The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!)

by Ashley Rhodes

  Finally, pictures sprang to life, video feeds from inside the two floors cordoned off as Lester’s black house. Shortly after, a three-dimensional model drew itself into being on one laptop screen, with a little green triangle blinking deep inside the lines that formed it. Alex tapped on it lightly and glanced at Cassandra. “That’s Nick,” she said. “Testing comms, Foxtrot, are you online?”

  After a moment, Nick answered. “Online. Heads up display operational.”

  “Highlighting route,” Alex said. On the map, a red path drew itself from Nick’s green arrow icon to several boxes—rooms in the black house. “Route optimized. Hold for go.”

  As Cassandra watched, Alex looked from camera feed to camera feed, patiently capturing segments of video. When she saw Cassandra staring, she explained. “I’m recording empty seconds so that I can feed them back to the security displays. It’ll look basically like this,” she waved at the empty halls and rooms, except for the few where men in black suits wandered by, normally in pairs. Ramon was on none of them. “There are two rooms with no camera feeds coming from them. He’s probably in one of those. Don’t worry yet.”

  It was the ‘yet’ that Cassandra was worried about. If Ramon wasn’t here…

  “Security feeds rigged,” Alex announced. “Route is clear, and hostiles are rigged. You’ll have to pass two locked doors, I’ll have them ready to open when you get there, Foxtrot.” A number of red triangles appeared on the map—an alarming number of them. There were at least nine, and all but two were moving.

  “Moving out,” Nick said over the comm.

  Cassandra watched his progress. When she saw him on one of the camera feeds she hissed, and pointed, thumping Alex on the shoulder.

  “Ow,” Alex snapped, “stop it. Those are the live feeds; only we can see them right now. Calm down.”

  “If you were in my position,” Cassandra said, “you’d know how impossible that is. Sorry.”

  Alex only shook her head and went back to monitoring the situation.

  Most of it they could see on one camera or another. Twice, Nick encountered ‘hostiles’ and twice he took them down with practiced ease and bloodlessly, depositing their bodies into side rooms or maintenance closets depending on where Alex directed him.

  He came to a first locked room and Alex hit a key, jargon flashed over the screen, and Nick confirmed entry. “No sign of Ramon,” he reported.

  “Got to be the other room then,” Alex said. “Keep moving, Foxtrot. Hostiles incoming, twenty meters.”

  The screens all flickered at once, briefly, and then again.

  Alex sucked in a breath. “Shit shit shit…”

  “What’s happening?” Cassandra asked, trying to keep herself out of Alex’s personal space while she attempted to fix whatever was going on.

  “Just… give me a sec…” Alex whispered. But she continued to curse.

  The looped feeds flickered again, and when they resolved back into stable images, Nick was on one of them.

  Cassandra’s stomach dropped.

  “Foxtrot you are on camera,” Alex said.

  There was no response.

  “Foxtrot confirm comms,” she said, more urgently.

  “What’s happening?” Cassandra demanded.

  Alex glanced at her. “I… they must have a secondary security hub. Probably it switches back and forth on a timer. Damn it… I’m sorry, Cassandra. Nick’s on his own.”

  As they watched, several men in black suits, armed, began to appear on the cameras, all of them in a hurry.

  “No,” Cassandra said, “he isn’t.” She turned, grabbed the gun Nick had given her, and tucked it into her jeans. “Keep the elevator unlocked.”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” Alex called after her. But Cassandra didn’t stick around to hear the rest of it. She slammed the van’s cargo doors behind her, readjusted her blouse to cover the handgun, and marched toward the FOCSA building.

  No one impeded Cassandra’s progress. She wasn’t the only olive complected person in tropical attire getting on the elevator. She was the only person who took the elevator to the top floor, though, and certainly the only one making her way to the other elevator that lead to the actual top floors. They were still pried open. In the closet nearby were the guards Nick had apparently had to take down, piled unconscious together on the floor, zip-tied and duct taped.

  The elevator was still operational when she called it, and it took her two floors up when she hit the button. She drew the pistol with shaky hands and pressed herself to the inside wall of the elevator, visualizing the map of the place in her head.

  Neither of these floors was drastically different than the ones below it. The main difference was that several of the apartments were joined, and there was an extra hallway where the center row of apartments had been split into two.

  She took long, deep breaths. She was here to get her son and her… well, her son’s father, whatever she and Nick were. She drew strength from that resolve.

  The door chimed quietly, and slid open.

  Everyone had presumably converged on Nick, so the hallways were empty. She tried to remember which direction he’d gone… down this hallway, yes, then left… then the next right; no, another left, he’d been headed toward the corner ahead of her and then…

  There was an opened door ahead, at the end of the hall, one of the two black rooms, with a trail of blood leading from the middle of the hall toward it. There was some commotion. Everyone would have eyes on Nick in there all she had to do was slip in and grab Ramon and…

  She pushed through the door carefully and surveyed the scene. There were a half dozen bodies on the ground, some of them bleeding, and Nick was heaving breaths, his face beaded with sweat as he stood from one of the bodies and gave a start when when he saw Cassandra there with her gun out.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed.

  “Alex lost contact,” Cassandra said, wide eyed that he’d taken out this many men by himself. “We… well, I thought you needed backup but… apparently I was wrong. Where’s Ramon?”

  Nick cussed, and raised his gun at Cassandra. She took a step back, shocked—

  And stopped when she felt something hard press against her lower back.

  “Ramon isn’t here, and he never was,” a smooth, older man’s voice said, almost casually. “Put your weapon down, Nick, or I’ll put a hole in Ms. Gonzales.”

  Chapter 16

  Nick’s hand twitched reflexively to his holstered gun, but Lester raised an eyebrow and shook his head slowly.

  “I can’t recommend that, Nick. You’re a good shot, but you’re not faster than my trigger finger and if I’m going down,” he shrugged, “you’d better believe I’m not going alone.”

  Nick relaxed his hands, his eyes on Lester.

  “Smart,” Lester smiled. “Kindly face the other direction now, lay your weapons on the ground and kick them behind you.”

  There was no choice but to do as he said. But he went slowly, his mind running through every option he had to get out of this, or at least get Cassandra out. If he died in the attempt, though, she and Ramon were every bit as screwed. Lester had set a trap, and they’d walked into it. It wasn’t Cassandra’s fault. She meant well.

  “Very good,” Lester said. “If only you’d been this obedient before. Turn back around. Hands behind your head.”

  As Nick obeyed, Lester gently handed Cassandra over to two men who came in behind him. They gave the room a once over, glared at Nick, and then each took one of Cassandra’s arms. God, she looked terrified. He wanted to tell her it would be okay, but… maybe it wouldn’t.

  “Look,” Lester said, sympathetically, “you actually did a great job here. All of this. It took me years to find Cassandra and, honestly, I never really knew where you were at all. I located your mother, but, then, did you really think I wouldn’t be interested in an island purchase? Don’t get me wrong, there—I investigate every major land transaction. It’s just good sense.
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  “And I want you to know that Cassandra will be well taken care of. I need her. She and Ramon are going home, Nick. It’s a good thing.” He glanced over his shoulder at Cassandra. “Ramon is safe and sound at home, in your father’s estate; where he belongs. You’ll see him soon, I promise.”

  “They’re not going to get you anything, Lester,” Nick growled. “Nothing you can’t get on your own.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Lester said. “So I let them live their own life until I realized that wasn’t the case. And you know what?” He turned halfway, so that he could look from Cassandra to Nick. “I didn’t even know where Cassandra here was. If she hadn’t come rushing in here, well, for all I know, Nick, you would have gotten out of this alive.”

  “Don’t kill him,” Cassandra begged, and it made Nick sick to hear the pain in her voice. There was so much they hadn’t had a chance to explore, to say. “Please,” she wailed, “please. I’ll go with you, I’ll do whatever you want. Just please don’t kill him…”

  Lester’s face pinched with mock pain. It was convincing, to a casual observer. But Nick knew the truth. Lester didn’t feel pain. Lester didn’t feel anything anymore; except greed, and satisfaction. He wasn’t even angry about all this. That’s what made him so dangerous.

  “You two say good-bye,” he said, waving the gun between them. “Life is full of regrets. For those that survive these sorts of things, I mean. You don’t want to carry that around, I promise you.”

  Nick wondered what sorts of regrets Lester had. He couldn’t imagine him having any.

  “Baby,” Nick said, and locked Cassandra’s eyes with his own. “Go quietly, don’t fight. Okay? It’s… it’s going to be okay.”

  “Nick,” Cassandra gasped, “no. I love—”

  The sound of the gun was deafening in the small room. Curiously, Nick almost didn’t feel the bullet. Something hit him, wump, right in the chest and he staggered back, tripped over a body, and hit the ground hard, his ears ringing, the sound of Cassandra’s screams a distant noise the faded with the rest of the world as he struggled to suck in a breath and found that he couldn’t.

  Then it was all gone.

  Until it wasn’t. It was dark, and quiet. Pain filled Nick’s chest where the bullet had struck the micro-thin vest that Alex had outfitted him with. There was still blood, and he almost certainly had two broken ribs just over his heart, but the bullet was trapped in the mess, a flattened slug that clinked to the ground when he turned over, groaning.

  He staggered to his feet and had to brace himself against the wall to stand. There was movement, but not in the room. He made his way to the door. No weapons—the room had been stripped of them. Outside, two men discussed the problem of having not brought enough plastic wrap, and which one of them would go back downstairs and get more for the cleanup job.

  There was a good chance they were Lester’s men. But there was a good chance they weren’t, as well. He felt bad about that. But not bad enough to keep him from getting through or past them.

  He stepped through the door toward the pair, and pulled the first one backwards and down by his head. He hit the floor with a yelp that turned into a gurgling, strangled panic when Nick stomped his throat.

  The other man pulled a gun, but by the time it was up Nick was already on him. He stepped in, caught the arm under his as he turned and broke the arm with a twist. The gun dropped from numb fingers. He caught it, turned, jammed it under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger. A second body thumped to the ground.

  Nick’s hand went to his chest reflexively when the falling body tugged at him and rattled his fractured bones, and then stepped over him toward the elevator.

  It was night. The elevator was shut off, so he took the painful path down the stairs, and then slumped against the inside of the lower elevator to finish his journey to the ground level. By then, he’d stowed the handgun in the back of his jeans and shed his holster, but he still got some concerned looked as he left the FOCSA building.

  His ear-piece was full of static, but he tapped the comm button several times, rhythmically; his confirmation code. Then he waited. It was entirely possible Alex had bailed. She’d have no reason to stay, after all. He hoped that, if she was gone, it was because she’d realized there was no good option and left. The alternative was that Lester had found her and taken her out. It was a very real possibility.

  Turned out, though, that neither of those things had happened. Alex’s voice came over the come. “Foxtrot confirm?”

  “Foxtrot confirming,” Nick wheezed. “Cassandra…”

  “I saw it on the cameras,” Alex said. “Nick—Foxtrot, I mean—I’m sorry. Really, I am. He got the drop on us. I’m closing on your location now.”

  Alex arrived, still in the white van, and Nick crawled into the passenger side.

  She watched him get in, frowning. “You good to go?” She asked.

  Nick grunted as he settled into the seat and nodded once. “A hundred percent.”

  “Good,” Alex said as she put the car into gear and pulled away from the FOCSA building’s plaza. “Because we have work to do.”

  Chapter 17

  All Cassandra remembered at first was the sound of thunder, and seeing Nick flop backwards as Lester holstered his gun. Then, everything went black. Now, she blinked against harsh light and lifted her hand to her head. It was pounding.

  She was somewhere soft. Above her, a canopy of sheer, maroon fabric wafted in a warm breeze. There was fabric under her skin as well, and it was soft, and smooth. She could smell food, something cooking, coming in on the breeze.

  With some effort, she pushed herself up, and realized her clothes had changed. She was in a silken shift of some kind; not anything she’d worn before. For a sudden moment she felt terribly exposed, and then violated. Who had changed her clothes? How long had she been out? What else had happened to her.

  A moment later, she realized that she recognized the room. It was one of two on the upper veranda of her Father’s estate, the one overlooking a pool and a wide yard. There was an old adobe grill out there that her father had built after a long trip to Mexico when she was six or seven.

  This was her mother’s room. It had been redecorated—everything except the mural on the wall. Her chest ached, and tears welled in her eyes.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” a voice said behind her, “that I took some liberties with your mother’s old room. I thought it was time to bring it into the modern age.”

  Cassandra whirled, and saw Lester sitting in one of two chairs near a small breakfast table, dressed in a white linen suit, legs crossed at the knee. He looked entirely unperturbed at her sudden fury.

  “Where is my son?” she demanded, voice shaking with the need to scream at him; but even those words resonated in her aching head to the point that she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Yes,” Lester said, “the sedative had to last all the way here, and you needed a second dose. Easier that way, all around. There’s food outside; you’re going to be famished once your head clears. Ramon is down there. I’m happy to take you to him, but take a look for yourself over the balcony.”

  As much as she wanted to kill the man, she worried for her son more. Cassandra turned, and walked carefully to the small balcony outside the great glass doors that let in the breeze and the smell of cooking food. Just as Lester said, Ramon was there in the courtyard, dangling his feet in the pool.

  The need to hold him again almost sent her leaping over the edge of the railing. She staggered back, desperate to control the sobs that wanted to force their way out.

  She turned back to Lester. “Take me to him.”

  “Certainly,” Lester said. He gestured at the wardrobe. “You’ll want to get dressed, of course.”

  Cautiously, as though it might be trapped, Cassandra walked to the wardrobe and opened it. There were clothes inside—from beautiful dresses to complete suits to jeans and tee shirts. She took the drabbest collection she could manage and clut
ched it to her when she glanced at Lester meaningfully.

  “No such luck, my dear,” he said. “I’m afraid you can’t be trusted. Yet. Nothing I haven’t seen before, I assure you. By all means, dress.”

  Stifling a curse, she turned away from him and angled the wardrobe door for what little privacy she could manage, and pulled the jeans on, a shirt down over her head, and managed to get out of the shift without revealing anything.

  When she was dressed, Lester stood and opened the door to the room with a key on his key-chain. So, she was to be locked in a tower after all. She smoldered as she walked past him and into the long hall. The carpet was the same, and again, the walls were still painted that yellow orange of sunrises that her mother had so loved. Everything else was different, though.

  She didn’t need Lester to lead her to the courtyard, so she made her own way with him in tow. When they emerged onto the white concrete slab that abutted the house, Ramon looked up from what he was playing with, and his eyes lit up. He ran to her.

  When she finally had her arms around him, her heart broke. She clutched him to her desperately, and muttered promises to him that she would never let him go. “Mi Mijito,” she cried, “oh, I missed you so, so much…”

  “Is Dad with you?” Ramon asked. “And Grandma?”

  She glanced up at Lester. He frowned, and shook his head.

  “Uh… no, Mijito,” Cassandra told her son. “Not… not yet. Are you okay? Have you been… okay?”

  “Uncle Lester said we could live here,” he said, his excitement cutting Cassandra to the bone. “I have a room with video games, and he said Angus can come and visit!”

  Ramon had no idea Lester was the man who’d been hunting them. What would Lester do if she told Ramon the truth? She decided, for now, not to find out. “That’s…” she couldn’t find a word. Instead she rubbed his head, ruffling his hair.

  “Ramon, buddy,” Lester said, every bit the friendly uncle he had apparently been playing to her son, “I need to talk with your mom a little bit in private, okay? But we’ll come back soon to eat. Almost dinner time, and Miguel there is a cook par excellence, I assure you both.” The man at the grill, upon hearing his name, turned and waved a spatula at them.