by Eve Langlais
The guilt.
It didn’t assuage it one bit that she’d drawn him into that life. She’d married a gang leader. As her brother, he was drawn into that world, and when the abuse began, he took his sister out of it.
Unfortunately, it didn’t end well. Killing Agneaux didn’t bring back his sister or his nephews.
Almost two decades later, and he still dwelled on it.
Wondered what things in Meredith’s life had made her into a spy and probably a killer.
He sighed as his mind went back to her. He left the room, pathetically hoping he’d see her. Maybe she’d gone to get them coffee or breakfast. Perhaps she was an early morning jogger.
He made it to his car without seeing anyone but staff. Got home after stopping to eat. The food was bland, and his mind was definitely elsewhere.
Gerome greeted him at the door, but Hugo could only grunt when asked, “How was your night?”
The night was good. The morning could have used a do-over.
And then it got worse.
The agents of KM barged into his office with Carla leading the way. The group of them were dressed to kick some athletic ass. Yoga shorts and capris, snug tanks, hair in ponytails with thunderous expressions.
“Where is she?” Carla bellowed.
“Excuse me?” Hugo looked away from his laptop, not startled at all given he’d seen their arrival on the cameras. “Where is whom?”
“Don’t play dumb. Meredith. Ariel. Whatever you want to call her. She’s missing.”
His brows pulled together. “Well, she’s not here.”
“Says you.”
“Yes, says me.”
Carla huffed.
“You spent the night with her.” Stated by the blonde. She tapped her phone. “Hotel surveillance footage shows you entering her room yesterday and not leaving until this morning.”
“It shows me leaving alone.”
“Because you hired someone to do your dirty work,” Louisa accused.
“Are you all insane? We slept together. Nothing more. If she’s missing this morning, then maybe it’s because she had an appointment.”
“She would have told us,” Audrey interjected.
“Damned straight, she would have. We know she was kidnapped.”
“Not by me,” he stated.
“If you don’t have her, then you won’t mind if Louisa and Audrey take a peek around,” Carla challenged.
“Knock yourselves out.” He waved a hand, and off the women went. “She’s not here, though. And I don’t know why you automatically assumed I kidnapped her.”
“We know you had an accomplice. We saw her with him.”
“Are you talking about Gerome? Because I am pretty sure I can vouch for the fact that he didn’t. How long has she been gone?”
“No one has seen her since the crack of dawn.”
The words made his blood run cold. It was late morning now. “Maybe she’s at the spa?”
That got him a snort. “Just because we’re women, doesn’t mean we spend our days getting pampered.”
“Just because she’s missing, don’t assume that the last man she slept with did it,” he snapped right back.
“Did you have her killed?” Carla accused.
“For what? Now you’re being ridiculous.” Hugo started drumming his fingers on his desk. “I would never kill her.”
Left unsaid was: “as long as she didn’t deserve it.” Hugo wasn’t one to let a little thing like death stop him from doing what was necessary.
“Am I being ridiculous? You were pretty pissed when you found out who she was. Maybe you wanted revenge.” Carla leaned low and hissed the words.
“My idea of revenge is bankrupting people and then buying their prized possessions for nothing.” He’d started doing it after he realized just how much his crimes hurt the innocent. The death of his sister turned him into a hunter. He went after the bad people and used their ill-gotten gains to do good. To his surprise, it proved more profitable than a life of crime.
“Ugh, now you sound like Tanya. Why kill them when you can drain their 401Ks and flag them at the IRS for life?” Carla’s voice pitched to mimic her friend.
“You say that now, but who did you call when they tried to audit you because you decided to claim ammo on your form?” Tanya huffed.
“I wasn’t lying. I needed those bullets for work.” Carla shrugged.
“Can we get back to Meredith? What makes you think she’s missing? Maybe she just wanted some time alone. Has anyone checked the hospitals?”
“Already done. She hasn’t been seen since she hitched a ride on that golf cart with that guy.”
“What guy?” he asked. “If he was the last one to see her, then why aren’t you questioning him?”
“We tried. Only we can’t find him because he’s not an employee. Obviously, some kind of hired thug,” Carla mused aloud with an accusatory glare in his direction.
“For fuck’s sake, he doesn’t work for me.” Hugo snorted. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Gerome is my man when it comes to special jobs.”
A knock at the door had them looking to see Marie stepping inside. “Ladies. I thought we weren’t going to bother Mr. Laurentian anymore.”
“Merry’s missing. We think he did something.” Carla jabbed a finger in Hugo’s direction.
“For the last fucking time, no, I didn’t.” His patience eroded.
“He’s telling the truth.” Marie held up her phone. “Which you would know if you’d investigated instead of going off half-cocked.”
“What did you find?” Tanya asked.
“Proof it wasn’t him. Time to leave, ladies.”
“I’ll go find Louisa and Audrey to let them know,” Tanya said, leaving the office.
“What kind of proof?” Hugo asked.
“Nothing you need to worry about. Sorry to have bothered you.” Marie went to take her leave, but he stood and barked, “Sorry won’t cut it. I am involved, and I want to know what’s going on. Where is Ariel? I mean, Meredith.”
“I don’t know where she is at the moment, but according to the latest report, she was last spotted being dumped into the trunk of a car about a mile from the resort.”
“What? We have to find her,” he exclaimed.
“Meredith is our top agent. If anyone can escape and look good doing it, it’s her,” Carla stated, showing she paid attention despite watching something on her phone.
“Except she doesn’t remember that she’s an agent!” he snapped, realizing in that moment the truth: she truly had lost her memory.
“We are aware and will handle it. This isn’t your problem anymore,” Marie stated.
“I am making it my problem,” he growled.
“Why? You’ve made it clear you think she’s a liar and couldn’t wait to give her the bum rush.” Carla once more didn’t give him any quarter.
The KM operative glared at him, and he resisted the urge to fidget.
“Why does it matter what I think? Once you find her, it’s not like we’re going to see each other again.” A thought he didn’t actually like.
“You’re right, you’re not, because you’re obviously not good enough for her,” Audrey said with a sniff as she returned with the others.
“We should have let her marry him and then iced his ass,” Louisa replied. “Can you imagine getting this place to vacation?”
“It would make a nice honeymoon spot,” Carla mused. “Question is, do we kill him before or after the ceremony? Philip might notice.”
“We are not killing Hugo,” Tanya declared. “Even if he is a jerk where Merry is concerned.”
“And to think, this jerk was going to offer the use of his toys if you needed them in a rescue.”
“What kind of toys are we talking about?” asked Audrey.
“Fast and expensive ones.”
There was a collective oohing.
“No more fast toys for you,” Marie said with a shake of her finger at Audrey.<
br />
“Ha. You got told,” Carla crowed.
“Is now the time to tell Mother you were puking this morning.”
That brought an excuse. “I ate something that was off.”
“You’re pregnant,” Audrey declared.
“We don’t know that for sure yet.”
“Until we do, I think you should be grounded from going fast, too,” Marie said with a pointed frown at both women.
“Thanks a lot, tattletale,” Carla muttered.
Before things devolved further, Hugo interceded. “Does Meredith have a tracking device?”
“We don’t chip our agents,” Marie retorted hotly.
“It might be an idea, though,” Tanya mused aloud.
Hugo paced behind his desk. “Since the person who took her did so under false pretenses, it will be more difficult to track him.”
“We’re running his image through our databases to see if we get a hit,” Tanya remarked.
“Should run it through Laurentian’s personnel file, too,” Louisa suggested.
“Go right ahead. I’ve nothing to hide. I’m more concerned that we might not succeed, or it will take too long. There must be a better way to figure out who took her before they kill her.”
“Why would they kill her?” Marie sounded surprised by the very idea. “She’s no use as a hostage if she’s dead.”
“Hostage for what?” Hugo couldn’t help but sound genuinely confused.
“In exchange for you.”
He blinked. “Me? What makes you think this is about me?”
“Why else take Merry?”
“Because she works for you. Maybe this is a KM shakedown.”
“Seems more likely the perp knows you’re lovers.”
Lovers. Hardly. They’d fucked. Epically. But more than that…he wasn’t ready for anything more, was he? Then why did it bother so much that she was gone? “Are you sure it’s about me and not her? What about the attacks? The attempts on her life?”
Blank expressions met him. “What attacks? She never said anything to us,” Marie said slowly.
He quickly told them of all the incidents, and by the end of it, Carla was pacing and cursing. “Fuck, this changes everything. If someone targeted her directly, then this is personal.”
“Think someone from a former mission recognized her?” mused Audrey aloud.
“Could be. Or someone ordered a hit because she foiled some plot. There was that thing with the Russians a few months ago.”
Russians? Missions? The Ariel he thought he knew grew more complex by the minute. And if he was truthful, more intriguing, too.
“We need something more concrete than possibilities,” he growled.
“If this is vengeance, could be they’ll take her off the island given we’ve never worked here before. I’ll check the airlines,” Audrey declared, moving away with her phone.
“I’m going to see what surveillance systems in the city and other resorts I can hack into to run facial recognition software on their feeds,” Tanya offered.
The others began cross-referencing the island with names gathered during former missions.
Whereas he pulled up the file compiled by the Killer Moms on him. He read it front to back.
Nothing jumped out. “This has nothing in it. I want to see your file on Ariel.”
“Why?” Marie asked.
“Because maybe there’s something in there that an outsider will spot. After all, if the person is on this island, I’m more likely to recognize them than you.”
“Her basic info won’t help you,” Marie said.
“I’m not asking for the basics. Give it all to me.”
Marie’s lips pressed into a tight line. “She won’t like it. There are very personal things in her file. Events no one should know about.”
“You really think I’m going to talk?” He arched a brow.
“If you do, then I think you understand the consequences.” Marie tapped the screen of her phone. “I’m air-dropping it to you now. Keep in mind the file cannot be shared or copied.”
“And will self-destruct when I’m done. I get it,” was his reply as it landed on his screen.
He read it and found himself more fascinated than expected. The woman born as Anita Whittaker did not have an easy life. Born in poverty, a victim of violence at home, then later on, domestic abuse. It could have ended badly for her, especially once she killed the bastard who’d hit her.
Hugo never could abide a man who hit a woman.
Anita turned a difficult life around. Kind of like him. They had more in common than he would have believed.
It was by accident that he stumbled upon the clue.
“She was married to Hector Gonzalez?” Hugo asked suddenly.
“A few years ago, why?” Marie immediately replied.
“Because just before Hector died, I acquired most of his business assets.”
“Hostile takeover?” Tanya asked.
“Very. And the son wasn’t happy. Claimed I’d stolen his inheritance.”
“Wait, I remember this. Wasn’t the kid in jail?” Carla exclaimed aloud.
It took Tanya but a moment to dig up the information. “Hector Gonzalez Jr. was incarcerated for fraud when his father died. He contested the will the moment he was sprung, but it went nowhere. Merry inherited it all.”
“Meaning Hector has reason to hate both Ariel and me.” A motive to hurt them.
In moments, there was silence and furious key clicks as they sought information on Hector Jr.
They began to shout out their findings, “One Hector Gonzalez Jr. moved to the Bahamas about six months ago.”
“According to financials, Hector Jr. has a few toys and a cool eleven mill sitting in the bank.”
“And he’s single,” Audrey announced.
“Holy shit, you won’t believe this but—”
“Hector is the one who put out the hit on me,” Hugo said, interrupting Carla. “Meaning, he probably was the one going after Meredith, too. The question is, where is he?”
It didn’t take long to pull a list of places Hector had been seen. A rental condo in the city, and a yacht. A quick phone call to the marina revealed that the boat had left its slip earlier that day.
Find the vessel, and they’d probably find Meredith. Hopefully, alive. He took it as a good sign that she had been taken rather than just shot.
“Which of my toys should we take to find him? Helicopter or speedboat?” he asked.
It turned out they wanted both.
They just didn’t want him along.
“Thanks for your help, but we’ve got it from here,” Carla stated.
“I should—”
“What?” Carla asked, standing toe-to-toe with him. “It’s not like you’ve got a personal stake when it comes to Merry.”
“Now, Carla, we don’t know his intentions,” Tanya said, kind of siding with him.
“No intentions. I just want to make sure she’s safe.”
“We’ll send you a text,” she announced, the wind of the rotor blades tugging the strands of her hair. Louisa and her girlfriend Rosy had already taken off in the boat. Tanya sat at the controls of the chopper. Portia, as co-pilot, gestured to Carla, who got permission to go if she promised not to get into an actual fight. Audrey and Marie would form a mobile command post.
They took off to save Meredith without him. Hugo could have walked back into his office and gotten drunk. What did he care? Whatever happened next was out of his control. They’d either find her or they wouldn’t. Not his problem. They were equipped to handle hostage situations.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about her. How she’d called him her hero. He’d saved her how many times? What if she needed him to save her again?
His phone chimed. A text message from an unknown number. It had an address he recognized and a simple message. I have your girlfriend. Be here by six, or she dies.
In that moment, he realized how much her safety and wellbeing matte
red to him. “Motherfucking bastard!” he yelled. Seething, the art on his wall narrowly avoided getting tossed to the floor and stomped. He needed to vent. To act. But rushing wouldn’t help either of them.
Think.
Hector obviously wanted him to walk blindly into a trap. The idiot chose the wrong man to mess with.
Emerging from the house, he found Gerome waiting by the Porsche. He handed Hugo his holster, then a jacket to cover it. He took one look at Hugo’s face and declared, “I’m driving.”
Rather than argue, Hugo said, “Take us to the old sugar factory.”
Because, apparently, Hector had decided to have his little showdown at the company property that used to be family-owned for generations until Hugo took it at auction after forcing it into foreclosure.
The sun beat down mercilessly as they drove. He’d already sent message to KM and wondered who would get there first. The helicopter ran into turbulence and had to land. The boat started its search in the opposite direction.
It was up to him
The luxury car slowed to a creep past the rusted gates. He’d already dropped Gerome a quarter-mile away. Let Hector Jr. think he’d come alone.
Slowing even further, Hugo eyed the construction zone comprised of skids of wood, a large waste bin, and a dingy trailer they kept locked at all times. Hector and family might have neglected the company that made their family famous, but Hugo planned to restore the old factory with some modern improvements. Once it opened, it would create jobs and real money, not the fake stuff previously laundered.
The lagoon flowing past the factory held a ship bobbing at a dock.
The urge to pull his gun hit Hugo the moment he left his car. But he didn’t want to seem too threatening. He cautiously approached. For all he knew, Hector Jr. had a scope trained on him and would shoot.
He counted on the fact that the guy would want to vent or gloat. Why else send him a text? If he wanted him dead, then a sniper could have done the job.
The ship appeared eerily silent, bobbing gently. No one on deck. Nor any voice to greet him—which made the sudden rocking and thumping startling. There was a yell. More banging.
What happened? Grabbing the ladder bolted to the side, he climbed aboard the ship, swinging himself onto the deck, a quick glance at the wheelhouse showing it empty. The stairs going down were narrow and put him at a disadvantage. Gun in hand, he tripped down and emerged into a lounge with a body on the floor. Across the room from it, Ariel sitting on a table, looking rumpled but uninjured.