“Not a chance,” he told me.
Thirty seconds after I finished putting dinner into the oven and invited Runa into my office to brief her, Shadow started sniffing my office floor and running around in circles. Runa and I had to grab her and sprint outside.
Grass was in short supply and the only tree, the massive oak across the road, was protected by a stone wall four feet high. I would have to drop her over it and then somehow scoop her out. I imagined loading Shadow into a bucket and lowering her to the roots of the oak with a rope. In my little fantasy Shadow wore a yellow mining helmet with a round light.
Clearly, I’d been staring at the computer for too long.
We took Shadow to the area behind the motor pool instead. Grandma Frida had set up a picnic table to the right, and we landed there, deposited the little dog on the pavement, and chorused, “Go potty!” in encouraging voices.
Shadow looked at us and wagged her little black tail.
“Whatever is cooking in the kitchen smells amazing. What are we having?” Runa asked.
“Lemon roasted chicken with rosemary baked potatoes, chive butter, kale and Brussels sprout salad with tahini maple dressing, and an apple pithivier.”
Runa gave me a long look.
“I cook when I’m stressed out. It sounds more complicated than it is. In reality, it’s mostly season things, dump them in a baking pan, and stick them in the oven.”
The little dog wandered off.
“What’s a PTVA?”
“It’s a French pie-cake made with puff pastry. The traditional version uses rum and almonds, but nobody likes rum, so I make mine with apples.”
Shadow trotted around, periodically paused to sniff at some random spot of asphalt, carefully considered it, then moved on. Apparently, selecting the perfect place to pee was vitally important.
“I need to catch you up on what we have so far.” I summarized the last few days for her; Diatheke, Celia, Benedict, Keystone, the chase, and Alessandro’s involvement. I kept the information about his database private. I didn’t know what it meant yet in the big picture.
She rubbed her face with both hands. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
“It’s my job.” But yeah, it sucked. “I’m sorry we haven’t found Halle. But so far the evidence seems to point to kidnapping, not murder.”
Professionally I knew that we were doing everything we could. Personally, the guilt drowned me. No matter how many times I warned myself, I thought of Runa as my friend. I desperately needed to fix this for her, and this case was a quicksand trap. Just when I thought I was on my way up, I sank deeper in. It was driving me up the wall.
“So where do we go from here?” Runa asked.
“Well, first things first. We’re now in the crosshairs of an assassin firm, so we’ll get attacked. It’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’ I called Matilda’s aunt. Unfortunately, she’s out of town, but she said a friend will be coming by to pick her up. Would you like to send Ragnar with them?”
“No.” She didn’t even pause. “Right now, the last thing he remembers is getting off the plane and he’s so calm, it’s borderline freaky. I don’t know how long this will last, but if his memory and emotions come back, I don’t want him climbing onto another roof. I need to be there to steady him.”
“Okay.” It was her decision. “The next step is to identify your mother’s target. We know he’s male, powerful, and his death would cause an uproar. Diatheke wants him dead, but they don’t want the heat that will come with it.”
Runa shook her head. “No clue. Mom didn’t socialize. Sometimes she didn’t leave the house for weeks.”
“I looked at your mother’s social calendar. The last ten years are backed up. How much do you know about the Texas Assembly?”
Runa sighed. “Just what everyone knows. It’s a legislative body that governs the Houses in Texas. Each House has one voting seat. If you are a Prime or a Significant, you are entitled to view the sessions but only the designated House representative can vote. Most people don’t go to the sessions unless something important happens. Mom usually went. She liked to know what was happening in the political world.”
I nodded. “The Texas Assembly has two main political factions: the Civil Majority and the Stewards. The Civil Majority thinks Houses have enough power and want to keep to themselves. The Stewards want to rule everyone and everything. Every three years the Assembly elects a Speaker. The winning party receives the Gold Staff and the loser is given the Silver Staff. Nine years ago, when the Civil Majority was in power, your mother served as the Gold Staff.”
Runa frowned. “I think I remember that. Isn’t it mostly ceremonial? She would bring the staff out and bang it onto the floor at the start and end of each Assembly session.”
“It is. But it also means that she met most of the Assembly’s members and knew all of the major players.”
Runa groaned. “It could literally be any member of any House in the state.”
“Yep.”
The political undercurrents within the Assembly were so complex it would take a supercomputer to sort them out. I made a note of everyone Sigourney was in office with, starting with the former Speaker Linus Duncan. Linus would take my call. He’d served as a witness to the formation of our House. Whether he’d tell me anything was a different question entirely.
We watched Shadow wander about. Arabella was still MIA and worry gnawed at me. My sister could handle herself, but Diatheke’s roster of killers was nothing to sneeze at.
“My brother is an emotional zombie, my sister is missing, and I found out that my mom was a hit woman.” Runa sighed.
“I’m sorry.”
“I suspected. The math just wasn’t adding up. She didn’t make enough from her forensic work to cover our bills. I mean, it wouldn’t even pay my tuition. When you asked me to go through her bank statements, I went back to the beginning of her records twelve years ago. You know what I found? Large deposits for consulting work. A hundred grand, two hundred grand. One was for half a million. Half a million, Catalina.”
“Must have been a high-risk target.”
“At least she was good at her job, right?” Runa gave a short laugh. “It’s one consulting fee after another, and then eight years ago everything just stopped. This was right about the time she told me that she wanted to spend more time with us. She must have stopped ‘consulting.’”
“I’m sorry,” I told her again.
“I can’t ask her any questions. I can’t say, ‘How could you do this?’ or ‘What were you thinking?’ So I went to my house yesterday. I talked to the ash and then I cried. I might be losing it.”
“No,” I said. “You’re keeping it together just fine. Better than I would.”
Runa shook her head. “I looked at the files on the flash drive. I thought maybe she was a kind of Robin Hood, who only killed bad people. She wasn’t. She killed whoever they paid her to kill.”
In the real world, there was no honor among thieves and no Robin Hood assassins.
She turned to me. “Ragnar can never find out. He wouldn’t understand. I can rationalize it somewhat. We were in debt, we were about to lose the house, we would go hungry. I don’t condone it, but all my mom knew was how to be a mother, a wife, and a superb poisoner. She was an amazing assassin. I don’t even know how she did half of the stuff on that flash drive. So, I’ll deal with it. I have no choice. But my brother can never be told. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said.
Shadow squatted and peed at a random spot.
I clapped my hands and crooned in a high-pitched voice, “Good girl, good girl.”
Runa whistled and made “woo” noises.
Shadow kicked her back legs, trying to scour the pavement, and strutted off.
“About Alessandro,” Runa said. “I shouldn’t have made the decision to work with him without talking to you. He was there, and he asked me, and I answered honestly. Brain wasn’t engaged.”
“Don’t worry about it. I was just trying to squeeze more information out of him. Your mother hired him to kill her assassin. He isn’t going away until he nukes them, so we can either work together or we can keep bumping into each other with unpredictable consequences.”
Runa raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep bumping into him, just a little bit?”
I gave her the Look of Death. “No. I found out that Alessandro has been staying across the street, so I disassembled his car window and then walked into my bedroom and found him posing on my bed like some sort of erotic poster.”
“He was posing on your bed? Was he naked?”
“No.” I wish. “But he was holding the picture I had left on the nightstand.”
Runa frowned. “Wait, the picture? The pink, glitter heart picture?”
I nodded. “Yep. That’s the one. I took it to my room. And now he knows about my kid crush and he’s mocking me.”
“Well fuck,” Runa said.
“Fuck” was a good way to put it.
“Look on the bright side,” Runa said. “If he steps out of line, I can poison him, so blood will come out of both ends simultaneously and continuously.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“You must think I’m crazy.” The smile slid off Runa’s face. “Joking while my mother is dead, and my sister is missing. Maybe I am, a little, and if I was by myself, things might be different. But I have my brother. I’m trying my best to not freak the fuck out. I’m trying to be positive and hopeful, and pretending that everything will be okay. But I know nothing is okay and sometimes I just want to scream myself hoarse.”
I hugged her. “Runa, you don’t owe me or anyone an explanation or an apology. Terrible things have happened to both of you, and you do whatever you need to do to get through it. If you want to strip naked and dance in the street throwing glitter in the air, nobody would blink an eye. It’s your grief. You own it.”
She wiped her eyes.
The door of Rogan’s HQ opened, and Bug emerged into the light of the streetlamp. He wore a clean khaki T-shirt and a pair of dark pants. His face was clean, and his hair was damp and brushed.
“That’s my cue to go inside,” I told Runa. “This is Bug, Rogan’s surveillance guy I told you about. He doesn’t do well with strangers.”
“No sudden moves?”
“No, he’s okay with sudden moves. Just don’t expect him to do small talk.”
Runa was right. The lemon roasted chicken did smell amazing.
The entire family had gathered for dinner, all except Arabella. She’d finally charged her phone and replied to my seven texts with “I’m okay, keep your panties on.” I composed an eloquent reply rich with four-letter words, sent it to her, and hadn’t heard anything back.
The table was full. Mom and Grandma talked quietly; Runa was making eyes at the chicken; Bern and Bug carried on a conversation in low voices. Matilda took the bread rolls off the baking pan and arranged them in a basket. Ragnar volunteered to distribute forks, knives, and napkins. Just a normal Baylor dinner.
Leon, wearing oven mitts, pulled the enormous roasting pan filled with potatoes out of the oven and held it while I scooped them into a pretty white dish.
“Grandma, Aunt Penelope, me and Bern, Bug, Runa and Ragnar, Matilda, and you,” Leon said. “Nine people, but ten plates. Who is the extra plate for?”
“We might have a guest for dinner.” I put the salad dressing on the table.
“Like who?” He put the pan onto the stove and pulled the oven mitts off.
I opened my mouth to answer. The doorbell rang, echoing through all of our cell phones. Leon tapped his phone. His eyes sparked with indignation. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I went to answer the door.
The icy assassin who killed the strike team and then stalked me in my own room was gone. Instead, Instagram Alessandro stood in the doorway, carrying a bottle of wine. He wore impeccably tailored brown pants and an indigo blue dress shirt with the sleeves casually rolled up to his elbows and the top two buttons open, just enough to give a great view of his muscular neck. His boots, leather, ankle-high, and expensive, matched the outfit. His brushed then artfully tousled hair framed his face. He’d shaved, and the masculine perfection of his features was on full display; the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the strong, clean line of his jaw, his sensual mouth . . .
My brain did that thing again, the one where I lost all ability to reason and form complete sentences.
Say something. Something smart.
Our stares connected. His eyes were still the same; calculating, lupine, and heated by amber magic from within.
“You’re late,” I told him. Yes! Brilliant. I said a thing and it made sense. It had a subject and a verb and they went together. Catalina Baylor one, Instagram Alessandro a big fat zero.
“Beauty takes time.”
“Oh, get over yourself.” I stepped aside.
He stepped through. “Permesso.”
I almost answered, Avanti, but caught myself. He didn’t need to know how much Italian I understood. Instead, I locked the door behind him, and we walked deeper into the house, through the office, through the hallway, and into the kitchen.
Nobody had started eating yet, but people were passing dishes and fixing their plates. They saw Alessandro.
Everything stopped.
He smiled at them, a dazzling, charming smile, warm and happy and a touch shy. When they said a smile could launch a thousand ships, this was the smile they had imagined.
Grandma Frida put down the salad bowl, raised her phone, and snapped a pic.
“No phones at the table,” Mom said on autopilot, her gaze fixed on Alessandro.
“I’m not missing this shot, Penelope.”
“Buonasera,” Alessandro crooned. “Thank you so much for inviting me to dinner. I haven’t had a homemade meal in weeks.”
When I’d spoken to him an hour ago, he’d had a mere trace of an accent. Now he sounded like he’d jumped out of a Fellini film onto the red carpet.
Bern crossed his arms. Leon scowled. Bug looked like a surprised hedgehog with all his needles up in the air.
Alessandro pretended not to notice and handed the wine bottle to Leon.
Leon took it, baring his teeth. “Keep your filthy hands off my cousin.”
Alessandro smiled again, his face serene, as if Leon had just complimented him on his choice of wine. “Please forgive me, the selection in the local stores is rather limited, but I was able to find a decent variety of Grenache.”
“You can take that wine and shove—” Leon started.
“Leon,” Mom said.
He clicked his jaw shut and went to get the wineglasses.
“Thank you for the wine,” Mom said. “Please join us.”
Alessandro stepped to my chair and held it out for me. Runa leaned on her elbow, clearly enjoying the show.
Grabbing the chair and hitting him with it was out of the question. I sat and let him scoot it closer to the table for me.
A phone flashed as Grandma took another picture. I clenched my teeth and stared straight ahead.
We passed the food around.
“You’re very pretty,” Matilda observed. “Are you a prince?”
“No,” he told her with another dazzling smile. “Only a conte. A count.”
“Hot damn,” Grandma Frida said.
A quiet thud sounded. My mother had set her glass down with some force.
For a brief time, nobody spoke as everyone dug into the food.
Alessandro ate like a starving wolf. His manners were flawless, but the food disappeared off his plate with staggering speed. He finished it all and went in for seconds.
“This is delicious,” Ragnar said around a mouthful of food.
“The chicken is ottimo,” Alessandro said, looking at my mother. “La cena migliore che abbia mai mangiato. Absolutely wonderful. I could eat this every day until I die.”
The chicken was “delicious,” and it was the “best dinner he had ever eaten.” Give me a break. And so much Italian too. He was laying the charm on thick. Oh, look at me, I’m Alessandro, so handsome, so refined, at such a disadvantage because I don’t speak good English and have to reach for my native tongue. He probably had a better English vocabulary than I did. Ugh.
“I didn’t cook it,” Mom said. “Catalina did.”
Alessandro froze.
Ha! Didn’t expect that, did you?
“That’s nothing,” Runa said. “Just wait until you taste her pithivier. It’s to die for.”
I glared at her. She gave me a look of pure innocence and went back to eating.
Alessandro made a short cough that sounded suspiciously like choking. “There is a pithivier?”
“Yes,” I said.
He put his fork down and faced me, his expression besotted.
Do not blush, do not blush . . .
Alessandro opened his mouth. “Marry me.”
“If she says yes, shoot him,” Bern said to Leon, his face completely serious. “She’ll thank us later.”
Bug stirred in his seat. “Catalina, do not marry this dickfucker. There are better birds in the sea.” He turned to my mom and said, “Pardon my French.”
Matilda leaned forward, looked at Alessandro, then looked at me. “Your children would be very attractive.”
Alessandro winked at Matilda. “Thank you. You are most kind.”
Runa covered her face with her hands and made some whimpering noises.
Okay, no. I had to nip this in the bud. “Matilda, picking a husband is more complicated than just selecting an attractive mate. He has to be smart and kind, and he has to be a good person.”
Alessandro glanced at me. The sharp fire in his eyes sparked and vanished before anyone else noticed.
Runa’s cell rang. She took her hands from her face and looked at my mom.
Mom sighed. “Go ahead.”
Runa answered it and frowned. “Uh, Mr. Moody?”
Sigourney Etterson’s financial adviser.
The table went completely silent. Bern pulled a tablet out of thin air and set it to record.
“So you want me to come to your office, right now?” Runa asked, and held the phone out at arm’s length toward us.
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