Nico (The Mavericks Book 8)

by Dale Mayer

  Somehow though her name had still been associated with it. Another dark stage of her life. Maybe that was the start of when she’d considered not doing many of the rallies. She had certainly slowed back down and cut her schedule by half, but it hadn’t been enough.

  Now she wouldn’t do it anymore. This last trip had finished her. If she’d thought she was done before with rallies, she no longer had any doubts now. If her assistant was associated in any way with this, that was just double the reason to make sure Charlotte completely cut her ties with everything. She thought about all the conversations she’d had with Maggie now, wondering if it was possible that she was related to that boy. Charlotte didn’t know if she was married or had children even. Lord she’d been friends but apparently had kept her back a bit on the friendship level.

  Charlotte remembered a faded indent on her ring finger, as if there were a husband. Or had been a husband. People said things like that all the time to avoid the truth, not because they were trying to hide anything but because they weren’t prepared to deal with the loss and to talk about something that had been recent. So, if Maggie had lost her husband any time in the last year, maybe she wasn’t ready to talk about it. And the same would then apply to children. She definitely looked like the motherly type and should’ve had five or six young lads around her, grown up now with grandkids. But, as far as Charlotte knew, there hadn’t been.

  She walked over to her laptop while everything was working in the kitchen and brought up her notes. She remembered one of the organizers she’d spoken to on that job and quickly brought up any emails pertaining to it. “Andy Noster,” she said. “That was his name. He was a Sydney native.”

  “Spell it?”

  “N-o-s-t-e-r,” she said. “He was eighteen.”

  “We’ll check into it,” they said.

  She nodded and read through a bunch of emails. “The organizers weren’t very happy either,” she said. “They hadn’t expected as many people to attend. The venue itself was too small for that number of attendees, and security had had to be brought in to help control the crowd.”

  “Right. Got it,” Nico said.

  She left him to it now that she had found the email that was bothering her and went back to the kitchen. As she thought about it though, she remembered some talk about him being an only child. She went back to her notes, since she had done plenty of research into his death at the time. And there, staring at her, was something that she hadn’t wanted to contemplate. “He was an only child,” she said.

  “And who’s the mother?”

  “Angela Noster and her husband was Daniel Noster.”

  “So, not a Maggie?” Nico said. “Have you got an image of the mother?”

  Charlotte quickly flicked through, brought up a photo, and then nodded. With a sigh of relief, she said, “It’s not her.” She twisted the laptop so he could see the image of the parents.

  “Good enough,” he said.

  Smiling and feeling somewhat better, she finally left her laptop and went to the kitchen. Of course that didn’t mean that Maggie wasn’t still somehow connected. But chances were good it wasn’t related to the death of that boy. When the pasta water boiled, she added salt and threw in the pasta. She hoped it was enough for four people. She didn’t even know if her brother ate pasta, but it was too late to ask him now.

  She kept sneaking looks at him, surprised—stunned maybe was a better word—to see him sitting here casually with the other two men. And yet he was so at home with this work. After all he’d gone through, he’d grown up into a hell of a man, and all she could remember was that freckle-faced kid who she tried to protect all the time. But he’d had a hell of a temper and always acted out. She’d turned and leaned back against the stove with the pasta bubbling behind her. “Joshua, how did you deal with all that anger?”

  He looked up at her, and the smile that whispered across his face was more sad than happy. “Remember that depressed and suicidal time period I spoke about earlier?”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah, that was my answer when the violence wouldn’t get me where I wanted to go. I got suicidal.”

  “And was it all because of Mom and Dad?”

  “That was a lot of it. It was the loss of the home that we’d had, and then, when I lost you too, I became very violent. Finally I came out of that depressed period. However, realizing that I wasn’t hurting anybody but myself, and nothing was changing, even though I was constantly angry, they put me on a bunch of drugs to help calm me down. I finally stopped taking the drugs, and then I got very depressed again, so they wanted to give me more drugs. And I realized that the drugs weren’t helping me any, so I stopped them. Yet I still hated my life and still hated the fact that our parents were gone, and you were gone, and I was all alone.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I kept asking them where you were and what happened to you and why I couldn’t see you, but I never got any answers.”

  “The foster care system sucks,” he said. “And, when siblings are separated, which they try not to do supposedly, it’s almost impossible to reconnect again.”

  “I agree with that,” she said. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  He stared at her, surprise lighting up his dark eyes. He put his phone down, stood, and walked toward her, then held out his hands. She put hers immediately in his. “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to feel guilty that we were separated.”

  “Too late,” she said, tears choking her throat. “I cried myself to sleep for years. And then I got angry. And then I just became detached. It’s like I put a veil between me and the rest of the world, so I didn’t have to deal with too much of it.”

  “You’ve had a lot of sadness in your life, haven’t you?”

  “And a lot of anger and a lot of emotions I couldn’t deal with,” she said.

  “You married?”

  “Married and widowed. That was a bad deal for him and for me. And more guilt piled in on top.”

  “And you wouldn’t feel as much guilt, except you’re already carrying a lot from our childhood,” he said. “I hope you don’t think you had anything to do with Mom and Dad’s accident.”

  “You know what? I don’t even remember most of the details. I remember it was a car accident, and we survived, and they didn’t.”

  “That’s about the best way to look at it too,” he said. “As far as I understand, it was a collision with a drunk driver. But, other than that, who knows.”

  She smiled. “We could find the files, I suppose, if we cared.”

  “When I went undercover, they were buried,” he said.

  She laughed. “Okay. So apparently I got buried too, didn’t I?”

  “No,” he said. “That was the one part that they just left as a vague disappearance into the foster care system.”

  “We didn’t have anything to do with the accident though, right?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Well, I didn’t even realize I was worried about it. Apparently I was because I feel better now.”

  He smiled and nodded. “Life’s like that,” he said. “You do what you can, but it doesn’t always work out.”

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she said warmly. “Not in these circumstances necessarily, but to know that you’re alive is huge.”

  He tugged her into his arms. She went willingly, and the two just held each other for a long time. She could feel the tears once again choking her throat. She sniffled, stepped back, and said, “I’m so exhausted that I don’t even know if I’m coming or going anymore.”

  “And you will be until this is all finalized,” he said. “But it will get better.”

  “And what will you do now?”

  “Well, I’m done with that job,” he said. “So maybe whatever I get to do next won’t be quite so distant.”

  “That would be nice,” she said. “I’d like to keep you in my life now that I know you’re okay.”

  �
�I would love that.”

  He hugged her again briefly and then stepped back and said, “Are you feeding us anytime soon?”

  She turned, seeing the pasta water heavily bubbling behind her. “Yeah, coming up.” She quickly transferred the defrosted pasta sauce to a pot and warmed it up on the stove the rest of the way as she finished off the pasta. By the time she called out to the men to say that dinner was ready, she had more or less composed herself again.

  With them quickly clearing off the table of laptops and papers and notepads, she got them to set the table, while she dished up their meal. And very quickly they were all sitting down and passing around a big tub of parmesan to sprinkle on top of their pasta sauce. She smiled as she sat down and said, “I can’t remember the last time I cooked for more than myself.”

  “We’ve both been loners,” her brother said.

  “And how sad is that?” she said. “We were lonely growing up, and we ended up as lonely adults.”

  “Well, at least you were married for a few years,” he said.

  “I was, and it was a very special relationship. Tough and emotionally taxing but very special.” She nodded at Nico. “Nico, you ever married?”

  He shook his head. “Nope, not going there either.”

  “Keane?”

  “No, and won’t either.”

  She laughed. “So says you two,” she teased. “Your minds will change someday.”

  “Maybe not,” Keane said. He looked over at Nico. “This guy is ready for marriage though.”

  Nico just looked at Keane and snorted. “Right. With my job?”

  “I don’t think your job makes much of a difference,” she said.

  “I’m always traveling.”

  “Sure, but what you do is important, so the traveling is just part of it.”

  Nico gazed at her a little bit longer than necessary, but such a warm light was in his eyes that she realized they were talking on a completely different level. She immediately dropped her gaze to the spaghetti and started eating. It was her fault for bringing up the subject, but, at the same time, it was also a relief to know that maybe the two of them were on the same wavelength.

  With the rest of the meal put away and the dishes cleaned up, Nico sat back down at the table. He’d been delving into Andy’s death—actually three years ago in Australia—because instinct said this was what Charlotte’s kidnapping was all about. The fact that Maggie wasn’t the mother did not deny a connection was here, and, if there were one, Nico definitely wanted to find it.

  It appeared that Keane had the same idea. He’d asked Miles for a bunch of information from the Australian side too. And everything they’d come up with had said that Andy’s death was an accident. It was hard to foresee something like that. The venue and the organizers had done everything they could to make the rally as safe as possible, but unfortunately something had gone wrong, and the poor kid had died. There had been no lawsuit afterward though. There’d been nothing.

  Which was all good and dandy, but it meant that, if somebody had some festering anger or resentment or blame to lay from that accident, then they’d gone inside with those emotions, not venting them, like to a professional therapist or psychologist or psychiatrist. That was a little more dangerous in some cases. Nico shook his head. “I’m not seeing anything that connects Maggie to the Nosters,” he muttered to Keane.

  “No, and I’m not seeing anything that connects them to her either.”

  “So then what?” Nico asked, sitting back. He glanced at the reunited siblings. They were busy talking and enjoying catching up on the newest and latest in each other’s lives. “I wonder if anybody else was killed or hurt.”

  “I did a search for that, but this was the only serious result. Somebody broke a leg, but it was fixed and fine.”

  “So we keep coming back to this boy.”

  “Yeah. He didn’t have anybody around necessarily who would want to do something like this, taking revenge on Charlotte.”

  “Yet Charlotte’s kidnapping is a pretty major event because of the extra deaths involved,” Keane noted.

  “I see that. I just don’t understand the why of it,” Nico said. “Obviously they were cleaning up so that they didn’t get caught, but how do you avenge one death by killing three more?” Just then his phone went off. He pulled it out and checked the message. He hopped his feet and said, “I gotta phone Miles.” He walked outside and said, “Miles, what’s up?”

  “The prisoner’s talking.”

  “Interesting. And why is that?”

  “He’s scared,” Miles said.

  “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

  “He figures he’s next.”

  “Well, of course he is. That’s pretty easy to determine.”

  “He said that they were hired to do this job.”

  “Right, and?”

  “He seems to wonder now if it was a job that he was hired directly for, or if it was a job that somebody else was hired for, and then they were given the job.”

  “But that makes no difference,” Nico said.

  “No, the only difference is the fact that he never would have worked for this person in the first place.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because he’s basically a mercenary.”

  “So that makes no sense still.”

  “I think our kidnapper’s problem is the fact that, had he known the merc had hired him, he would have realized that the job would be terminal. And he wouldn’t go there because of that.”

  “Ah, so our kidnapper wouldn’t have worked for him in the first place, but now that he realizes who was his ultimate boss, then our living kidnapper knows he is in major trouble.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, what is he offering?”

  “He said an Australian ultimately hired them.”

  “Well, that’s a good start.”

  “Yes, but it’s not enough.”

  “I know,” Nico said.

  “I was basically thinking that we need to keep the search centered on Australia.”

  “I want the search centered on that dead kid,” Nico said. “It’s about the only reason anybody would have something against Charlotte.”

  “You don’t think it’s the brother?”

  “The timing doesn’t completely work,” he said. “We can’t rule it out yet because obviously something else could be going on that we don’t know about, but it seems like a stretch at the moment.”

  “But it seems like a stretch that this kid would have died three years ago, and now they’re finally seeking revenge? Plus whoever hired them would have wanted all these men killed?”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Oh, I did find out one thing though.”

  “What’s that?” Nico asked as he went to hang up.

  “The kid was adopted.”

  At that, Nico froze. “Yeah, so now we need to know who his birth parents were. That could make the difference. I was looking for any connection to Maggie, and I wasn’t finding it. So let’s find that connection there.”

  “And you’re thinking this still has something to do with Maggie?”

  “Let me tell you this,” he said. “My gut says Maggie’s involved. My gut also says that dead kid’s behind it. And now that you’ve told me that he’s adopted, I’m pretty sure this will all make more sense really fast. So, whatever records you need to get into, get into them fast.”

  “On it,” he said. “We’ve got connections inside the Australian government now. Let’s see what we can find.” He hung up.

  Smiling, Nico walked back inside and turned to look at the three of them, who were all watching him. “Well,” he said, “the prisoner’s talking, and he said that he was hired by an Australian. The other thing is that the kid who died was adopted.”

  Immediately Keane’s gaze lit up. “Ah,” he said, and he tapped away at his laptop.

  Whereas she looked at him in surprise and asked, “What difference does that make?” />
  “It makes all the difference in the world.”

  Chapter 12

  Hours later Charlotte had collapsed on the couch yet again.

  Not long afterward one of the men shouted, “Eureka.”

  She wanted to sit up and figure out what he was talking about, but she was just so damn tired that it was hard to move. She wanted to go to bed, but she’d also been the one who held off leaving because she didn’t want to leave her guests down here. And, if something was going on, she didn’t want to miss out on anything. But now that something was going on, it seemed like her body was moving in slow motion to get anywhere.

  When she finally made her way into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes, Nico hopped up and said, “You should just go to bed.”

  “Sure,” she whispered. “I should, but …” She sat down on the chair as he pulled it out for her. She smiled up at him. “Thanks. You’d make a great nurse.”

  Keane snorted at that. “He wouldn’t do it for just anybody.”

  She was surprised to hear that, and she smiled at Nico, who tossed Keane a disgusted look. “He’s just teasing you,” she said gently.

  He glanced at her in surprise. “Now you’re defending him?”

  “I must be having a good moment,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Somebody yelled eureka. What was that all about?”

  “That was me,” Keane said, almost mockingly dancing in his seat in front of her.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “So, will you tell me what that’s all about or just sit there, like a rooster, who knows something nobody else does?”

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” he said, laughing. “But all games aside …” He immediately launched into a discussion. “So the kid who was killed was adopted, and there had been several disputes when he was young between his adopted family and his original family. The adopted family won, and the birth family disappeared from sight.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “I would probably always want to sit there and monitor how he’s doing though.”