Eva took the elevator to the parking garage.
Climbing into her Mercedes, she tossed her purse on the passenger seat. Before Luciana was born, she and Christopher always made the drive out to the ranch together. But no more. Now they did everything separately. Pulling out into the crush of Buenos Aires traffic, she turned her attention to her task. Driving in the city required aggressive maneuvering and complete focus. Stoplights and road signs were mere suggestions to most Buenos Aires drivers. Once she’d left the city behind, she relaxed. For the next thirty minutes, she could pretend her life wasn’t about to change forever.
That she hadn’t made a life-altering decision.
All that was left was prayer. Christopher, forgive me. Would he understand? Sharing the plan with him wasn’t an option. He’d never agree to the risk she was going to take. But there was only one way to escape the Vargas family: death.
Everyone, including Christopher, must think hers was real.
The drive ended too soon. She turned onto the long driveway, her tires grating as she left pavement for dirt. She stopped the car just inside the gates. The guards checked her vehicle’s interior. She opened the trunk and they looked inside.
The family had experienced many acts of violence. Since her mother’s abduction and murder, care was taken to ensure the ranch was safe. Large family gatherings were arranged with little lead time to give enemies less opportunity to plan an attack.
Perspiration gathered beneath her dress. She parked in front of the estancia and, ignoring the armed guard, went through the mahogany door.
“Papa.” She greeted her father with a kiss and embrace, trying not to think that this would be the last time she’d see him.
His face glowed. “Eva.”
He was a big man with an imposing frame. Even at sixty, his black hair held little gray and his shoulders refused to stoop. Guilt weighted Eva’s steps. After today, grief would once again crease his features. But that couldn’t be helped. It was Papa’s own fault. He held the reins on his daughter too tightly. He was making her choose between him and the man she loved. Christopher would be devastated too. But she could not share her scheme with him either. He must play the grieving widower. As soon as possible, she’d contact him. Franco would allow him space to grieve. There would be no pressure to rejoin the business for a while. Franco would not object if Christopher wanted to take her child away to heal, and then they could vanish.
“Am I the last to arrive?” she asked in Spanish.
“But you are the most important. The others can wait.” He looked over her shoulder. Disappointment and irritation tightened his jaw. “Where is Christopher?”
Eva smiled. “He will be late. Luciana was napping.”
Her father frowned. “Luciana should have a nanny.”
“I’m working on it, Papa. Christopher is enamored with his child. Surely, you can understand?”
Franco sighed. “And if I say no, you take offense?”
“Exactly, Papa.” She patted his arm. “Have no worry. Christopher will be here soon. I made sure to tell him your new horse was coming today.”
“You were always a clever one. I want to finish up the business discussion so I can give the beast a try.” The prospect of a new polo mount brightened his mood and put a bounce in his step. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and steered her toward the dining room. She nodded to the burly man who stood guard at the entrance. Nicolas was her father’s most trusted man. He’d been employed by the Vargas family since before Eva was born. He’d been her ally her entire life.
Now he was her only confidant.
As usual, Eva was the only female in the room, but that did not worry her. Denied sons, Franco had responded in a practical manner. Instead of allowing a male cousin to take over the Vargas enterprises, he’d groomed his daughters for the role. Eva took the chair at his right. The chair to Papa’s left was empty, to remind all that the seat was not for them to fill. Her younger sister, Maria, would take that place when the time came.
Maria would sit at this table sooner than she expected—or wanted, thought Eva. Guilt flickered. Her sister wanted no part of the business.
Eva sat, the high-backed chair hard under her thighs. Resting her forearms on the rustic table, she waited for the meeting to begin. Franco sent Nicolas to the cellar to retrieve a sample of their latest ammunition delivery. The family discussed the details of several impending deals. Eva grew restless. Just a few more hours before her world turned upside down. Before she took a step from which there was no retreating.
The ceiling exploded. Debris rained onto the table. The double doors burst open. Four men steamed in. Machine guns barked over the screams of men and the scraping of chairs as they tried to flee. But there was no escape.
Shock rooted Eva in her seat. What was happening? This was not part of her plan.
Her father dove off his chair. His arm caught Eva around the middle, forcing her to the ground beneath his larger body. But he hadn’t moved fast enough. A bullet cut across Eva’s midsection. Another seared across her neck, spearing her with agony. She hit the floor. Her head smacked the tile. Blood filled her throat, choking her. Gunshots and screaming became muffled. Franco landed partially on top of her. The weight of his body knocked the air from her lungs. His eyes blinked in shock and pain. Blood spread across his crisp white shirt. She felt her own life draining out onto the cold tile. Their mingled blood soaked her dress.
“I’m sorry,” Papa mouthed before he died.
Eva’s vision dimmed. Her eyes fixed on the ceiling fan, spinning in a lazy circle above her. Her only regret was that she hadn’t said good-bye to her child or husband. A life built on violence ends in a bloody death. Christopher was right. They should have run long ago. Her heart weakened. Her breaths faltered.
“It is done.” A man spoke in Portuguese.
Aline Barba was behind this. Retribution, no doubt, for the death of her son. This was Eva’s fault. She’d been too eager to pull the trigger that day. And now she would pay.
Eva could barely draw air to inflate her lungs. Shallow breathing dimmed her vision.
The men left the room. Eva scanned the room. Dead. All dead.
She wheezed. Minutes later, a shoe scraped in the hallway. Her father’s body blocked her view and pinned her upper torso and arms to the floor. He was too heavy and she was too weak to push him off of her. Unable to move, she waited for death, her breath rattling in her chest. Blood pooled on the tile around her and soaked her dress.
“Eva,” a man’s voice called.
Christopher?
She opened her eyes. Disappointment welled. Not Christopher.
Nicolas pushed Franco off of her and scanned her from head to foot. She remembered that he’d been in the cellar. The knees of his slacks were dark with blood, as if he’d crawled through a puddle of it to reach her.
“Shh.” He rolled her onto her side and gave her a cursory examination. “It’s not as bad as it looks. One shot. Straight through the shoulder. The neck wound is a graze. You’ve lost blood, though.”
He folded two cloth napkins and bound them to the front and back of her shoulder with his belt. He placed another on her neck, moving her own hand to hold it in place. Then he righted a chair, picked her up, and placed her in it. “Put pressure on this. I’ll be right back.” He stood and walked toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“We might as well proceed with the plan. Aline wants you dead. Let’s let her think you are. Did you plant the toothbrush and hairbrush in the apartment?”
She nodded.
Nicolas disappeared through the doorway. Ten minutes later, he returned carrying an unconscious woman. She wore the same red dress and shoes as Eva. Her long hair fell over Nicolas’s arm in a dark wave. When he positioned her on the floor, Eva could see the Sun of May tattoo between her shoulder bl
ades. Nicolas picked up a machine gun from the floor. Stepping back, he fired a burst of bullets from her waist to her face. The blood that sprayed from her body blended with the existing carnage. After testing for her pulse, he rolled Franco on top of the woman’s body.
The body’s DNA would match the DNA Eva had planted in her apartment. Eva Vargas would be pronounced dead.
Nicolas carried her to the helipad and placed her inside the copter.
“I saw Christopher,” Nicolas yelled over the sound of the rotors.
Eva pressed her nose to the window. “Where?”
“Running away like a coward.” His mouth tightened. “He did this.”
“He wouldn’t.” She shook her head. No one was more loyal than Christopher, except he was unhappy lately.
Nicolas stabbed a button on the instrument panel. “He was here while they gunned down your family. I saw his car, and he stole all the money from your father’s study.”
“No!” Eva’s head spun.
“Why else would he take the money and run? He’s been acting strangely lately. Did you know he purchased false passports? How the fool thought he could do that without someone finding out is beyond me.”
He hadn’t told her about any passports. She thought back to their argument.
She hadn’t acted fast enough. He’d decided to go without her. He might love Eva, but his child was his life. For Luciana, Christopher would do anything.
The helicopter lifted, spun, and shot out over the pampas. Sunlight blurred her vision.
She vowed to find him. She would take her daughter back from the man who had stolen her child and left her to die. Christopher would pay for her family’s massacre.
Cristan reeled.
“I’m sorry I believed Nicolas instead of believing in you,” Eva continued. “Nicolas took me to a medical facility. You stole the cash, but thankfully, my father had money in his bank accounts as well. Maria funneled money to us. I don’t remember much of the first six months.” Her hand went to the scarf around her throat, tugging it down to reveal a ropey scar across her neck. “What the bullet wounds didn’t damage, grief for my family and anger toward you destroyed.”
“I don’t understand. There was a woman who looked like you in the compound? What was your plan?”
She walked to the other end of the patio and back, her expression unreadable in the dark. “I was leaving the family for you. I’d been planning for months. The only person I told was Nicolas. We both knew that death was the only way to exit the Vargas family. So I had to die.”
“But how . . .” Cristan was beginning to connect the terrible dots.
“Nicolas found a woman who looked very much like me. She was from Cordoba. A poor woman who would not be missed. He had a tattoo put on her back to match mine. I bought duplicate outfits. The day of the massacre, he’d been holding her in his trunk. Our plan was to put a bullet in her head, put the body in my car, and send it off the bridge into the river. We already had everything in place to fake my kidnapping and set up Aline Barba as the culprit. My father would have believed it without a doubt. Aline had made threats in the past.
“You killed a woman to fake your death?”
“Nicolas killed her.” Eva waved a hand.
“But you knew about it.” Horror swept through him.
Eva stopped and stared at him. His wife had arranged the murder of an innocent simply because the poor woman looked like her. Cristan might have done some bad things in his life, but Eva had crossed a line. Not just crossed it, she’d leaped over it at full speed like an Olympic hurdler. Yes, Cristan had killed men for Franco, but those men were his own equivalents in other gangs. They knew the risks associated with their activities, and if given equal chance, they would have killed Cristan without blinking.
But Cristan had never murdered an innocent. Judging by Eva’s confused stare, she didn’t comprehend his revulsion.
Anger flushed her skin and whitened her scar. “I had planned to take our daughter and kill you. Nicolas convinced me you had set up the massacre. You took the money in my father’s study. You were out of the country in days. You had purchased fake birth certificates and passports. You were ready to run after the explosion. It seemed as if you planned the whole thing.”
“I bought travel documents for all three of us, Eva. I wasn’t planning to leave without you. When I confirmed you were dead, I did what I thought you would have wanted. I took our daughter to safety.” If faced with the exact same situation, Cristan would make the same choice.
“If it wasn’t you, then who told Aline about the meeting?” Eva asked. “The dates were never announced outside the immediate family more than a few days in advance. Yet Aline knew in time to plan a well-timed attack.”
Cristan said, “Immediate family and Nicolas.” Suddenly, part of Eva’s story replayed in his mind. Who was the one person on the ranch that hadn’t been hurt in the attack? Nicolas. “Convenient that he was in the cellar when the attack occurred.”
For once, Eva looked stunned. “But he was with my family for decades. He helped raise me.”
“I have no other explanation. Maybe Nicolas was tired of the life. Everyone else had their own agenda.”
“True.” Nodding, she digested this with a furrow of her brow. “Perhaps this is the reason Nicolas didn’t desire revenge the way I did. He wanted to put a quick bullet in your head, steal Luciana, and find somewhere quiet for the three of us to retire.” Her lip curled, as if the idea of retirement was distasteful.
If Nicolas had his way, Cristan would be dead. He wouldn’t have seen the bullet coming.
Eva sighed. “I am leaving. I wish I could say good-bye and apologize to Luciana. But that isn’t possible.”
“You frightened her.”
“I know.” Eva sighed. “I was never meant to be a parent. Your woman, Sarah, her first instinct was to protect Luciana. It should have been mine. But it wasn’t. Perhaps I am merely wired wrong. You deserve each other.” She pointed toward her jacket. “I’m going to get something out of my jacket.”
Cristan nodded, but he kept the gun on her. She would never intentionally hurt Lucia. She loved her daughter in her own way. But Eva was and always would be a killer.
She pulled an envelope and a small box from her pocket. “This is a letter for Luciana. An apology and an e-mail address so you or she can contact me through Maria in case of an emergency.”
“Do you see Maria?”
“Occasionally. She is content on her vineyard. She never wanted more.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
She shook the box. “This is for Sarah. A thank-you gift to her for saving my child. Do not let her open this until tomorrow.”
“Where will you go?” He took the envelope and box.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. Everything is different than I thought.”
“I shouldn’t let you go.” He should call the police, but deep in the recesses of his heart, feelings for Eva still lingered. He was no longer in love with her, but they’d shared defining experiences that had shaped the people they’d become. They also had a child together. That was a bond that could never be broken. “Why should I trust you? You tried to kill me.”
Eva shrugged, a careless gesture that summed up her impulsive nature. “That was when I thought you were the enemy. I should have known you would never have turned on me.”
“So we won’t see you again.”
She backed away from him and turned toward the woods. Glancing over her shoulder, she called, “You have nothing to fear from me, Christopher.” And disappeared into the woods.
Not exactly an answer.
CHAPTER FORTY
“I can’t stay here forever.” Sarah perched on a kitchen island stool and pushed back the plate of eggs. She wasn’t hungry. “I miss my girls. Who knows how long it will take to fi
nd Troy? He knows the woods around here. He can hide for a long time.”
“We’ll see.” Cristan collected her dirty dish and carried it to the sink. The circles under his eyes attested to yet another night without sleep, but something about his attitude was decidedly less tense this morning. “There’s no rush. You can’t even use a knife or dress yourself. The girls can come here. I’m sure they’d love to have a sleepover with Lucia.”
Sarah flexed the fingers of her left hand. She had to keep her arm immobilized in a sling until the stitches came out in seven days. “I’m sure they would, but what about Eva?”
The threat that his murderous wife was lurking was one of the reasons Alex and Em were still staying with Sean. Sarah wouldn’t put her girls in any additional danger.
He tossed a dishcloth over his shoulder. His snug T-shirt outlined his well-defined biceps and chest. Maybe it was the drugs making her woozy, but he looked hot, which was ridiculous because she had problems in her life—problems so huge she shouldn’t be thinking about her boyfriend’s muscles. Both of their exes were trying to kill them.
Boyfriend. She smiled. It seemed like a silly title for someone as masculine as Cristan, but what should she call him? Lover? A blush heated her cheeks. He was definitely that.
“I’m not so worried about that this morning,” he said.
Suspicion poked through her painkillers. “Why?”
“Sarah? Dad?” Lucia walked into the kitchen. Her tousled hair and wrinkled pajamas made her look unbearably young and vulnerable.
“Pancakes?” Cristan suggested.
She Can Kill Page 27
