by Ophelia Bell
Callie’s intake of breath makes me glance at her again, and I deflate a little at the look of horror on her face. I shake my head, “I didn’t kill them, and the senator knows it.”
Longo snorts and shakes her head. “No, but now there are members of two cartels tailing you who could start shooting at any moment. Sure, they’re more likely to shoot at each other, but innocent people will get caught in the crossfire.”
I level a pointed stare back at her. “Then I suppose you’d better get a move on with your part of the bargain, Senator. I’ll get out of Denver the second I have something worthwhile to take back to Mexico.”
The senator’s jaw clenches as we stare at each other. In a weary voice, Callie says, “Mom, if that’s all, we really need to get going to the hospital to see Wyatt and Nina.”
At the mention of them, Longo frowns, then turns back to her daughter. “I shouldn’t be surprised Nina’s tangled up in this too, should I? The way she fawned over your brother . . .” She sighs and picks up her mug, heading to the coffeemaker for a refill. “I need to tell you something, sweetheart. Something I probably should have told you a long time ago, but didn’t have the heart to get your hopes up.”
I take the opportunity to move to Callie, who offers me her half-full coffee mug, which I gratefully accept and take a long swallow from.
Sorry, she mouths up at me and I shake my head, then bend to place a kiss against her temple. Longo turns back toward us at that moment, her eyes narrowing at my proximity to her daughter. I slip my arm around Callie’s waist and pull her close. She seems to mold herself against me and a mild buzz creeps through my limbs at the reminder of how well we fit.
Longo looks like she’s about to make a comment about our closeness when Callie snaps, “What is it, Mom? Tell me now or get the hell out.”
“This is my apartment, I’ll remind you . . .”
“Mom!”
Longo sighs and shakes her head, a pained look crossing her face. Then she glances at me, brows furrowing.
“I can go, if this is a private matter,” I offer.
“No. Stay,” Longo says. “You actually have the clearance, unlike my daughter, so this would’ve made it to you eventually.” She settles on a barstool with her steaming mug clutched in both hands and takes a deep breath. “Operation Broken Heart has a secondary purpose besides taking out Amador and dismantling his organization. Only a few people know about it, though.”
“No offense, ma’am, but I’m hoping to be well away from the whole operation by the time you guys get to that point.”
She nods. “I’m aware of that, but your understanding of the intel we’ve gathered so far has been invaluable. I’m hoping you’ll stay on as an analyst, at least until it’s finished. But there’s particular intel we’re hoping to find in the batch Zavala has yet to deliver. You said you’ve seen it already, so you can vouch for its existence. How much of it do you remember?”
“I didn’t get a close enough look to the text files to read them, but the photos Zavala showed me painted a pretty clear picture of what he knows. I saw enough to believe he wasn’t lying about the rest.”
“Did any faces in particular stand out to you in the photos? Any locales?”
I stare down into the empty mug, thinking. Callie takes it from my hand and slips away to pour us both fresh cups while I work through my memory of the digital images I saw. Some were scanned from prints, some stills from video surveillance, others were telephoto shots.
“Mostly what you probably already guess: Amador and Flores seem to be the primary subjects, and people associated with them, which includes my family and Flores’ daughters.”
“One of whom is rather close to you, correct?” Longo interjects.
I give a sardonic laugh. “All of them are, but I think you mean Elle, my sister . . . half-sister.” I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Mom and Flores used to have a thing.
“How close are the others?”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Are you telling me you don’t already know?”
She shakes her head. “Part of our agreement with Flores included giving him more privacy to do his business as long as he keeps his part of the bargain. So no, we haven’t been aware of much connected with him for about the past five years. No more than he willingly shares.”
I debate whether to tell her everything but decide she’ll find out anyway. “Both my oldest and youngest brothers are pretty close to Flores’ two other daughters, Celeste and Toni. Celeste and Maddox were high-school sweethearts, you could say. He pretty much lives with her at the Flores estate now. Toni is my brother Sam’s boss at her tattoo shop in San Diego.”
“Interesting, and potentially valuable. We need to consider the possibility that all three are potential targets, especially if their faces showed up in the files Zavala has. What about the locations?”
Her suggestion that Elle might be a target has me distracted, but I rally and focus again, shaking my head. “The locations I couldn’t say. I’ve never seen Amador’s compound, so I’d only be guessing whether some of the shots were taken there. There were definitely some places I didn’t recognize. Some pretty unsavory stuff, though no worse than I saw working for Zavala.”
It occurs to me that we started this conversation with her about to reveal something, yet here I am being interrogated. I decide to go along with it out of curiosity, but Callie is somewhat less patient for her to get to the point.
“Mom! What do you need to tell us? Will you just come out with it already?”
Longo walks over to the fireplace and retrieves one of the photos from the mantel. She returns and holds it out to me. “Did you see this man in any of the photos?”
She points at the face of a twenty-something man with blond hair and eyes like Callie’s. He and Callie are standing arm-in-arm in front of a sparkling Christmas tree, wearing two of the ugliest holiday sweaters I’ve ever seen. My gaze only lingers on him for a second before sliding to her. She’s younger here, perhaps in her early twenties, and she looks so happy.
Callie’s intake of breath makes me turn to her, frowning. She reaches out a hand and snatches the framed photo from her mother. “That’s Chris. Why would he be part of this?”
I look at the man in the photo again, studying his face and flipping through the memories of the photos Zavala showed me. I barely had a few minutes with them, but typically that’s all I need for visuals to be fixed permanently in my mind. My memory for words isn’t quite as quick to embed—I usually have to read a thing before I can memorize it, I can’t just glance at a page filled with words—but it only takes one pass. It isn’t a talent I advertise, but it comes in handy more often than not.
“I remember him,” I say, nodding cautiously and looking back at Longo. “But what I saw wasn’t pretty.”
“Tell me what you saw.” Her voice hits a lower register and I notice she’s white-knuckling her coffee mug again.
“Mom . . .?” Callie begins in a tremulous voice, but Longo cuts her off with a sharp shake of her head, then nods at me.
I turn to look at Callie, whose face has gone ashen, then back at her mother. There’s no fucking way I’m getting out of this without telling them what I know, which admittedly isn’t much.
“I saw him in video surveillance stills, so the quality was for shit. He was hogtied and gagged . . .”
I trail off, remembering some of the marks on his half-naked body and knowing exactly where they’d come from, because I’d endured the same kind of torture myself. I spare a moment wondering whether Gustavo was working for Amador back then. Still, even if he wasn’t, he had to have learned that skill somewhere.
“And it was this man? My son, Chris?”
“Yes.”
“Was there a date?”
“June 30th, 2017. Four and a half years ago.”
All the air seems to leave the senator’s lungs and she closes her eyes. Beside me Callie wavers, and I slip an arm around her again to s
teady her.
“It was his birthday,” Callie whispers. “He’d just turned thirty-three.”
29
Callie
“Where is this picture? I want to see it,” I demand, looking between them both. Mom only frowns and shakes her head.
“It’s only up here for the moment,” Mason says, tapping his temple. “The sample intel Zavala sent me away with only included teasers about Amador’s operation. He let me skim through some of the rest, since he knew I’d remember enough of it to vouch for its existence.”
I stare up at him, overwhelmed and in awe and desperate for any reassurance he can give, any more proof. “You really do have a photographic memory, don’t you? You weren’t just joking the other night. What else do you remember?”
His lips tighten in a line and he shakes his head. “My memory isn’t proof of life. All it proves is that your brother was alive four and a half years ago.”
“Which was also a year and a half after we presumed Chris was killed in Colombia,” Mom says.
I whip my head around and glare at her. “You said he was dead! We had a fucking funeral, Mom! We scattered his ashes! Did you know all this time that there was a chance he didn’t die?”
She looks as anguished as I feel, but I have zero sympathy at the moment. She lied to us all this time.
“Callie, my hands were tied. I didn’t want to give anyone false hope. I wanted you and your father to have closure . . .”
“Does Dad know?” I blurt.
She heaves a long sigh and rubs her temples, then drops her hands in defeat, shaking her head. She’s always looked good for her age, but at the moment, her crow’s feet are etched deep, betraying every one of her sixty-three years.
“No one knows except Captain Watts, the commander of the black ops team we’re assembling to infiltrate Amador’s compound. Which we can’t do until we have all the intel we need to carry out a successful mission. I can’t make it look like my only agenda is bringing him home, if he’s still alive. The priority still has to be taking Amador out.”
“Amador isn’t stupid,” Mason says, redirecting our attention to him. “You were DEA Administrator when Chris was taken, so if Amador knew, he’d have kept him alive on the off chance he could use him somehow. You’re even higher profile now, which means he’s more valuable. Be prepared to have him used as leverage at some point.”
His voice turns hard as granite, and when I glance at him, his jaw is clenched, gray eyes blazing with anger as he and Mom share a long look. It hits me that he knows what this means all too well already. He knows what it feels like to have a child in the clutches of a monster.
And Mom . . . Oh, God, Mom . . .
I release Mason’s hand and rush to her, forgetting the sting of her lies altogether in the face of what she’s had to endure all these years.
“Mom, I’m so sorry.” I fling my arms around her. “I didn’t know. If I had . . .” Emotion clogs my throat and hot tears well in my eyes as we hold each other.
She sniffles lightly and brushes a tentative touch over my hair, reminding me of how tender she could be when I was young. Then she pulls back to look me in the eyes, her brow knit with worry. “You cannot tell your father, do you understand? It would do no good, and I just can’t deal with the accusations he’d fling at me if he knew I kept this from him.”
I shake my head. “I won’t.” But then I frown. “Nina . . .”
“Callie, no. Nina can’t know either.”
“I can’t lie to my best friend. She’s already involved in this. Wyatt should know too, shouldn’t he?” I look at Mason, mentally begging for an answer. He winces, and I realize how complicated a conversation that would be, especially after seeing how close our two friends have become over only a couple days.
I shake my head and sigh. “No, you’re right. Maybe it’s better if she doesn’t know yet.”
“We can revisit telling her after we get the rest of the intel. Adrian too,” Mom says, squeezing my arms and releasing me to turn back to Mason. “And on that note, I believe we all have other places to be. I believe you can be confident I’ll do everything in my power to get the approval we need for this exchange with Zavala. You’ll hear from me soon.” She reaches both hands out to him and takes his in hers, squeezing, then nodding. “And whatever you do, please don’t let Callie get any more tangled up in this than she already is. I like you, Mason. Don’t jeopardize my opinion of you.”
“I’ll do my best, ma’am,” he says. Then, to my astonishment, she pulls him into a hug and kisses him on the cheek before turning back to me and embracing me once again. I stare over her shoulder at him, amused by the stunned look in his eyes and almost as stunned myself.
After she gathers her things and departs, I say, “Well, that was about the closest thing to her blessing that she’s ever given one of my relationships. Please tell me there aren’t pigs flying through the sky outside right now.”
He emits a gruff laugh. “I like her. She doesn’t tolerate bullshit.” He closes the distance between us and slips his arm around me, nuzzling into my hair and inhaling. “Also . . . you just said relationship.”
“Don’t let it go to your head, mister,” I warn, though I really do like the sound of it. It’s far too easy to sink against him and let the euphoria of his warm strength take over. I could get used to this, but letting my mind go down that road so soon is only going to get me wound up in knots, because I know I can’t have that with him yet. I still let myself savor it for a few moments, letting his gentle kisses against my jaw and neck banish the remaining tension tangled up in my limbs.
With a sigh, I finally extract myself and give him a peck on the lips. “I need to go shower so we can go. Can you find us a place to eat close to the hospital?”
When we arrive at the hospital and head to Wyatt’s floor, I step off the elevator and stop cold. Mason strides ahead a few more feet before glancing back at me with a frown. “What’s wrong?”
“How can I face her, knowing what I know? I’ve never kept secrets from Nina before.”
He takes a deep breath and turns to face me fully, closing the distance so we’re eye-to-eye. “Just don’t bring it up. I can’t imagine your brother’s significance to her is a welcome topic if Wyatt’s in the room, assuming she’s told him already. Chances are, Booth will be read in once he’s back at work, and you can leave it up to him to tell her then, if he wants to.”
I wince. “That’s even worse! If she finds out I knew and didn’t tell her, she’ll never forgive me!”
He sighs and gives a helpless shrug. “What do you want me to tell you? Wyatt’s my friend. He deserves to be happy. They both do, right? Telling them the truth isn’t going to help. It’s just going to get them wound up with false hope that may never pay off. If we had more solid proof, it might be different, but we don’t. Saying something is only going to cause heartache.”
I clench my eyes shut and groan because he’s right, but that doesn’t make it easier to suppress the urge to tell Nina what we learned.
Mason switches the bag of deli sandwiches and chips we picked up to his other hand and takes mine in his free one, squeezing and tugging me along. “Focus on the positive. You and I were in the same room as your mother and the world didn’t end.”
I snort and fall into step beside him, deciding that the whole scenario from this afternoon does make a pretty entertaining distraction from what’s really going through my head. By the time we get to Wyatt’s room, I’ve managed to let it go and slip easily into the Mom story, which has Nina enraptured and in teary laughter by the time I finish the tale.
“Oh my god, you guys! She was just sitting there the whole time when you were going at it and didn’t say a thing? That’s such a Kat thing to do. My mom would’ve shit a brick.” Nina grins at us and pops another chip into her mouth, laughing as she chews.
Wyatt is alert and laughing too, but when he looks at Mason he sobers, and I turn to see why. Mason is leaning against the
bathroom door, expression pinched, his attention fixed in the distance beyond the windows. He looks lost in thought, and evidently whatever’s on his mind is nothing good.
I get up and go to him, slipping close and resting my hands on his shoulders. He redirects his attention to me, and his attempt at a smile is endearing, but I don’t believe it for a second.
“Were you thinking about your mom?” I ask.
He closes his eyes and lets out a breath as he nods. “How’d you guess?”
“You’re not as complicated as you think.”
His throat bobs with a swallow and he glances at our friends, then takes my hand and pulls me into the corridor.
“I have no idea how long it’s going to take before I can get back to LA. It’s not easy for my brother to call me without giving away my status. And hell, for all I know, Amador’s men are watching him. Will you keep me updated on her situation?”
“Of course. I’ll call you as often as you want. You might even get tired of hearing from me.”
He chuckles. “Not a fucking chance.” His gaze turns tender and he lifts a hand to brush his fingers over my hair, then pulls me close and presses a kiss to my forehead.
The simple gesture is so utterly benign it shouldn’t affect me the way it does, but I can’t help the sudden, sharp ache that takes residence in my chest. We only have tonight before I have to get on a plane back to my regular life, yet I have a desperate knot forming inside me over the fact that we haven’t had nearly enough time together.
I close my eyes and lean into him, and I’m about to tilt my head up for a kiss when someone calls my name.
“Callie? Is that you? What are you doing at the hospital? Who the hell is that?”
Mason’s head jerks up as I turn toward the voice, a sick feeling of dread replacing the earlier complicated tangle of euphoria and sadness.
“Barnaby? Um, hi.” I barely get his name out before my ex closes the distance and makes the mistake of shoving himself between Mason and me.