“Well, my retirement hasn’t exactly been the clean break I was hoping for,” I snapped.
Irma gave me a look of reproach that instantly made me regret raising my voice, the kind of look teachers, librarians, and strict grandmothers strived to master. “The day you left Lucio was one of the best days of my life,” she said softly.
I wasn’t sure what threw me off more: her words or the emotion in her tone. “I thought you and Dad got along,” I said.
“We did. I was good at my job, and he was the type of employer who rewarded that. But do you think it was easy watching you grow up in a place like that? Just because Lucio is gone, don’t think he can’t still hurt you. You’ve been so much happier since you left. Don’t let that world pull you back in.”
“But that’s the point,” I said. “I was happy, but Jean-Baptiste took the reason for that away, and now I might never—”
My voice broke, and I stopped. Squeezing shut my eyes, I put a hand to my head and took a deep breath. Despite my best efforts, the psychological effects of it all were catching up with me. I felt drained, my self-control slipping. God, was I really thinking about making a deal with Joey? It was a desperate act, and even if it worked, what would it get me? There was no point to any of this. I could kill the people responsible for Dave’s coma a hundred times over, and it wouldn’t wake him up. I was useless.
“Go get some sleep, kid,” Eddy said as I slumped forward. “I know you didn’t get any last night.”
I rubbed my face. “I’m fine. I got a few hours when I was drugged, remember?”
“Listen to Eddy. That devious mind of yours has a better chance of solving this”—Irma gestured to the papers on the table—“if you get some rest.”
I sighed. They were probably right, as usual, but before I could admit it, a phone went off. My heart lurched as my gaze snapped to the burner phone, but the screen lay dark and silent as before.
With a rustle, Elisa woke and sat up on the couch. She fumbled for her phone, and when she saw the screen, she looked at us guiltily.
“Rosa?” She put the phone to her ear and stood, turning from us. Her hair was a mess in the back from sleep.
I sighed. Maybe I should have confiscated her phone. Sometimes, I spoiled that girl.
“Rosa, you know I can’t.” Heading to the privacy of her room, Elisa slowed and stopped. “I already told you. It’s too dangerous.”
I stood and strode over to her. It sounded like I needed to give Rosa a talking to. No matter what, Elisa couldn’t give away the safehouse’s location, not to anyone. It was a shame, since Rosa had seemed like the sort of sensible person who could understand that.
“I know.” Elisa gave me a worried look as she continued the conversation. “I wish you could be here with me, too, but you can’t.”
I stopped, waiting. If Elisa could handle this on her own, then I wouldn’t butt in.
“I—” Elisa stopped, listening to a voice I couldn’t hear. Her mouth remained open, reminding me of a murder victim gasping for their last breath. “You can’t mean that. That doesn’t—I know it’s not fair, but—”
Watching her, I could pinpoint the exact moment Elisa’s heart broke. She closed her eyes, swallowed, and when she spoke, her voice shook. “If that’s what you’ve decided, then… Then I guess this is goodbye. But I still can’t tell you where I am.”
Once the flash of maternal rage that someone had hurt my baby girl passed, I realized something was off. Why would Rosa suddenly be so determined to get Elisa’s location that she’d threaten to break it off? Unless…
“Elisa—” I started, but I’d arrived at the realization a second too late. Elisa sucked in a sharp breath, and when she turned to me, her eyes were filled with helpless horror.
“Mom?” she whimpered.
Damn it all. Elisa shouldn’t have to deal with this, not on top of her dad being in the hospital, not after what had happened to Haley. Was a safe, normal life for my daughter really too much to ask?
“Put them on speaker,” I said in a low voice.
Hands shaking, it took Elisa two tries to press the button. Eddy and Irma gathered around us, and Irma put a comforting hand on her back.
“Who am I talking to?” I asked calmly.
“Hello, Val,” Jean-Baptiste greeted through the speaker.
“You son of a bitch,” I hissed. “You kidnapped my daughter’s girlfriend for leverage? Is this who you are now? You’re pathetic.”
“You left me no choice. I don’t want to hurt her, so here’s what we’ll do. You come alone to the Miami Marine Stadium in exactly one hour, and we’ll trade. Her for you.”
“That’s not—”
He hung up, not giving me the chance to even try to negotiate terms.
“Damn,” I whispered.
Elisa’s phone clattered to the floor as her hands flew to her mouth. Her breaths were short and gasping. “Mom—”
I held out my arms, and she rushed into them. She hugged me so tightly it hurt, but I didn’t try to loosen her grip. I just rubbed her back gently. “Shh. It’ll be okay.”
“We have to help her.” Elisa pulled back so she could look at me, her eyes teary. “We can’t leave her there.”
“I know,” I said.
She looked relieved for a second before tensing up again. “But he wants— You’re not going to turn yourself over?”
I would have to at least pretend to if I wanted to get Rosa back. That left me with the same problem as before: there was no way to attack Jean-Baptiste without him seeing it coming.
“Mom?” Elisa’s voice trembled.
“I’ll turn myself over,” I said. “And the moment Rosa’s safe, I’ll break myself free.”
“How?” Irma asked pointedly.
My mind raced, picturing what I knew of the stadium. Ideally, I’d have longer to plan, but with Jean-Baptiste’s one-hour deadline, I needed to get moving now.
“Jean-Baptiste’s powers warn him of threats to his life… and only that.” The idea solidified in my head, and I stood up straighter. “Eddy, Irma, you’ll find a place to hide nearby. The moment Rosa gets to a safe distance, you’ll attack his men. We’ll kill every one of his henchmen if we need to, but we won’t make a single move against him. No threat to his life, no powers kicking in to warn him beforehand.”
It burned me to say it. After what Jean-Baptiste had done, I wanted to give him a slow, agonizing death. I wanted to make him feel the pain and suffocation that enveloped me whenever I thought of having to take Dave off life support. But my priority now was to save Rosa. I refused to let Elisa suffer any more loss.
“That has the potential to get messy,” Irma warned.
“I can’t think of a cleaner way—not in the time we have,” I said. “Grab all the guns we’ve got and put them in the car.”
Irma and Eddy set off down the hall.
“I’m coming, too.”
I winced, then schooled my face before turning to her. “Elisa—”
“You can’t stop me.” Her jaw set in a way that was purely her father. “There’s no room strong enough to lock me in, and you can’t mind-control me without your powers.”
“I wouldn’t mind-control you even if I had them,” I said sharply. “I would expect you to listen when I say it’s not safe and you need to stay here.”
“I know it’s not safe. I know what could happen. But if it helps Rosa, I’ll risk it.”
She stared me down, chest slowly rising and falling. Sometimes, it amazed me how much she’d grown. I remember the day she was born, her tiny face all squished and just a wisp of hair atop her head. It had been selfish of me, bringing her into this world and keeping her when my lifestyle attracted so much danger. I wondered not for the first time if I was a terrible mother.
Because she was right, I couldn’t stop her from coming. I wanted to argue, to spend the next half an hour laying out all the reasons she should stay here and let me handle it. Better yet, I wanted to find a nice
safe bunker somewhere and lock her in it, keeping her safe from all the world. But if I refused to let her come, she’d only do something foolish on her own. Better to give her a task that would keep her relatively safe and controlled.
“You’ll stay in the car,” I said, “When Rosa leaves the stadium, your job is to get her and drive her straight here.”
Elisa’s face scrunched as she considered it. “What about you guys? How will you get back?”
“We’ll take two cars.”
After a moment, she nodded.
A compromise. Good. I gave her hand a comforting squeeze before going to arm myself. As I unbuttoned my blazer to slip on a shoulder holster, worry seeped into my veins like a poison. It could all go wrong. Elisa could see Rosa in danger and rush out to save her, putting herself in the line of fire. One of our shots could go too close to Jean-Baptiste and trigger his powers. We could end up being outgunned, plain and simple. I didn’t have my telepathy. I didn’t have an ace up my sleeve. All I had were my wits, two septuagenarians and a teenager for backup, and a load of bullets.
What if it wasn’t enough?
Chapter 10
The Miami Marine Stadium was a glorious bastion of urban decay. Its heyday had been over fifty years ago, back when speedboat shows were apparently the hot new thing. (There’s no accounting for taste.) Facing the water, the giant concrete structure must have been quite the tourist attraction back in the day. I supposed it still was, but it only attracted urban explorers and the morbidly curious. To keep out those few, a chain-link fence and security guard had been put into place. They were either a recent addition or a not very effective one, because graffiti marring the crumbling concrete was visible even from a distance.
I drove past it in a crappy gray minivan with tinted windows, and though normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in such a vehicle, I hoped to throw off anyone keeping watch. (I liked to think I had a classier reputation.) The street in front of the stadium was open and empty, the only cover provided by rows of palm trees. I continued to drive at exactly the speed limit, turning the corner and heading out of sight.
“You got it?” I asked.
In the passenger seat beside me, Elisa nodded.
The rendezvous wasn’t for another three minutes and six more turns, and by the time I pulled into a restaurant parking lot, I was sure we hadn’t been followed.
Eddy and Irma got out of the parked car beside us and slipped into the back of the van. I turned to Elisa. Her eyes closed, she took slow, shaky breaths.
“What have we got?” I asked.
She opened her eyes and swallowed. “Mr. Dupree and nine other men. They’ve got more guns than Aunt Bianca has tattoos, but…”
“But?” I prompted.
Her brow furrowed. “They’re not supposed to shoot at you. Mr. Dupree told them he needs you alive.”
I leaned back against the cheap resin seat. “Well, that’s not ominous at all.”
The last time someone had wanted me alive, it had been Dr. Sweet, and he’d hooked me up to one of his heinous machines and used me like a puppet to mind-control an entire building.
I suddenly felt a cold ball of slime in my stomach. Could Dr. Sweet be involved in this somehow? He’d broken out of prison months ago, and there’d been no sign of him since. Not that I’d been sitting on my ass waiting for him to attack my family again. I’d hired a private detective to try and track him down, though she hadn’t—
She’d called me when I was talking to Lagarde, and I’d completely forgotten to call her back. What if she had a lead? What if Dr. Sweet was behind this somehow? Jean-Baptiste wasn’t the type to work with a psychopath like that, but I’d thought he wasn’t the type to attack me, either, so what did I know? Or maybe he was being controlled somehow.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Moreen. It rang once, twice, and I clenched my jaw as the next three rings went unanswered before going to voicemail. I hung up without leaving one.
“What is it?” Elisa asked.
“Nothing,” I lied. “Just a hunch that didn’t pay off.”
I wanted to wait until I could get in touch with Moreen just in case she had relevant intel, but Rosa didn’t have that kind of time.
I brought up a map of the stadium and surrounding area on my tablet and held it out to Elisa. “Where did you sense them all?”
She pointed out her best estimates of the men’s locations to Eddy and Irma. Having only been in their minds for less than a minute, she had trouble matching the map to what she’d seen through their mind’s eye, but it was better than nothing. Jean-Baptiste knew my powers were suppressed, but he wouldn’t be expecting Elisa—or so I hoped. We sorely needed an advantage, and her telepathy was the only one we had.
“Any sign of Ember?” I asked, thinking back to Jean-Baptiste’s stylish and superpowered bodyguard.
“No,” Elisa said. “Or at least, I didn’t sense anyone like her. She could be out of range.”
She had to be around somewhere; the woman followed Jean-Baptiste like a shadow. She’d probably show up at the worst moment possible and throw something heavy at me.
“Okay.” I hesitated. “How’s Rosa?”
Elisa squeezed shut her eyes again. “Really scared.”
“She’ll be okay.” I put my hands on hers, looking her in the eyes once she opened them. “We’ll get her back, and this will all be just a bad memory.”
We had a lot of bad memories, my family. And just when it seemed like we were putting the worst behind us, more came to take their place. I flashed to finding Dave’s body washed up on the dark shore, no breath in his lungs. Would that be a terror I could confide in him later, whispered when the two of us were alone in bed? Or would it be one of the last memories I ever had of him?
I glanced at the clock, finding more minutes had passed than I’d have liked. “You know what to do,” I told Eddy and Irma.
They both nodded and returned to their own car. Then Elisa and I got out and switched seats, and she drove us back to the stadium. It took no more than two minutes, but the silent ride seemed much longer, the humming of the engine and noises of the sunny street fraught with menace. Elisa stopped at the corner just out of sight of the stadium, and I gazed at her.
“Stay in the car, signal Rosa when she comes out, and go straight back to the safehouse,” I said.
“I know, Mom.” She couldn’t keep the edge from her voice, having heard the same thing at least five times in the last hour.
“I mean it.” I gripped her shoulder. “Promise me that no matter what, you won’t go charging into that stadium.”
Sensing my severity, she met my gaze. “I promise.”
With my telepathy out, I could only study her expression for signs she meant what she said. Elisa had run straight toward danger in the past; she was a lot like her father in that way. If she sensed Rosa was in trouble and tried to help… Why had I let her convince me to allow her to do this? I should have slipped her a sedative and left her back at the safehouse. She would have never forgiven me, but at least she’d be safe.
No, she could do this. She was as brave and strong as Dave was, and unlike myself at that age, she was smart. She wouldn’t screw up.
I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Be careful.”
She swallowed. “You, too.”
Unable to linger any longer, I got out of the car and strode down the empty street. My short wedge heels thumped against the sidewalk, the red ankle-length boots tightly laced so I could run in them. Black jeans, a white shirt, and a crimson blazer to hide the pistols in my shoulder holster made up the rest of my outfit, the frame of my sunglasses a matching red. I marched toward the stadium with a confident air that was pure show.
I walked past the orange traffic cones that prevented people from driving up to the rotting structure. The sun shone down merrily on the water behind it, and white yachts glided past, their occupants not having a care in the world. My stomach flipped at the sight, and I wondered if I�
�d ever be able to look at a boat without remembering last night. I approached the chain-link fence, and the security guard rose from his seat. This would usually be the point when I mind-controlled him into letting me inside, but thanks to Jean-Baptiste, that wasn’t an option. I’d have to try bribery, and failing that, put a gun to his head.
But the guard was either on Jean-Baptiste’s payroll or just wasn’t stupid enough to get in the Prophet King’s way, because he unlocked the gate and stepped aside to let me in.
I brushed past him, paying only enough attention to ensure he wouldn’t attack me once my back was turned. A small jungle of trees around the path served as a reminder of a time when this must have been a well-landscaped, welcoming entrance, their limbs waving in the breeze coming from off the water. Except for the sound of waves and distant boat motors, it was quiet, which set me on edge.
I ascended grimy steps, smelling dirt, rot, and something fouler. In the shadow of the stadium’s massive concrete overhang, I took off my sunglasses, slipping them into my purse where I felt the comforting metal of another pistol. Emerging from the stairs into the stadium proper, I got my first glimpse of the incredible view.
It was a gorgeous sight. The building’s decay didn’t make the water any less blue or the sky less clear. A gust of wind brought the fresh scent of saltwater to carry away the stench of filth. Rows of seats spread out before me at a downward angle, their faded, weatherworn blue covered in graffiti of all kinds. Spray-painted words and images covered the steps, the pillars, and even parts of the ceiling, their neon colors a bright contrast to the ugly brown concrete.
In front of me, at the very bottom of the stairs, Jean-Baptiste stood with Rosa. His white suit was immaculate even amid so much dirt, and instead of Ember, two bodyguards in suits and ties stood to either side of him. One had Rosa by the arm, her wrists bound in front of her with a zip tie. She wore a skirt and a halter top, but her feet were bare. They must have grabbed her from home, or they’d taken her shoes, which was a pretty standard tactic to make it harder for hostages to run away. I thought of the stadium’s filthy floor and wanted to punch them. Rosa would be lucky not to step on broken glass or a needle if she hadn’t already.
The White Knight & Black Valentine Series (Book 4): Kill Them All Page 8
