by Edie Harris
Casey caught Ilda dabbing at her eyes with her napkin, and new rage threatened. Why had Pipe insisted she attend this madness? For a man who claimed to love her, Pipe sure seemed perfectly fine with causing her pain. Casey, on the other hand, felt boxed in, pressed from the inside out to soothe her obvious grief. He remembered Théa, though he hadn’t known her well, but she’d been more than Ilda’s sister and singing partner—she’d been her best friend.
That sort of loss didn’t leave a body in four short years.
“Regardless, it’s time for peace, wouldn’t you agree?” Pipe pushed back from his chair and stood, lifting his wineglass for a toast. “Ciro, old friend, the roots of your empire dig deep, while the branches of mine reach toward the sky. There is a part of me that wishes to suggest we join forces.”
Ciro’s weathered face creased as he smiled. “Niño, you don’t know how this pleases me.” He lifted his own glass, and the others began to follow suit.
“I said a part of me.” Pipe’s answering smile was a sharp, feral thing. “But the rest of me struggles to see past the pain we’ve inflicted on one another throughout the years. So much pain, Ciro. Can you remember it, imagine it?”
Soberly, Ciro nodded. “I can. I can.”
But Pipe shook his head, and from the corner of Casey’s eye, he saw Manuel slip from the room, disappearing like a wraith. “I’m not so sure. But I do believe I’ve landed upon a solution to end our feud.” When Ciro gave Pipe an encouraging nod, he continued. “Recently, I’ve come into an unexpected windfall. Something better than money, of course, since neither of us needs more of that.”
Tentative chuckles rumbled around the table, but Casey felt his stomach sink.
“So, no, this windfall wasn’t monetary, but a blessing nonetheless. And tonight, as we sit here together in the spirit of reconciliation, we’re going to witness the power of this blessing.” Pipe crossed himself...just as a terribly familiar high-pitched whistling hit Casey’s ears.
The missiles. The missiles Casey had brought in exchange for making inroads with Pipe and the Marin cartel. The missiles not yet on the market, even for the US government, because Gillian had sent them to Chicago for beta testing in the empty fields of southern Illinois. The missiles that aimed for those who carried the same DNA as that of the individual whose strand had been sampled and input into the launcher’s targeting system.
Vicente, the snitch. Locked—and stitched—up in the barracks, he’d no doubt unwillingly donated his blood several times over, and as Pipe had shared, the ex-brigadier’s grandmother was Ciro Orras’s sister.
In the distance, a boom echoed.
Pipe smiled. “Ah. The blessing.”
What have I done? Casey fought the urge to be sick where he stood as the implications of what he and his family had permitted to happen overwhelmed him. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t pulled the proverbial trigger—they had knowingly, willingly handed a known criminal waging a very public territorial war the means to end that war.
The first time Faraday weapons were in the possession of an entity other than the US government, and this was what happened. Entire families, destroyed. Children, the elderly—generations of men and women who’d always lived on the other side of the city, most of them content in their day-to-day lives, wiped out.
All because Casey had wanted to play the hero and bring his little brother home.
Until this moment, he’d thought there was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect his family, no line he wouldn’t cross. Hell, Tobias had murdered Russian arms dealer Karlin Kedrov for what the evil man had done to their younger sister, Beth, and Casey had proven on more than one occasion that he refused to back down from a threat, especially against his loved ones.
But this...this was genocide. No six degrees of separation, nothing but the knowledge that he—and he alone—had given a villain the means by which to commit it.
When Adam found out, his softhearted brother was never going to speak to him again. Casey didn’t doubt that Adam would rather have stayed locked up for eternity, or perhaps even die, than to know that, in an effort to save him, hundreds of innocents had lost their lives.
Ilda had called him selfish the other day. Good God, she didn’t even know the half of it. Selfishness, ego, the arrogance that had made their family business what it was...it had led them to this point, this moment, when Casey was forced to silently reckon with truths he’d never anticipated battling all while remaining absolutely still, not able to break his cover in a room filled with two dozen of his enemies.
Not able to do a thing except accept that he was, perhaps, as heinous a man as Pipe. As Ilda had said, at least Pipe had never pretended to be something he wasn’t—a good man. But until this second in time, Casey had believed himself to be better than that. Better than the Pipes and the Ciros and the Karlins of the world.
As cell phones belonging to the Orras men around the table began to ring, Casey knew he was not better at all. Never had been. Never would be.
“Your loved ones are calling,” Pipe said calmly, as though the shrill, panicky ringing didn’t set his teeth on edge one bit. “You should answer.”
Some men scrambled for their phones, others warily reaching into their pockets. One by one, they answered, and tinny screams filled the room. A spill of Spanish so hoarse and so fast, so broken, that Casey, for all his fluency, couldn’t catch more than a third of what was being said.
Fire.
Explosion.
Blood. So much blood.
Everyone’s gone, abuelo. Everyone...
Lifting his wineglass to his lips, Pipe sipped, utterly detached from the gasping cries, both from those victims on the phone and from the pale-faced Orras men looking to one another in desperation. “That,” Pipe murmured as he set down his glass with a careful clink, “is the sound of your bloodline dying out.”
Casey glanced to Ilda, his body ready to move, but she had turned to stone. Cold, gray stone, her lips parted and her fists clenched tight in her lap. She stared at Pipe with the same horror as the already-grieving Orras members, appearing as though she might pass out at any moment. Breathe, Casey begged her silently. Breathe, baby, and I’ll get you out of here.
Suddenly, she sucked in a harsh breath, color flooding her pale cheeks, and she whipped around in her seat to spear Casey with a panicked glance, brown eyes so dilated as to appear black.
She reached for him.
He tensed.
And Pipe laid a quelling hand on her shoulder.
Ciro turned tear-dampened eyes filled with helpless rage to where Pipe stood calmly at the head of the table. “Have you no mercy, Felipe?”
“Not once in four years.” Then he inclined his head, and hell rained down.
In eerily synchronous movement, each of Pipe’s brigadiers reached beneath the table, withdrew handguns and shot the Orras cartel member next to them in head. A series of quick, deafening bangs echoed in the high-ceilinged room, leaving no chance for protest or defense, save Ciro, whom Pipe cruelly, coldly forced to watch the murders of his fellow men.
Casey was already moving, lunging forward, but he wasn’t fast enough to protect her.
Blood sprayed across Ilda’s face as Pipe neatly executed his rival.
Hooking his arms around her body, Casey yanked her from her chair, blinking against the pink mist drifting down from eleven bodies that had been breathing seconds earlier and now slumped unmoving in their seats, holes in their foreheads still smoking from their point-blank assassinations.
Pipe’s expression was blank when he fixed his gaze on Ilda, who shook in Casey’s hold as he half-dragged, half-carried her to the door. “I told you there’d be peace in Medellín, querida.” Carefully, Pipe set his gun on the tabletop. “Now, there is.”
Chapter Sixteen
Her ears wouldn’t stop ringing.
So much gunfire, the shots in such quick succession, echoing off the high ceiling, and it had deafened her. Everything felt off-balance and
...and white. It was as though she could hear noise, that unsteady shrillness, the buzz that zipped from one temple to the next and had her blinking back tears.
No. Wait. It wasn’t the pain in her ears causing her eyes to sting, but what she’d just witnessed. What Pipe had just done.
Murder. Mass murder. Ilda could barely make sense of it, blinking and gasping, her ears hurting so much she worried briefly, vaguely, if permanent damage had been done. The guns were the least of it, as were the dozen dead men slumped at her pristine dining table. They paled in comparison to what she thought—wondered, feared—had occurred. That sound, before the gunfire, of something like a rocket taking off, followed by a faint boom, and then the ringing. Not in her ears, though.
The phones.
And then there was the screaming, the crying, like a recorded track trapped inside a tin can. The devastation of those voices, pulsing against her senses until terrified emotion choked her, froze her.
As they had died around her, she’d done...nothing. Nothing but sit there, barely breathing, gaze unable to focus on any one entity in the room, her thoughts narrowed down to a single word.
Arlo.
She had to get to Arlo. Right upstairs, short meters away from this massacre, her baby girl was tucked under the covers and completely oblivious to what had happened beneath her princess bed.
Her body was moving without her volition, into the darkened hall and away from the chamber of death. Steel banded her waist, lifting her feet off the ground in a jostled rush as the light from the dining room doorway dimmed with every step. She blinked again, recognizing the arm around her as Casey’s, the faint, low hum of his voice strangely soothing against her injured ears, for all that she couldn’t make out his exact words. Her hands fell to his forearm, gripping, scratching, despite not truly wanting him to let her go.
Except she had to get to Arlo.
Her legs kicked, the sharp heel of her stiletto connecting with his shin, and she felt him flinch behind her, along with a displeased rumble deep within his chest, vibrating against her bare shoulders. “Arlo,” she told him—perhaps a whisper, perhaps a shout. “Arlo.”
His hand, heavy and rough, stroked over her throat, warm breath buffeting one aching ear, and she stilled, concentrating on his words.
“...where she is, Ilda. I’ll take you, but you have to tell me where.” Again, his fingers stroked, skin on skin over the tension knotting her neck.
A shiver wracked her, unpleasant yet not and having nothing to do with his touch. Only the situation she—they—faced, the terribleness she simply could not yet fully process. For years she’d been living side-by-side with a monster, not a man, had thought she’d known his limitations as a human being and what sort of villain he truly was.
Mother Mary, had she been wrong. “Up the stairs, to the left. Second door.”
At the foot of the stairs, Casey settled her on her feet, his hands steadying on her waist. “You good to walk?”
Not bothering to answer, Ilda turned, reaching for the railing with a white-knuckled grip and hustling up the stairs. She felt more than heard Casey’s heavy boots behind her as she fought to clear her ears. Swallowing, tugging, a few frantic pats.
“It’ll come back, your hearing. Don’t worry.”
I’m not worried, she wanted to snap at him. Not about her hearing. What did she need that for? No, what Ilda needed was her daughter, in her arms, immediately. And then she needed to get them off the hacienda and...and out of Medellín.
They couldn’t stay. Hell, she’d already known they shouldn’t stay, but now there was no choice to the matter. She had wanted that choice, didn’t want to feel as though her life were out of her control, or that she was dancing to another’s tune. Every other minute, it seemed as though unseen forces were tugging her strings and, by extension, Arlo’s strings. Ilda was willing to tolerate quite a bit to feel safe, but this, downstairs, wasn’t merely a step too far, but ten thousand steps.
Pausing outside the door to the nursery, Ilda exhaled a shuddering breath. “We can’t run yet,” she whispered, not able to look Casey in the eye as he eased to stand next to her. “Adam...there’s no way you could get him out of here tonight. Security is—”
“Tight, yeah. But, Ilda, if you want out, I will get you and Arlo out, right this second.” He reached into a pocket of his utility trousers, removing a black handkerchief and slowly wiping at her face. It was only then that she felt the sticky wetness coating her skin, which could only mean...blood. “Adam will understand the delay. Tomorrow night is soon enough for him.”
She shuddered as he cleaned her face, then dabbed at her neck, her clavicle. “Tomorrow.”
“The auction. We’ve got a plan already in place to get him—and you and Arlo—out of here following the auction.” He stuffed the soiled cloth into his pocket, then framed her face with his hands. “Tell me you want me to take you off the hacienda tonight, baby.”
“If you already have a plan,” she swallowed around the lump in her throat, feeling the hoarseness of her voice, as though she were the one who’d been screaming and not...not all of the innocents, “then we can wait.”
“Ilda—”
“We can wait.” Her decision made, she nodded and reached for the doorknob. “One more day, right? If you try to take us now, Pipe will hunt you down. You won’t get within a mile of your brother so long as he’s in Colombia, and we both know that.” She finally met his gaze. “Is your plan a good plan?”
“There’s no such thing as a good plan.” The pads of his thumbs petted over her overheated cheekbones. “But what we have in mind will work in getting all of us out of here, in one piece.”
“Then we wait.” Without another thought, she pushed open the door—and was rushed by a dresser lamp, wielded by the ferocious nanny. “Isobel!”
“Ilda?” The lamp lowered, and Ilda took in Isobel’s frazzled appearance, dark eyes dilated with terror, before glancing to the princess bed across the large room. “What happened?”
But Ilda was already moving to her daughter’s side. “Pipe happened.” Propping her hip on the edge of the mattress, she carefully pulled back the blanket tucked to Arlo’s chin and stared down at her sleeping face bathed in the glow of the elephant nightlight on the side table next to the bed. All the air escaped her lungs in a whoosh as she leaned down to enfold her little girl within the protective circle of her arms, knowing it would wake Arlo and not caring a bit.
And, lo and behold, Arlo squirmed moments later. Behind her, Ilda heard Casey give Isobel a recap of the atrocities that had taken place downstairs, his voice clipped and without any of the emotion she was used to hearing from him.
“Where’s your room?” Casey asked brusquely.
“Off the nursery.” Isobel sounded suspicious. “Why?”
“Go there, lock your door and pack a bag. Necessities only, but don’t plan on ever being able to come back.” Glancing toward Ilda, he nodded, understanding somehow without it being explicitly said that Ilda would want Isobel to come with them when they left the hacienda. “You love Arlo?”
Isobel scowled up at him, fists propped on her hips. “More than you know.”
“Then keep your mouth shut between now and tomorrow night.” He opened the door to her adjoining suite, gesturing her inside. “Goodnight, Isobel.”
She halted on the threshold, spearing him with a dark look. “You’re trouble, Cortez. Always have been.” Without another word, Isobel entered her own room and closed the door firmly behind her.
After checking the locks on both doors, Isobel’s and the door to the hall, Casey turned to face the bed, shoulders pressed to the door as he stared—hungrily, Ilda thought, longingly—at the pair of them. “I thought you said she doesn’t sign.”
So he’d seen her speaking with Arlo, in their own haphazard manner. “Not any official language, just our own words.”
“Some of that looks like actual sign language.”
“LSM. When she first star
ted trying to communicate, I researched lengua de señas mexicana because it was the most universal choice for Spanish speakers.” She brushed Arlo’s tangled bangs out of her eyes, smiling at her daughter though her words for Casey remained somber. “I began integrating basic words, to the best of my knowledge, assuming we’d eventually have to take her out of Colombia for help.” Shaking her head when Arlo signed their word for ice cream, Ilda glanced to Casey, then shrugged. “I didn’t mean to wait so long to enroll her. I wasn’t trying to stunt her development. I just...it never seemed safe.” But that was when she’d believed wholeheartedly that the hacienda was the safest place they could be in a world filled with blood and bullets.
Casey took a step toward them, then halted, his gray-hazel eyes flicking between her and Arlo. “No one’s blaming you. Certainly not me.” He frowned when Arlo signed again. “What is she saying now?”
“She...wants to know who you are.” A question Ilda never thought she’d need answer. After hesitating briefly, she signed as she mouthed the words.
“And...and what are you telling her?” Oh, his voice. It sounded so nervous, so worried. So absolutely heartbreaking.
“I said you’re the brother of the man in the barn—Yes, with the eyes, princess,” Ilda confirmed when Arlo, quick little Arlo, made that most basic of connections. Fear gripped her once more, because for her three-year-old to recognize a relationship existed between her and Adam meant Pipe had as well. No more pretending they were still safely shrouded in his ignorance, not after tonight. The need to escape pressed on her, suffocating her with an anxious urgency. Her voice caught, broke. “Clever girl.”
“She certainly is.” Cautious wonder lurked in the quiet syllables.
All of a sudden, Arlo pushed Ilda gently away and scrambled off the bed, her blue-and-yellow sunny-sky pajamas a bright spot in the dimly lit space as she scurried for the toy bin that held her outsized collection of plastic animals. Two dinosaurs were procured—the same toys Arlo had brought into Adam’s stall—and then Arlo crossed to the middle of the room, where Casey stood immobile. She held up the dinosaurs in offering.
