“Montano…”
“Shh.” I kissed the back of her hand a second time before letting go.
“Hey, look! It’s open!” she exclaimed. While the rest of the amusement park looked like it had been closed for years, the ice cream stand had a line out front.
I parked the SUV, and before I could come around to open her door, Blanca was almost to the back of the queue.
“Sorry,” she said when I joined her, “I got nervous when I saw that.” She pointed to where a school bus pulled up. As soon as the door opened, thirty or more kids raced over and got in line behind us.
“Good call, sis.”
“I’m so sad the carousel is boarded up,” Blanca said after we got our ice cream and walked what I assumed was once a bustling midway. “It was so beautiful.”
“Come with me.” I pulled her over to the side of the building where I’d noticed a window. “Hold this,” I said, handing her my cone.
“What are you—”
I circled her waist and lifted her into the air. “Can you see it?”
“Oh, yes. And it’s more spectacular than I remembered.”
I looked up, more to get another glimpse of her smile than anything else, but caught her taking a lick of my cone. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing!” I squeezed her waist.
Blanca giggled. “It was going to drip.”
“Sure, it was.” As I slid the back of her body down the front of mine, I leaned over her shoulder and took a big bite of her ice cream.
“Hey!” she shouted, giggling even more.
“Turn around is fair play, sis.”
When I set her on her feet, the smile left her face.
“I’m sorry. It’s just a habit. I won’t do it anymore.”
“That isn’t it.” When I let go completely, she walked toward the lake.
“What is it, then?”
She walked out on a dock and sat down, hanging her legs over the side. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Come on, spill.”
Blanca shook her head. “It’ll make me sound like the most awful person.”
“Since I already know you’re not, go ahead.” I had to bite my tongue to stop from telling her that her sister was the awful one.
“Is this what it was like? You know, between you and Sofia?”
I sat beside her and leaned back on my hands. “Um, yeah, we had fun…”
“But?”
“It wasn’t like this.”
“What do you mean?”
I tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “It wasn’t like this,” I repeated, grappling to find the right words without divulging too much about her twin.
“It was better, right?” She squeezed her eyes closed. “Why am I asking questions I don’t want answers to?”
“It wasn’t ever this good.”
“The fact that what you just said makes me happy means I’m a worse person.”
I shook my head. “Not even a little.”
She leaned on her hands like I was. “The last thing I said to my sister was that I hated her.”
Ironic that the last words I’d said were that I loved her. “Bad fight?” I sure had experienced enough of those with my own siblings.
“It was more than that. I mean, I’m sure she was very different by the time you met her, but the Sofia I grew up with wasn’t a very nice person.”
“Is that why you left?”
“They say parents don’t have favorites, but in our family, they did. I was always a mama’s girl, while in my dad’s eyes, my twin could do no wrong. Once my mom died, I didn’t feel like I belonged anymore.”
“So you ran away and never came back?”
“Something like that.”
“What happened back at the cab…camp?”
“I can’t explain it. It was as though a chill descended on me, and I knew I had to get out of there.”
“What about now?”
“I’m good.” She shuddered. “I know we have to go back, but I’m not in any hurry.”
“Neither am I.”
“Ouch!” she shrieked, pulling her feet out of the water. “Those little bastards bit my toes.”
I checked out her perfectly pedicured toes with the bright-orange nail polish and envied the fish who’d nibbled on them. “Let me see if they broke the skin,” I said, pulling her legs onto my lap when she turned sideways. When I didn’t see any sign of blood, I massaged her soles.
“Oh my God, that feels amazing.” She lay back on the dock and rested her arm over her eyes. I moved from her feet to her ankles and then up her calves, kneading her flesh as I went. “You are really good at that,” she moaned with a breathy sexiness to her voice that sent a current of desire straight to my groin.
Fortunately, the highest I could go was where her pant legs were rolled up to her knees. I gave her leg a squeeze before letting go.
“Thanks,” she said, sitting up, but not putting her feet back in the water. “I can’t believe how warm it is, given it’s the beginning of December.”
“Ranger mentioned there’s a snowstorm on its way.”
Blanca’s eyes opened wide. “I should probably think about getting some provisions, then. Unless…”
I looked at her with a raised brow. “Are you thinking about leaving?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “There’s something I need to find first, and I haven’t even started looking. Once I’ve done that, my plan is to fix it up and put the camp on the market.”
“What are you looking for?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know exactly.”
“Maybe I could help you. You said you didn’t know exactly. What do you know?”
“Only that my sister left something at the camp for me and it’s imperative I find it. That’s all my father said.”
“Makes it tough with nothing else to go on. Do you have any guesses about what it might be?”
“She said it might be jewelry. Or maybe something of their mom’s,” I told Ranger later after Blanca and I got back to the camps after stopping at the market and I’d helped put her groceries away.
“What do you think it is?” he asked.
“Whatever Hatchet was hired to get his hands on.”
“My thoughts too. So, what’s your plan?”
“How bad is this storm predicted to be?”
“They’re saying to expect at least a foot. Maybe as much as three.”
11
Onyx
The Night Before Thanksgiving
One Year Ago
Miami
We’d been on standby for seventy-two hours, waiting for the “go” to transport two of K19’s contracted operatives to Columbia for an undercover assignment. Landry “Tackle” Sorenson would be placed inside the US Embassy in Bogotá while Knox “Halo” Clarkson would infiltrate one of the South American country’s drug cartels.
I wasn’t sure how the hell Halo had been assigned such a high-risk mission, given one year ago this week, he and Tackle were undercover in Somalia when they were kidnapped by pirates. I’d been part of the team who went in and rescued them. I’d done my damnedest to get them home to be with their families in time for the holiday, but I just couldn’t make it happen.
It was shit luck that the timing of this particular mission coincided with the Thanksgiving holiday once again.
Corazón and I hadn’t made any plans to be with her family or mine this year, given the “go” could come at any moment. While I’d met her father before, she’d never met my mother or any of my siblings, a fact she wasn’t happy about.
“I can’t remember the last time I was with them for Thanksgiving. It isn’t a big deal in our family,” I’d told her. It wasn’t the truth. Not by a long shot. But given my family lived on the West Coast and we were on the opposite side of the country with strict orders to be at the ready, it was impossible for us to leave. That hadn’t seemed to either matter or appease her.
We spent a quiet night—o
nly because she wasn’t speaking to me—in what she referred to as a “shitty” hotel room; it seemed fine to me. With Corazón, it was always about money, something that was beginning to grate on me.
When the call came in at zero eight hundred the next morning, saying Tackle and Halo were en route, I was in the shower.
“Trap Flannery is waiting for us at the airfield. We need to head out,” Corazón added after informing me the order to deploy had come directly from Monk.
Still half asleep, I wondered when Trap had been brought in on the op, but it didn’t matter. He was still with the CIA, outranked me, and this was their mission. K19 had only been given the assignment to carry it out.
I thought briefly about contacting Monk Perrin, K19’s lead for the mission, or Money McTiernan, who was Monk’s primary agency contact. However, today was Thanksgiving. It made sense Money would’ve tapped someone like Trap as a secondary point person.
I also wondered if he planned to captain the flight over me. Again, as tired and fed up with Corazón’s behavior as I was, I really didn’t give a shit.
When we arrived at the airfield, Corazón went to talk to Trap first while I fetched our coffee.
“Hey, man, happy Thanksgiving,” I said, walking up and shaking his hand.
“Same to you, Onyx. Sucks not being top guy on the totem pole on a holiday, doesn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Never big on them anyway.” As soon as I’d said the words, I felt bad. While I wasn’t, Trap was a family man. From what I remembered, he had at least two kids he was forced to be away from whenever a mission was given a go.
“You flyin’ to Bogotá with us this afternoon?”
“Thankfully, no. My job is just to fill in as mission planner on the CIA side to make sure Tackle’s and Halo’s assignments and identities are firmly in place.”
“Copy that.”
Corazón and I worked out flight plans, manifests, and instrumentation checks on the aircraft. We hadn’t been done long when Trap informed us Tackle and Halo had arrived.
“I’ll file the reports with the airfield and copy K19, unless there’s something else you want me to do,” said Corazón.
If Trap hadn’t been within earshot, I would’ve told her all I really wanted was for her to leave her pissy-ass attitude here in Miami so we could get this mission over with. That, though, might lead to conversations about what would happen once we returned.
I hadn’t told her this, but I’d requested a private meeting with the managing partner of K19. All hell would break loose if Corazón got wind of it, especially if she found out the reason for my request was to ask for a reassignment and a different copilot.
It was impossible to know with Corazón, but maybe her quick temper had as much to do with her being sick of spending so much time with me as I was with her.
We’d been in the air two hours when we ran into a full-blown, out-of-the-blue weather system just over Aruba—not uncommon for the area. “What the fuck?” I spat when I tried to gauge our location in relation to the storm and realized both the communication and radar systems were down. “Check the circuits,” I told her, trying to gain better control of the aircraft.
“Venezuela’s grid is out,” said Corazón, looking at something on her phone.
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s whose airspace we’re in. There’s a total blackout.”
“Connect with Columbia.”
Corazón was still studying her phone.
“Did you hear me? Fucking connect with Columbia. I need to know where to divert.”
She glared at me and then manually entered coordinates into the system that rerouted us over Columbia’s Macuira National Park.
“Sorry about all that turbulence, guys,” I hollered back to Tackle and Halo when we were out of whatever weather system had been tossing and turning our aircraft.
“Maybe you oughta give the stick to Corazón, dude,” Tackle hollered back.
“You hear that?” I said, laughing. “You ready to take my stick?”
When I turned to face her, the last thing I expected to see was the woman I’d referred to as my heart for the last several months, pointing a gun at me.
When she cocked it and took aim, I knew that within seconds, I’d be dead. There was only one thing that raced through my mind. “I love you, Corazón,” I said to her. She pulled the fucking trigger anyway.
12
Blanca
“Oh no!” I groaned when the electricity suddenly cut out. I peered out the window and saw that Ranger’s place was still lit up. Why would my electricity go out and not his?
It was pitch-black since the moon was shrouded by clouds and it couldn’t be more than ten degrees outside, so there was no way I was going to try to make my way outside and to the basement to see if a circuit blew.
On the other hand, it would quickly become too cold to stay in the camp unless the power came back on in the next few minutes.
I jumped and put my hand on my heart when I heard someone pounding on the front door. “Blanca, are you in there?” A flashlight shone in the window.
“Coming,” I shouted at Montano, feeling my way from the kitchen to the entryway. “The power’s out,” I said, stating the obvious and letting him in.
“Where’s your breaker?” he asked.
“In the cellar.”
“We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to dig our way through the snow to get to it. Why don’t you get whatever you need to stay next door tonight?”
“Are you sure I won’t be an imposition?”
“Where else you gonna go, sis?”
“Right. Um, thanks.”
Montano led the way to the bedroom off the kitchen, where I tossed a few things into a bag. He carried it for me while I put on a jacket and the only pair of boots I’d brought, which wouldn’t do much good in the snow since they were ankle height. “I’ll grab some stuff from the bathroom on the way out since it’s by the front door.”
As soon as we stepped out onto the porch, Montano dropped my bag and swept me into his arms.
“What are you doing?”
“Snow’s too deep. I’ll come back for your stuff.”
“I can walk,” I protested, even though I knew he was right. My boots were useless.
He shook his head and trudged the distance between the two camps. Once next door, he set me down and returned for my stuff.
“Come on in,” said Ranger, holding the door open for me.
“Sorry about this.”
“No need to apologize. Your place was never winterized. We have two backup generators over here.”
“Your power went out too?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I shook my head, wondering what in the world I thought I was doing. I should leave as soon as the snow cleared and catch the next plane back to Italy. I could hire someone to sell the camp. While I was curious about whatever I was supposed to find, I didn’t share my father’s opinion that doing so was “imperative.”
“How about a hot toddy?”
“I’ll take one,” said Montano, coming inside with my bag. “Let me get your coat.”
“Thanks, and yes, please,” I said, looking from him to Ranger.
“Oh, I should tell you that Onyx’s version of the drink is hot chocolate with butterscotch. Mine is with peppermint schnapps.”
“That sounds a lot better than hot Irish whiskey. I’ll take butterscotch please.”
“See, son? I told you butterscotch is the ticket. Everybody likes it better than peppermint.”
“Everybody but me,” muttered Ranger, walking away.
“Come sit by the fire with me,” said Montano, taking my hand.
“This place is even nicer than I remember.”
“Cozy, right?” he said, patting the sofa when I stopped to look at a photo on the mantel. “Don’t tell me. That’s Jimmy?”
I set the frame back where it had been and sat beside him.
“You should
see my brother now,” said Ranger, handing me the adult hot chocolate.
“Yeah? Got a dad bod?” asked Montano.
“Not exactly.”
Ranger pulled out his phone, scrolled through his photos, and held it out for us to see. “That was taken this summer.”
“Wow,” I mumbled, marveling at how Jimmy Messick looked even better now than he did when we were teenagers.
“But he’s married, right?” Montano chimed in.
Ranger shook his head and laughed. “He might be, but I’m not.”
The man seated beside me made a growly noise in his throat.
“When did people start calling you Ranger?” I asked.
He sat in one of the chairs that flanked the sofa. “My first year of college.”
“Where did you go?”
“I ended up at Syracuse, but I started out at the Ranger School in Wanakena.”
“What made you change to Syracuse?”
He laughed. “Honestly, I was bored out of my mind.”
“What did you study instead?”
I caught a look that passed between him and Montano, who nodded.
“I graduated with a degree from ’Cuse’s Institute for Security Policy and Law Program. My emphasis was on Middle Eastern studies.” He cleared his throat. “Enough about me. I was trying to remember the last time you were at the lake. I wasn’t here much during high school since I was always in sports.”
“Thirteen years, at least. Maybe even fourteen.”
“You’re my age, right? Two years younger than Jimmy?”
“That’s right.”
“When’s the last time you checked in with the office?” Montano asked Ranger.
Ranger looked at Montano wide-eyed and up at the clock on the mantle. “It’s nine o’clock.”
“On the West Coast, it’s only six.”
I put my hand on Montano’s arm.
Onyx (K19 Security Solutions Book 10) Page 6