one. No, the side; it was less used.
“I mean,” Ramon said, and turned to her, “is it okay? If Angus comes over to play video games?”
Lena was close enough to be watching with interest, and Cassandra raised an eyebrow at her. Angus’ mom nodded enthusiastically.
“Yeah. Okay. For a little while,” she said. “Now come on.”
“Why are we in such a hurry?” Ramon asked as she took his hand and drew him toward the side door. “Where are we going? The door’s that way.”
“We’re going out the side,” Cassandra said.
He knew something was wrong. “Why? Mom?”
“It’s good to change things up once in a while,” she told him. “It’s fun.”
“It’s a longer walk to the car,” he argued.
That was true, and she actually paused a moment.
In that pause, she came to her senses. This was silly. She was being paranoid. She took a deep breath, and laughed it out. “You’re right, mi mijito. But it feels nice outside. A longer walk will do us good.”
Ramon tugged to pull his hand away from hers. “Mom,” he groaned, “don’t call me that at school.”
She grinned at him even though it actually cut her heart for him to say it. He couldn’t possibly understand at his age what it meant to her when he did. “How about mi poquito gordito instead?”
He threw his hands up and groaned again. “You’re killing me, Moms.”
She ruffled his hair, and urged him on. “Come on. Let’s sneak out. We’ll be like spies.”
That seemed to excite him enough. He made a show of creeping toward the plain metal door and peeking out carefully before he waved her toward him, imitating the soldiers and spies he’d seen on television when he watched movies he wasn’t supposed to. “Go go go,” he whispered.
For the fun of it, she joined in the game, and together they crept along the outside wall of the auditorium, almost pressed up against the stone work of it.
When they got to the corner that bordered the parking lot, Ramon held up a fist, peeked around it, and then held a finger to his lips. “Radio silence,” he whispered, “bogey at ten o’clock. Wait, no…” he had to pause and point at imaginary numbers on a clock face, “…more like… two o’clock.”
“What do we do, Agent Poquito Gordito?”
“Come with me if you want to live, Agent Lame Mom,” Ramon said, and stuck his tongue out at her. “I’ll to left, you go right. We’ll rendezvous at… the taxi round.” It was the only place to rendezvous, at the end of the parking lot.
She laughed, and pinched his cheek while he sighed and pushed her hand away. The he counted down to three on his fingers, checked around the corner one more time, and ducked to scramble toward the nearest car.
Cassandra followed him, her eyes flickering toward Ramon’s version of ‘two o’clock’ and then staggered to a halt.
“Ramon,” she snapped, suddenly panicked. She should have been elated. Or something else more positive. But the ‘bogey’ Ramon had seen could only be here for one reason and it was as bad as it got.
There, leaning against a car in the parking lot, arms folded while he waited patiently for them, was Ramon’s father.
Nick had come back. Their life here was over.
Chapter 9
If he was being honest, Nick knew that he was going to feel something when he saw Cassandra again, and especially when he saw Ramon. Granted, there was every possibility that Ramon wasn’t his. After all, Cassandra was a grown, beautiful woman. Once she knew she
was safe, maybe she’d opened herself up to having a real, full life.
Irrationally, that doubt vanished when he saw Ramon scamper across the grass, crouched low, head down, zig-zagging as though he expected to be shot at. A thrill of mixed wonder, anxiety, and panic shot through him.
Then he saw her.
She came out after him, smiling—they were playing a game, not actually evading pursuit—and as she did she looked his way and almost stumbled forward before she stood up straight and stared at him. She was somehow more beautiful than she had been before. Maybe motherhood agreed with her. He wished she hadn’t seen him; that he’d been more careful, and that he’d been able to watch her being happy just a little while longer.
“Ramon,” she called.
The boy peeked out from where he’d ducked behind the car, first at her and then at Nick. Then, hesitantly, maybe sensing that something was wrong, he approached Cassandra and reached out to take her hand.
Together, they walked toward him. Both were cautious, but only Cassandra scanned the parking lot, the roof of the St. Peter’s Auditorium, and the darkness beyond the lot where the trees could hide would-be assassins. Good girl.
“Cassandra,” he said when she got close.
Ramon looked puzzled, and peered suspiciously at Nick. “My mom’s name is Elena. Who are you?”
“Honey,” Cassandra said after she licked her lips and swallowed. “This is Nick Graves. He’s… ah…”
She looked up at Nick. He saw confirmation in her eyes without having to ask the question. Thunder shook the inside of him, cracking some long sealed vault. His stomach dropped as the reality of Ramon’s existence—his son’s existence—finally hit him full force. Outwardly, he was calm. Inside, he was unraveling. He nodded to her.
“Nick is…” she had to swallow again, “…Ramon, this is your father. Nick.”
If he showed even a little emotion, it was over. So he didn’t. But he looked at Ramon and let the corner of his mouth be the only bit that moved.
The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!) Page 6
