by Edie Harris
Casey looked to Ilda, helplessness written in his expression, but Ilda merely watched, barely able to breathe.
Slowly, he sank to the floor, legs folded beneath him as though he’d sat on a rug with a small child countless times before. His intent gaze never left Arlo’s round face, his attention perfectly focused, as though getting this right were of vital importance. Mirroring him, Arlo sat, then handed him one of the plastic dinosaurs, which his big hand with its long fingers nearly swallowed. In silence, he waited for a cue from Arlo.
Arlo didn’t keep him waiting, immediately siccing her toy at his in a mock battle of teeth and claws. Casey held his dinosaur mostly immobile, paying more attention to her than to the playing. “You were right,” he whispered, never taking his eyes from Arlo. “She’s perfect.”
And Ilda’s shattered heart, so abused from tonight, this week, four years of interminable grief, began to repair itself. Deep inside her chest, she felt the ragged pieces stitch together, slow tugs of thread and needle that somehow didn’t pain but comforted.
There, a few feet away, sat her daughter and her daughter’s father, playing together, Arlo’s expression innocent and happy, Casey’s features softening by the second. It was a sight she’d never dreamed possible, and seeing it felt like a fever dream, something she had imagined only in the deepest recesses of her subconscious. It shouldn’t have been possible, but here it was, happening. Right before her eyes.
They looked alike, she realized. The longer she saw them side-by-side, the more it became obvious to her. The shape of their eyes, if not the color, and the tips of their ears. The hair so dark a brown it might as well be black. Even their mouths showed promise of being similar, in time. Arlo’s dusky skin remained fair with the freshness of youth, nowhere near as brown as his or Ilda’s, but there was no mistaking the bloodline resemblance between her daughter and the man who was not Casímiro Cortez.
As Arlo went to the bin to collect more toys, Casey glanced around the nursery. Ilda’s legs dangled at the edge of the bed, her tall heels scraping the soft rug, her fists clenching in the quilt. She wondered what he saw when he looked at the well-appointed room, the evidence of Pipe’s excessive spoiling of Arlo. She also wondered why Casey refused to look at her.
“Did you ever love him?” The question seemed torn from Casey, so weighty that Ilda nearly rocked backward from the subtle force of it.
“That’s a complicated question.” Even more complicated now, given what was downstairs. Ilda shivered, her stomach knotting abruptly. “Or maybe it isn’t.”
“Explain.”
They both watched Arlo as she returned to her position in front of Casey—this time with an armload of dinosaurs—instead of taking the hard road and making eye contact with one another. She felt too fragile as she fought to find the words, and to be right in those words. “I told you that Pipe was good to me, to us. As good as a man like Pipe could be. But he never loved me the way he did Théa, and we both knew it.”
But Casey was like a dog with a bone. “That doesn’t answer my question.” He picked up another dinosaur when Arlo pushed one toward him, his movements no longer stilted but easy. It was taking him no time at all to fall into daddy mode. “You’ve been resistant to leaving here, and I thought I understood why. I thought it was me—I rose from the dead, and I kept pushing you and pushing you. I’m not a patient man.” Frustration pulsed from him. “But what if it’s not me who’s got you all twisted up and wanting to stay here? What if it’s Pipe? If your heart’s involved, if that’s what is keeping you—”
“My heart is not involved.” Ilda was more than a little surprised to realize it was true. One hundred percent, undeniably true, but something she hadn’t wanted to face in the years in which she’d been with Pipe. And, judging from Pipe’s psychopathic revenge for her sister just now, she would guess that his heart wasn’t hers, either. “I never fell in love with him. He was there, he cared for me, he adored my daughter. He kept us safe. For a while, I loved all of those things—his presence, his care, his safety—but I can tell you with all honesty, marido, that I never loved him. You don’t snitch to the DEA on someone you love, do you?” Pushing from the bed, Ilda came to kneel next to her daughter on the rug and finally looked Casey in the eye. “No. You don’t. But until you came back, I thought it would be enough, what I was doing to ease my conscience and the relative safety he offered us. I thought my gratitude would be enough.”
“Nothing could be enough when you compare it to what we had, Ilda.” His glare was ferocious, blazing, but his anger didn’t bruise her, because that fury wasn’t at her. “What we have.”
Before she could say anything, Arlo abandoned the dinosaurs and stepped into the space between Casey’s bent knees. Her tiny hands went to the day’s worth of scruff stubbling his jaw, and then she signed at him.
Tension seized Casey’s features, and Ilda knew what he felt, because she’d been where he was right now. The stress of not understanding what was being communicated, the fear that anything you said wouldn’t be comprehended in turn. “What did she say?”
Ilda reached out to comb her fingers through the tangled ends of Arlo’s loosened hair, the straight strands so unlike her own, silky between her fingertips. “She wants to know if you’re her friend.”
His face an open book of emotion, Casey nodded at his daughter and was rewarded by her sleepy smile and small arms banding tightly around his neck. His breathing hitched audibly before his own arms gathered Arlo close. He held her, Ilda noted, as he’d held Adam earlier this week in the stable—one big hand rubbing soothingly along her spine, the other gently cupping the back of her head. A faint tremor shook his muscled frame as he turned his face to the side of her neck and inhaled deeply, his eyes closing so the lashes laid shadows along the battlements of his cheekbones.
He was holding his daughter for the very first time.
Ilda blinked rapidly, warding off the dangerous emotion that threatened to break this fragile oasis the three of them had built in the nursery for these few stolen moments. She could feel the joy radiating off him, so acute as to be painful, and when she heard his shaky exhalation, wet with unshed tears, a few of her own escaped to slip down her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered closed briefly.
“Hey.” A brush of warm, callused skin against the wetness had her blinking, only to lock gazes with Casey as he wiped away her tears with one hand, the other still holding Arlo—who was quickly drifting off to sleep against his shoulder—as though he never intended to let go of the girl again. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
His jaw touched Arlo’s temple. “For this. For her.”
More tears spilled over. “We’re coming with you tomorrow, Casey,” she whispered, making sure to say his name as it was meant to be said—as it deserved to be said. “We’re coming home with you.” Wherever home was, that was where she and Arlo would be, forty-eight hours from now.
“Then do the same as Isobel—pack a small bag, necessities only. Everything you’d take if you knew you would never return.” Careful not to jostle Arlo, who was close to drooling, he reached behind him and withdrew a gun from the waistband of his trousers.
He offered it to Ilda.
She flinched away.
The gun remained in his outstretched hand. “You know how to use one of these, yes?”
“No.” She frowned at him. “And I pity you the world you live in that you assume I would.”
“It’s your world, too, baby. Just for one more day.” He glanced down at Arlo before shifting his grip on the weapon. “This is the safety.” His thumb indicated a tiny plastic latch-like thing. “While it’s in this position, the gun won’t go off, okay? But I’ve got the chamber already loaded for you, so all you need to do is flip this in the other direction, aim it and pull the trigger.” He set the gun on the rug beside her, then lifted his hand once more to cup her jaw. “Sleep in here with Arlo tonight, with the door locked. You have your mobile?”
She n
odded.
“You call me at any time, and I’ll come. No matter what. Understand?” His gaze darkened. “No matter what. But until you call me, you need to be ready for anything, and that means a gun. I promise, you’ll never have to touch one again after tomorrow.”
Exhaling slowly, Ilda laid her hand over the uncomfortably warm metal of the handgun, trying not to show her distaste. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
Chapter Seventeen
Casey had proposed to her on this balcony, overlooking the courtyard. Though it hadn’t been so much a proposal as a demand—which, Ilda mused darkly, must simply be his baseline. Making demands, expecting his commands to be followed.
So long as those commands kept her and Arlo alive, Ilda had decided she could heed them.
The view was much the same as it had been the day she’d said yes to Casey, warm air and bright flowers and a vista of hills and sky that reminded her why she loved her country. Colombia was beautiful, its people strong and courageous, and though she had traveled much of the world with Théa when their music had taken off, Colombia was her home and all she truly knew. She’d been willing to leave with Casey as his wife four years ago, willing to leave Medellín behind, but that sense of adventure had been stuffed in a box in the back of her mind and thoroughly ignored in favor of living in the present, protecting her daughter and forgetting she had ever recklessly given her heart to a man who had been little more than a forbidden stranger.
She’d often wondered whether her grief had left her more susceptible to him in that moment. She’d wondered if, perhaps, her body had fooled her heart, mistaking lust and compatibility for actual love. More than that, she’d feared, upon reflection, that she had been weakened—by violence, by loss, by her own need for affection and attention—when she decided to go all in with Casímiro Cortez.
Strangely, those concerns had been erased by his reappearance, this time as Casey Faraday. She knew who he was now, and deep down, Casí and Casey remained the same. Big and bossy, shoddy at shielding his emotions—at least from her—and a protector. He was the human equivalent of a savage guard dog, two shades shy of feral and clever enough to keep his wits about him, biding his time until the perfect moment to strike arrived.
Less than a week since his return to her life, but it felt like eons had passed, and she couldn’t deny the truth rioting in her rib cage: Ilda loved him. She’d loved him four years ago, below the surface and to the marrow of her bones, despite having only known him a few short months. She’d loved him for giving her their daughter, even when she thought him dead. She loved him now with an undeniable piercing clarity for doing everything in his power to enfold them permanently within his life, lifting them from a land where they could no longer flourish.
Her hands tightened on the smooth wood of the balcony rail. She ought to have taken Arlo from here sooner. She didn’t have much in the way of savings—Pipe had started managing her accounts when she was hospitalized after the chapel, and, as his fiancée, she’d only needed to ask for something and it would be provided to her. Still, she had enough ready to spend that she could have bought a pair of one-way plane tickets, found a cheap to-let and gotten a job as a waitress to pay the bills. She could have done something other than subconsciously permit Pipe to have this power over her.
What a mistake. A mistake that had cost Arlo vital months in which her linguistic needs could have been met by professionals, and cost Ilda the opportunity to heal from her losses without the crutch that Pipe had provided. She saw now that in promising to keep her safe and protect her from the bloody war that had stolen from them both, he had reinforced its existence and her fear of being crushed by sorrow once more. He’d subtly, subversively crippled her, and rage at the realization left her shaking where she stood, the hills blurring before her tear-stung eyes.
That wasn’t love, what Pipe had done to her. That was subjugation, and control...and it was something to which Casey, for all his macho high-handedness, would never subject her.
She stared blindly out at the landscape, but something sparkled in her peripheral vision. There on her finger, winking in the waning daylight, was the perfect platinum of Pipe’s engagement ring.
A ring that suddenly felt like lead, choking the veins and bones until she no longer felt the pulsing nerves beneath her skin. Panicked, she tugged at the band, nails scraping her skin as she yanked the blasted thing from her finger. Without pausing to think, she drew back her arm and threw the ring as far as she could, hearing it ping on the stones at the far edge of the courtyard.
For the first time in four years, Ilda finally felt as though she could breathe.
Movement from the opposite side of the courtyard caught her eye, and Ilda watched, shocked, as Isobel glanced cautiously around before leading Arlo from the shadows and into the stable.
What. The. Hell.
Ilda was running as her anger crested. She’d told the nanny that leaving the nursery today for any reason was unacceptable, and Isobel knew better than to disobey, especially after the carnage that had occurred in the dining room the night before, despite all traces of evidence having been removed before Ilda woke this morning. Arlo’s safety came first, always, and this latest infraction by Isobel would not be tolerated.
Avoiding the main level—and the hall that led to the dining room—Ilda took the circular wrought-iron stair at the far end of the balcony, clinging to the side of house and covered in vines. The courtyard cobblestones were uneven beneath her bare feet, but she didn’t care, hustling through the stable’s open doors and glancing about wildly.
There, near the end of the aisle, right before the turn that led toward the row of stalls holding Adam prisoner, stood Isobel, locked in a torrid embrace with the new brigadier, whose name Ilda still did not know. Arlo tugged at Isobel’s hand, obviously angling to get down the dark aisle to Adam, her face crumpling with displeasure as Isobel refused to release her.
Ilda stalked forward just as Arlo let out a wail. “Isobel.”
With a gasp, the nanny tore herself from the brigadier, eyes wide as she took in Ilda’s glare. “I... I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have left the nursery, but—”
“No ‘but.’” Ilda scooped Arlo into her arms. Fixing her displeasure on the brigadier, she asked, “Who are you?”
His gaze flicked to Isobel before giving Ilda his full attention. “Nico.”
She took a moment to memorize his face, the long curve of his nose, the trimmed beard, the unusual pale green of his eyes striking beneath thick black brows. “How long have you been with Pipe, Nico?”
Again, the man hesitated. “Two months. I’m from—”
“I don’t care where you’re from.” For the first time, Ilda embraced her position of power as Pipe’s fiancée, despite having tossed away his ring. “Just as I don’t care what you and Isobel get up to when she’s off-duty. But if I catch you near my daughter again, I will have Pipe remove you from this country. That is, if he doesn’t decide to take harsher measures first himself. Am I understood?”
“Yes, señora.”
“Good.” Seizing Isobel’s wrist in an unyielding grasp, Ilda turned on her heel and dragged the cowed woman from the stables and into the sunlit courtyard. Only when they were out of the lengthening shadows and in clear view of anyone watching—because something about Nico had raised the tiny hairs at her nape—did Ilda release Isobel. “What were you thinking?”
Isobel’s jaw set stubbornly as she rubbed her wrist. “I was thinking I was saying goodbye, and that you’d rather I have Arlo with me than leave her alone in the house.”
“You told that man we’re leaving?”
The other woman rolled her eyes. “I’m not a complete idiot, chica.” But there was a strange note in her voice, setting Ilda’s teeth on edge and ratcheting her paranoia up several degrees. Isobel held out her arms. “Give me Arlo, and I’ll get her fed and bathed.” She paused. “And ready to go at a moment’s notice.”
Ilda
stared down her old friend. “I’m trusting that you’ll not let Arlo out of your sight once until...until tonight is over.” Because despite the paranoia, undoubtedly caused by the nerves of what the night would bring and the new road their lives would take, Ilda needed to trust someone. Isobel, with their shared history in the 13, was by default that someone.
Kissing every inch of Arlo’s round face, until the little girl was reduced to giggles, Ilda handed her to Isobel, signing in their shared language to be good for the nanny. Arlo waved, and without another word, Isobel disappeared inside the hacienda, leaving Ilda standing in the fading sunshine with her heart thumping hard against her sternum.
Reaching into her pocket, she curled her fingers around her mobile. She couldn’t do this, couldn’t hide and wait for Casey’s rescue. What had she been thinking, to not pack up and leave last night, the moment she watched Pipe murder his rivals without breaking a sweat?
Her stomach heaved as she pulled out the phone, tapping out the number with the American country code from memory. But as her thumb hovered over Call, footsteps sounded behind her, a familiar tread. Stiffening, Ilda turned to stare at Pipe.
Pipe, who held a gun trained on her heart. His smile burned her with its utter coldness. “Querida. Let’s call him together, shall we?”
* * *
“I still can’t believe you scored an actual invitation to this thing.”
Chandler grinned slyly at Axel Moreno, who had forgone his fake cleric’s robes tonight in favor of combat boots, forest-green fatigue pants and a black T-shirt. “You sound suitably impressed. I like you.”
The DEA agent shook his head as he continued his methodical reassembling of the two handguns he’d just cleaned and prepped. “Just didn’t realize MI6 had those kind of underworld hookups.”
“MI6 doesn’t. I do.” Chandler’s blond ponytail swung as she whipped around to glare at Tobias. “Why are you coughing at me?”
“Are you really going to call hunting down the new de facto leader of a Russian black-market arms ring and threatening to break all the fingers in his right hand unless he handed over the code word to get us into the auction a ‘hookup’?” Tobias fixed her with a wry look. “I ask only for my own edification.”
