“Megan, you need to calm down. We can talk through this, come up with a strategy. If we get out of here and stop this before anything bad happens, I’ll make sure you’re able to see your kids. Carlos can’t keep you from seeing Annie and David.”
She was in full-on freak-out mode. She didn’t register a word I’d said. I moved closer, as did Cristina, but I motioned for her to stand back.
“Hey, Megan, you want to hear a good joke?” Cristina said.
I just shook my head. That certainly wasn’t going to help.
Just as Megan raised the knife, I jumped in and grabbed the arm that held it. She screamed as if I were Freddy Krueger. Then, she dropped her arm downward, ripping it out of my grip. The knife swiped my hand, cutting the webbing between my thumb and fingers.
“Shit!” I jumped backward, holding my hand. Blood guzzled out of the cut.
“Are you okay?” Cristina said, running to my side.
My hand felt like it was on fire.
“Oh…no. Did I do that?” a sniffling Megan asked.
She dropped the knife then, and it clanged off the Travertine floor.
“Do you have a towel or something to stop the bleeding?” Cristina asked.
“My bedroom. Follow me.” Megan darted away faster than I expected in her whacked-out mood.
“Do I need to call for paramedics?” Cristina had a thumb on the screen of her phone.
I looked at the cut. No severed tendons or ligaments that I could detect. I could move my thumb, even if it felt like I’d been stung by a thousand wasps. “No. If we call them, cops will show up and ask too many questions. Megan will get arrested. She might go to jail. I’m fine.”
“Right, says the woman with a fountain of blood cascading off her hand.”
Cristina’s face was contorted into such a grimace I could barely see her eyes.
“You’re not helping,” I said as blood dripped to the floor. I looked to the bedroom. “Want to see what’s taking Megan so long?”
Cristina shuffled away, then kicked the knife by accident. “Crap!”
“Get that out of sight.” She bent down to pick it up, but another thought hit me. “Wait. Don’t touch it. Your prints will be on it.”
“You planning on pressing charges against her or something?”
“Cristina, we still don’t know what the hell has gone on here. Find something to pick it up and put it someplace.” She ran toward the kitchen, grabbed a handful of paper towels. She gave a bunch to me, which I used to wrap my hand. She used a couple of spare paper towels to grab the knife.
“Just don’t let her find it,” I said, holding my hand up to minimize the blood flow.
“Right.” She moved two feet in every direction, then found a closet. She opened the door and placed the knife on the floor. “Good for now.”
“Let’s go find Megan.” The mound of paper towels was almost completely crimson already. I needed a regular bath towel, or maybe two, to get the blood flow in check.
Two steps into the master bedroom, I stopped.
“What kind of fucking tornado hit this place?” Cristina said.
The bedroom was in shambles. Clothes were thrown everywhere. Pictures and cologne and other knickknacks that had probably been on the dresser or side tables had been knocked to the floor; some of the framed pictures were shattered.
I took a few more steps into the room; it was hard not to step on something. Then my eyes went to the bed. The mattress had giant slashes in it. But it was the red against the white sheets that made my pulse skip a beat.
“What the…?” Cristina said. “Wait. Do you smell something?”
I ignored her. “Megan. Where are you?”
I walked toward what I assumed was the bathroom. Megan shuffled out before I got there. “I’m sorry…” She was holding a towel in one hand, but her eyes were on the item in her opposite hand. A sheer, black bra. It was rather obvious it wasn’t hers.
45
Cristina ran over, gently plucked the towel from her hand, and gave it to me. I handed her the soaked paper towels.
“Thanks,” she said, holding the wad as if it were the tail of a rat. She moved past Megan, looking for a trash can in the bathroom.
I wrapped my hand while approaching Megan. “I’m so sorry, Megan.”
She blinked a few times, but said nothing. I glanced at the bed. “Megan, where is Carlos?”
“At work, I guess. Or maybe he and his slutty whore are at some hotel room.”
I released a deep breath. “So why are the sheets red?”
She lifted her chin. “It’s ketchup.”
Cristina walked out of the bathroom. She was wiping her bloody fingers on her shirt. “Told you I smelled something.”
We ignored her. I had no idea why she’d used ketchup, but now wasn’t the time to ask her questions about her methods of displaying her anger and pain. I was just thankful she had calmed down. She looked at my hand.
“Ivy, I don’t know what to say. I think I just…lost it.”
“You been drinking again?”
“Yes, I had a few drinks, but I stopped before I went overboard. Three shots of vodka to an old pro like me…that’s like peeing into the ocean.” She cackled so loudly I put a hand to my ear, but I smiled along with her. Anything to lighten the mood.
“Do you think we need to clean up before we get out of here?” I asked, but she had already fallen back into a trance. She walked across clothes and torn sheets and a busted radio clock. Then she dropped to her knees. She pulled a card from a pile of trash.
“I only came home so I could try to feel close to my family, mostly to Annie and David. But this note…this is what I found on the table next to the bed.
I walked over as she read it aloud.
My dearest Carlos,
Not only are you the kindest man I’ve ever met, but you are the rock of my life – in more ways than one. J I love you with all of my heart – and every other body part. I can’t wait to have you between my legs again. Even if I have to share you, I will always be there for you.
Yours forever,
xoxo
Megan dropped her chin to her chest, her arms falling to her side. I could feel her pain ripple through the air, as if an aftershock had pummeled my chest. “I’m so sorry, Megan.” I put my good hand on her back. “We’ll help you clean up, and then we can leave. He’s going to know you were here when he sees the mattress, but I’ll help you find a lawyer. Just know that you’ll be able to see your kids. Cling to that thought for now, and it will get better.”
Cristina began to place items back on the tables, and after a few minutes, Megan even helped with the effort. The purple towel wrapped around my hand was a darker color on one part, but it felt like the bleeding had stopped. I held it upward and did what I could to help.
Megan stopped and looked at me, the one-armed bandit. “I have some bandages in the cabinet above the toilet. Let me get those for you.”
“That’s okay. I can do it. You can tell Cristina where everything should go.”
I walked into the bathroom, opened the cabinet above the toilet. I grabbed a basket of bandages, resting it on the toilet seat. I removed the towel, washed off my hand—nearly biting through my lip as the water poured into my open cut—then dried it off, applied bacitracin, and put on three bandages. I could hear some banter from the other room. It seemed low-key, which allowed me to relax a little, even though my hand was still hurting like hell. My webbing was now held together with adhesive and bandages. I couldn’t move it without reopening the cut.
As I placed the basket in the cabinet, I spotted the edge of a photograph sticking out from under a folded hand towel. This wasn’t my house, and I didn’t want to be nosey, but given the note that Megan had just read, I pulled out the picture.
I stopped breathing. It was a picture of a man and woman…naked, intertwined. It was Carlos…more of him than I wanted to see. As for the woman, I could only see her from the rear, so to speak.
She had shorter brown hair and a full figure. I looked in the cabinet and lifted the towel all the way and found five more pictures. I thumbed through them, then stopped on the last one. “What the hell?” I whispered. This photo was different. It was Carlos with a woman, but not the same one in the other pictures. She had a similar body type and hair color, but a few more curls. The pair was in the same basic position. She had a small tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it on her lower back. “A tramp stamp.” I stuffed two of the photos in my jeans.
My sixth sense told me there was more to this than just a guy going through some type of crisis, or reacting to Megan’s crisis. And I had to find out what it all meant.
46
Zeke locked his apartment door, then peered through the peephole for a few seconds. A middle-aged mom sauntered by in a bikini that likely hadn’t fit ten years earlier, much less now. A little girl wearing sunglasses that covered half her face bumped against her mom’s hip every few steps. Neither seemed to notice or care as they both giggled intermittently while staring at their phones.
He felt a prick at the base of his skull. For a brief moment, he wondered if there was any way that the clueless mom could be one of them. Normally, he would roll his eyes and move on. But he couldn’t take any chances, not after Armand’s murder. He quietly pulled the door open a couple of inches and watched the mom and daughter until they got on the elevator at the far end of the hall.
He exhaled heavily as he locked the door again. He tossed his Texas Rangers cap and sunglasses on the bed—he’d used a Toronto Blue Jays cap when north of the border. He had little time to pull everything together. And even then, he knew that the odds that someone would be killed—someone very dear to his heart—was all too real.
As he grabbed his duffel bag from the closet, he felt a pang deep in his gut. Thoughts of his two kids filled his mind. His little boy’s first birthday, when he’d tossed birthday cake around like he was playing in a sandbox. His sweet baby-teeth smile and infectious giggle were etched in Zeke’s soul.
As for his daughter, he always went back to that time when she had played a game of cat-and-mouse with a squirrel in the backyard. He had stood on the back porch and watched as she gave instructions to the attentive little animal. It went on for a good couple of minutes, and then the squirrel darted out of its stance and started chasing her. She screamed at a pitch that would rival any opera singer as she scrambled around the yard. Zeke had waited to see if her true personality would show itself. A moment later, she came upon a stick. She grabbed it off the grass, quickly turned around, and demanded the squirrel start to behave. The squirrel wanted no part of her and took off for the nearest tree. She then proceeded to stand under the tree and give the squirrel a nice long speech.
Zeke whispered to himself at the memory, “Oh, Mandy, just like your mother.”
Eva. Their attraction had been instantaneous and full of fire. What he didn’t know early on was that her red-hot passion wasn’t reserved just for their love life. She wanted things done a certain way…all of the time. She was very particular about how the kids were raised, what they were exposed to. At first, he admired his wife for these traits. But after a while, the two of them began to butt heads, and neither had the propensity to back down. Instead of uniting and bonding over the kids’ various milestones, they tended to experience those events individually. He knew that over time it would create a chasm in their relationship. And it had.
Theirs was what one would call a loveless marriage. And it didn’t help that he spent a majority of his time on the road, away from home. She resented him for it. He’d told her early on that his career, his calling, required him to be on the move. While it pained him every day to not see those little changes in his kids—the first tooth to fall out, the first hit in baseball, the first starring role in a school play—the wedge in his relationship with his wife grew wider.
But that didn’t mean that Eva deserved to die.
He walked into the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and chugged until it was empty. Over the years, his line of work had involved a certain level of risk. At times, those risks came to fruition, whether it was on behalf of one of his clients, or when he’d had to take matters into his own hands. Yes, he’d been forced to perform certain acts that most would call reprehensible. But in his mind, the end result was far better than living with the status quo. Society as a whole was better for it.
Or so he’d convinced himself.
While he had no death wish, he also never truly concerned himself with being killed. His skills, both physical and mental, were advanced. He’d accepted this way of life long ago, knowing peril could be right around the corner. He did so because that was the way his father had taught him. In some respects, he believed he was only carrying on the family mission. But he knew his genetic makeup was slightly different. His propensity to take on assignments that brought him face to face with the most vicious and repugnant humans on the planet had, at times, even made his stomach queasy. But it never made him flinch. And it never led to him walking away.
He filled his glass once again, his eyes glaring out the window into the endless blue San Antonio sky. There was nothing serene or calming about it. Not today. Not with what lay before him.
He’d done everything in his power to shield his family from his way of life. Dual citizenship, changing names…essentially living a hidden life. All for Mandy and Ryan, and yes, even Eva.
And then there was Zahera. An exotic beauty who, at times, had taken his breath away. But the relationship, he hated to admit, had been born out of necessity. One that gave him the appearance of a life in San Antonio and, when necessary, a new woman on his arm when traveling, whether that be to his beloved Toronto or to other locales.
And Zahera certainly knew how to fill out a bikini in the perfect way.
He slammed his glass to the counter and thought more about the brutal death of Zahera’s father. He had miscalculated the breadth and depth of Udovenko’s organization. He’d been told that they had just begun penetrating the fertile US market. But it was apparent that Udovenko—even if it was through his proxy, Sergey—had developed a foundational structure in this country that allowed him to attain information and then quickly carry out certain tasks in a bold and definitive manner.
Thinking about the grief and despair he’d seen from Zahera since they both had learned Armand had been run over, he shuddered. Her pain had been one of the most difficult things he’d ever witnessed. It had chipped away a piece of his heart to know that Udovenko had killed Armand to simply make a point.
He had incorrectly assumed that San Antonio, the smallest big city in the US, would be so far off the grid that neither Udovenko nor his right-hand man, Sergey, would have any knowledge of his existence in the southwest. He had been wrong, in the worst way. The drug traffickers apparently had contacts that were far-reaching, their tentacles in every agency. He knew how they thought. Because they deemed him untrustworthy, they had sacrificed a life. A way to drive home a cautionary point: if you fuck with us, we will not hesitate to kill those who are close to you.
But was it a one-time warning, or would the killing continue? That was what Zeke did not know. He’d not predicted this last move by Udovenko’s demented team. The real question came down to this: did they still view Zeke as a necessary asset in propelling their trafficking operation—drugs and now child body parts—to the next level? If so, then it was likely that they would halt their retribution. For now.
That was what Zeke was counting on. Just a few hours. That was all he needed. It would still require a certain amount of luck. And he might have to kill…again. But if he could save his family, it would be worth it. And he wasn’t about to let Zahera perish just because he’d simply used her.
He would use the half-million dollars Sergey had already given him to set up his family in a location no one would find. He had hoped to get the full four million before executing this plan, but he had to settle for the lower sum for now. Most
importantly, if he could get the required help, his family would be safe forever. He would likely remain on the run. But he’d worry about that later.
For now, he had two calls to make. The first was to a man he would trust with his life even on the darkest of days—this would solidify the plans for his family. The other call would set his strategy in motion. He knew that could be one of his final tasks on this earth, if it didn’t go off without a hitch. And recently, nothing seemed to go according to plan. But he saw no other way. He grabbed his phone and punched in the first number.
47
I dropped off Megan and Cristina at my apartment. As the pair got out of the car, I signaled for Cristina to drop her head into the passenger-side window. I told her she had one primary task: make sure Megan stayed sober and didn’t leave her sight.
“I think I can handle that. She slept most of the way over here. She’ll probably just conk out on your couch.”
I put a hand to my chin. “Hey, I think I have a bottle of wine in the cabinet next to the fridge. When she isn’t looking, hide it. Or better yet, just dump it down the sink or the toilet.”
“Sure thing.” She stepped away from the car, and I put my hand on the gearshift.
“Hey,” she said, suddenly back at the window. “What if the cops show up to arrest her for breaking into her old home and slicing up the mattress?”
We’d been able to clean up most of the mess, but we didn’t have time to purchase a new mattress. And I couldn’t be certain there weren’t drops of blood—my blood— somewhere on the floor or in a sink. The towel and paper towels were in a trash bag in the trunk of my car.
“I’m a little nervous for Megan,” Cristina said, with a quick check of our client over her shoulder. “I mean she broke a court order. She could get arrested, taken to jail. It might send her over the top again.”
The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Page 45