“Let’s just… take one step at a time,” Nick said. “Focus on what’s in front of us. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just… we need more information. That’s why we’re here. Okay?”
Cassandra watched him for a long moment, and then looked away. Being with him, feeling almost safe… it was good. But did he have only one grim solution to every problem? And if that was the case… was it worth it to live a life drenched in blood, haunted by the deaths of the people it cost to live it? Good or evil, Cassandra didn’t want more deaths on her conscience. There was a better way. There had to be.
Night fell, and while there were some obvious lieutenants and managers on the estate, there was no one that seemed to qualify as a leader. That wasn’t unusual in Cassandra’s opinion. Her father was loved by everyone in his circles—but there were people who wanted him dead. There was at least one who got their wish. He rarely spent time in the open, and that was the way of men like him. Live in the darkness too long, and the light became dangerous.
The descent to the edge of the orchard was perilous, but manageable, and afterwards the hike down the relatively flat ground made Cassandra feel light on her feet. They trekked silently between the trees together, Cassandra leading when they needed direction and Nick leading when they had a heading.
It was a sprawling field of cherimoya and guava trees, thick with the scent of the fruit that had fallen prematurely and rotted on the ground. No one watched it now, and from the weight of the branches Cassandra wasn’t even sure anyone was working the orchard. Maybe the current owner didn’t care for it. She hoped he at least allowed the locals to come and take their fill but doubted it.
Some of the trees had distinctive knots and shapes that she’d known since she was young, and as she found them she oriented them toward the part of the wall where the entrance to the wine cellar should have been. There were cameras atop the wall over the entrance, but they were meant to survey the edge of the orchard and when they swept away from where Cassandra and Nick crouched behind a wide-canopied guava tree they darted across the open field and dove beneath the bushes at the base of the wall.
They were prickly, and Cassandra had to hold in a squeal when her face met with a spider’s web, but she couldn’t find the spider—which was a mixed revelation—and so tried to forget that it had happened. The door was covered with debris and it was locked from the inside—but that presented Nick with only a minor inconvenience and in short order he had it open.
He insisted on descending first into the pitch darkness of the stairway down, and she slipped in after him.
The musty scent of the disused passage took her back instantly to the night she left. She’d used this very route to escape the estate, as she had dozens of other times to meet with Hector. She felt like she was fourteen again, and eighteen, and only twelve, the first time Hector had showed her the secret path in an attempt to impress her with a secret. It had worked.
Nick leaned against the heavy door, pressing his ear close to listen for any noise on the other side. When there was none, Cassandra pointed out the latch. It moved with only the slight groan of heavy wood that was well worn with age, and long stationary. Nick lifted a small scope to his eye, and scanned the darkness.
“One camera at the exit up there,” he whispered.
“Keep to the wall,” Cassandra said. “Behind the last rack, there’s another door like this one that opens out.”
Nick nodded once, and then watched through the scope for a long moment before he waved her after him.
They skittered quickly along the back wall. Cassandra trailed her fingers along the raw stone of the bedrock beneath the house. She was surprised there weren’t shallow grooves from all the other times she’d done it.
Nick found the door easily, and the two of them slipped into it with minimal effort—there were three empty barrels to be moved, but they rolled quietly and easily out of the way, and then they were down the long, dusty hallway, Nick leading with his scope to his eye. They probably could have used light, Cassandra thought, but there was no reason to risk coming to a crack in the wall further on and being exposed by an accidental glow.
The door to the pantry was more difficult. Something was in front of it, and Nick had to carefully push until it gave by inches. Moving it back after they were done would be out of the question, but by then perhaps it would be assumed to be the fault of whoever now organized the pantry.
It turned out to be a large sack of rice, and there wasn’t much else beside it down here. The pantry of the Gonzales estate had once been brimming with wheels of cheese, preserves, sacks of flower and grain, baskets of herbs and spices… whoever lived here now apparently had no use for a stocked pantry.
Something about that rubbed Cassandra the wrong way. This estate, this home… it was a family place. In her father’s day, there had been grand meals with all the workers and estate staff prepared from the stores in this massive room. Papa had sat at the head of a long table, and fed everyone freely and generously. When someone who worked for him fell ill, or had to take care of their parents, they were taken to the pantry and given food to take home to their family so that they could do so.
That it was empty now… it was like someone had taken the heart out of her home.
“Are you okay?” Nick asked.
Cassandra wiped her eyes and pointed to the back wall. “Keep going. The dumbwaiter is there.”
“I’ll go up,” Nick said. “You wait here.”
“I’m going,” Cassandra sighed. “You can’t stop me, Nick.”
He opened his mouth, but closed it and turned away from her to pry the door open.
It was a simple enough path up—the rope once used to take the large box up and down just had to be cut and secured to the rail in order to become a climbing rope right to the top. Nick went ahead of her, climbing easily without touching the walls. Cassandra had to brace her feet against the inside. There were cobwebs here and there but Nick cleared most of them on his ascent.
The door at the top was unlocked, but there was some kind of furniture in front of it. At the least, it had some kind of gap in it that Nick looked through before he began working it out of the way. After a few minutes, he slipped through.
Cassandra waited for his signal.
Almost the moment he gave it, and she began to crawl through the opening, the door to the office rattled once, and the two of them froze.
Some kind of patrol. Nick’s feet made no sound as he dashed across the room to the door and pressed himself against the wall behind it. The door rattled a second time, and there were a series of beeps, followed by a click.
The door opened, and a tall, bald man poked his head in the room quickly, glanced around, and started to withdraw. He stopped. He saw the moved hatch, and entered the room.
Nick was on him instantly, doing something Cassandra couldn’t see with his thumb as he reached around from behind the bigger man that made his breath and attempt at screaming come out in a thin wheeze. Slowly, they sank to the ground together. Cassandra crawled through the hole to close the door, but as she did another man came through after the first, smaller, but armed. He raised a taser.
He didn’t notice Cassandra coming at him until it was too late. She practically leapt at him, hooking one arm around his neck as her momentum carried them both down and over. The taser clattered to the ground beside them and he reached up to pull at her arm but she secured it with her other and held on for all she was worth.
The guard kicked, gasped weakly, and reached for the radio at his waist. Cassandra kicked until it dropped from his weakening fingers and slid across the ground.
His struggle slowed as Nick stood from the other guard’s unconscious form and whirled on her, crouched. Instead of intervening, though, he stepped over Cassandra’s purple faced victim and quietly closed the door.
The guard Cassandra held finally went slack. She gave it a count of ten, like she’d been taught, and then let him go. Nick helped her up, and glanc
ed down at the fallen man in black fatigues. He frowned, and gave an approving nod. “I take it all back.”
“Told you,” Cassandra whispered. “I’m not a liability.”
“This will complicate things,” Nick said. “If they were one patrol, they have check in points. We need to find anything useful and then get out.”
“Check the safe,” Cassandra said. She’d seen it once, when she was very small. “It should be… there, behind the television.”
It didn’t take much checking to find it, but Nick eyed the combination dial. “No time to crack it,” he said. “Look through the desk.”
“The combination can’t be changed,” Cassandra said. “It was custom made. It’s the same one, all the same gold inlay. Here…”
She bit her lip and tried to remember, turning the dial slowly as she did. “Papa told me once,” she muttered, “that they were Mama’s measurements when she was a dancer, when they met… ha!” She winced, and bit her lip when Nick glared at her for the little victory shout.
The safe door swung open.
“See what you can find in the desk,” Nick said as he slid past her. “Anything in a folder, envelope, or box. Take any memory chips you find.”
She did, picking through drawers. One of them was locked, but a letter opener fixed that problem.
There were documents involving the purchase and sale of portions of the grounds, which was disturbing and dismaying but not illuminating. The same name was on most of them, however. “Do you know Mason Cobb Taylor?” She asked. “Apparently he’s the new owner.”
When Nick didn’t answer, she looked up to see him staring at an open folder, flipping through it. “No,” he whispered, “no, no, no… shit.” He looked like he might throw the folder across the room, but closed his eyes, and then snapped it shut and grabbed something else from the safe before he closed it.
“What?” Cassandra asked, alarmed. She stood from the desk drawer.
Nick hesitated a moment, and then shook his head, “Come on. We have to go. Now. I’ll tell you when we’re out of here and can talk freely.”
She didn’t like it, but followed his lead. He was the professional. The route back was the same as the route in, but they made it just in time—by the time they were scampering back up the side of the mountain, there was commotion throughout the estate. Someone had found the guards, or been alerted to the presence of intruders. That passage in and out wasn’t going to work in the future, though Cassandra hoped they wouldn’t need it again.
It wasn’t until they were back to safety and beginning the trek down to where they’d hidden the car that Nick told her what he’d found. When he did, her blood ran cold.
“Mason Cobb Taylor is an alias for a man named Lester Miles,” he said, his voice tight. “My old boss. The one I thought I ditched. Apparently I didn’t.” He stopped, and took a several deep breaths, running his fingers through his hair as he did. Cassandra stared at him.
“He knows about you?” She didn’t understand. “That you aren’t, what, dead or missing?”
Nick shook his head. “No. He knows about me, about my Mom… about you, and Ramon and that I worked for Alex. The whole goddamn thing was a fucking set up. We have to go back to Mom’s place. They aren’t safe there. Maybe not anywhere.”
Chapter 14
Nick didn’t stop on the way back to the island. By the time they got there, he was nearly out of his mind. Cassandra had been stoic and quiet for almost the entire trip, both of them worried. When they did talk, it was mostly about where they might go next—some place remote, maybe the other side of the world. There were places a person could get lost entirely, and Nick had assets that would take them a long way.
Nothing seemed amiss when they arrived on the dock, but they both dashed up the long, stair studded trail to the house. It wasn’t until they got there that they realized that something was very wrong. The goats didn’t announce their presence. The door was opened. All around the front of the house there was evidence of heavy foot traffic.
Nick drew his sidearm, and pulled Cassandra to cover, scanning the forest. There was plenty of foliage to hide a sniper, but no one had taken a shot yet. “Stay here,” he said. “Don’t move until I come for you.”
Cassandra swallowed hard, and it was clear that she wanted to argue but she didn’t.
He stood from their cover and sprinted to the house, up the steps of the porch, and pressed himself to the wall next to the door. A quick glance inside, and he didn’t immediately see anyone, though there were obvious signs of a struggle. Another glance… no, wait. There were two people. Both down.
One of them was his mother.
Nick rounded the door frame. His instinct was to check his mother—she was bleeding, or had been—but he cleared the house first, just in case. Only then did he fall to his knees next to her. Pain was a thing he’d learned, a long time ago, to ignore. So he did that now, as he reached out and pressed his fingers to her throat to find a pulse.
Ellen gasped, and opened her tired eyes in panic. “Get off… Nick… oh, my boy… I’m so sorry… I didn’t see them until they were on my door and they—”
“Shh,” Nick sighed. Maybe his training hadn’t been all that good. Or not inclusive enough. Something in his chest wrenched sideways and then dropped into his stomach. “Mom…”
She shook her head slowly, pained, and lifted her hand from where it was pressed to her stomach. The blood was black. How she’d survived this long he couldn’t imagine. “It’s okay,” she said, “it doesn’t hurt anymore. Nick, baby, listen to me. Focus. They took… they took Ramon. Okay? They took him.”
He was alive, then. Lester wouldn’t have bothered taking him if he meant to kill him. Hell, he’d probably never meant to kill him. Was it possible he’d used the contract to flush Nick out? But why go to all the trouble?
That could be figured out later. “Come on,” he said, slipping a hand under her head, “we’ll get you to the mainland, get you some help.”
“Nick, don’t,” Ellen hissed. She gasped, and when he backed off she was breathing hard again. She was pale. There was blood everywhere, pooling across the wooden floor, already drying in places. “I know where they got me,” she said. “I shouldn’t be alive. I tried to hold on for you, baby. I’m…” her eyes unfocused, and her head started to loll to one side but she struggled to keep her eyes open. “Someone talked about the black house. Take him to the black house. Until he can get the Gonzales girl, too. You… you…”
“I can patch you up,” Nick said. He couldn’t see clearly, and had to wipe his eyes to look around. “I can give you some blood, rig a transfusion. There’s plenty on the boat. Just hang on, Mom, okay? I’ll be right—”
He’d seen the look many times. That vacant, empty stare into eternity as all the fine muscles around the eye and pupil let go. His mother was gone.
“Nick?” Cassandra’s voice was trembling, and edged with panic. “Oh… God…”
She knelt beside him and pulled him to her as he let out a single sob. That was all he could afford, all he had time for. He closed his eyes while she kissed his head and for three heart beats he grieved.
Then he gently pried himself away from Cassandra and cleared his throat along with his mind. “The black house,” he said, his voice flat. “They took Ramon to the black house. It’s a safe house in Cuba. I’ve heard of it but… I’m not sure where it is.”
Cassandra looked from Nick to his mother, but didn’t say anything.
“We have to go,” he said. “Lester is still looking for you.”
Only then did he look at the other body in the room. It was missing part of its face. His mother’s shotgun was in the corner. Good for her, then. She took one of them down before she dropped. That was something, at least.
“Come on,” he said, standing.
“Should we… we can’t just leave her here,” Cassandra said quietly.
“We’ve already lost time,” Nick told her, and bent to take he
r arm and pull her carefully but insistently to her feet. “We’ll come back. But she’s gone. Ramon isn’t.”
Cassandra nodded quickly, and cleared her eyes. “Nick, I’m so sorry… if we’d never come here—”
“It might not have mattered,” he said. “Not if Lester already knew about her, about us. He always has a plan. He’s just been waiting for the right time. That’s why he’s so dangerous. Lester is patient. From now on we just have to assume everything is potentially a trap he’s set.”
She nodded again, and kept nodding. Her jaw was tight. She held her breath, but it wasn’t preventing her from falling apart.
Time was of the essence, but Nick pulled her close and held her while she cried. It was only fair. He rubbed her back, and didn’t say anything to try and make her feel better. Nothing would have. How could it? His own insides were twisted around a barbed spike. He’d only just found his son and now Lester had taken Ramon from him, and taken his mother from him as well.
He would kill the man. There was no doubt about that. It was clear, now, that there was simply no way to run from Lester. The only question left now was how?
Alex. She had ways of finding information. If she’d infiltrated the intelligence networks and agency databases, surely she could dig up something about the location of the black house. If it was even a single place. Lester had drop sites and safe houses across the globe for his own network’s use, but some of them were mobile…
He couldn’t think about that now. First, they needed intelligence and they couldn’t get it on their own.
“Let’s go,” he said again, and ushered Cassandra toward the door, still holding her as they walked together.
She recovered somewhat on the walk down. She hardened, for the second time, this time to steel, and by the time they were halfway down the trail he had to start jogging to keep up with her. “When we find him,” she muttered as they left the trail and headed toward the dock. “I’ll kill him myself if I have to.”
The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!) Page 11