by Holley Trent
“Cocky.” Jacques threw his head back, laughing. “You don’t have it in you. You could never do what needed to be done, could you? Not for yourself, your wife…” He cocked his chin toward Felipe. “Your sons. You weren’t even that great of a tightrope walker. Not much of an artist, were you?”
“He’s trying to distract you,” Felipe said. “Keep you from focusing on what’s important.”
Right.
Senior nodded and drew in a breath that didn’t seem to completely fill his lungs. Maybe that was because his lungs weren’t completely there to be filled.
Lightheaded, he slapped a hand down to a nearby table to catch himself before he fell.
Felipe was there with his hands under his armpits to catch him. He whispered, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Senior shook him off, directed what little concentration he had left to the task of reknitting bones and organs, and fixed his gaze on Jacques.
“I would kill you,” Senior said.
He caught a flash of movement in his periphery and stole a glance out the window to see an agent on the ground with his gun’s red light trained on Jacques’s forehead.
“There are more of them,” Felipe said. “On all sides. Bryan’s out there, too. Remember him, or do you not bother learning names? He’s one of the Bears you tried to abduct in western North Carolina. You let your men rough up his little sister. Go ahead and try to run. If the FBI doesn’t shoot you, no one’s going to stop Bryan from eating you. Survival of the fittest and such.”
Senior looked to his son and felt an odd pride. No pacifist there. Not even a little bit. He was as practical as his mother.
Good. It’ll serve him well.
“If anything happens to me,” Jacques said, pulling Senior’s attention back to him. “I’ve got men with explicit orders to raise hell. Plant evidence. Ruin names. You don’t even know where they are.”
“He’s probably telling the truth,” Felipe said. “He’s never been above paying off local law enforcement before, so there’s no telling who he’s got under his thumb.”
Jacques smiled ruefully.
“But…the thing is…” Felipe let down the zipper on his jacket, pulled his shirt down at the collar, and exposed the mic taped to his chest. “With you admitting that, it’ll be very difficult to convince any prosecutor worth his salt to charge anyone who can prove a past affiliation to you.”
That smile leached away, along with most of the blood from Jacques’s face.
“What else do you have?” Felipe asked. “Besides your men on standby? There’s already enough evidence against you to bring you to trial in at least seven countries, so, really, I don’t care what you confess. Like my brother, I’m sick of this whole thing. Die or not, makes no difference to me, as long as you stay the fuck away from what little family I have left.”
Senior was glad that his son could get past it, but he couldn’t.
He needed to hear the words through Jacques’s own lips—for him to confess what he had done. That he’d killed his wife, or at the very least, ordered it done.
But then he looked at that man.
Really looked at him.
The hard lines of his face. The thin, fatless lips. The cold, dead eyes.
He wondered if Jacques really had a soul. He didn’t think he did, and he felt sorry for the man.
Truly sorry that he obviously didn’t have a well of kindness to keep him square and upright through tough times. That he really didn’t care for his fellow man, only his own needs.
He probably hadn’t even cared much about Jacqueline except as a possession.
Goddamned shame.
But, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered now. Jacqueline was gone. Senior’s boys were grown. Perhaps Senior had nothing to show for the past thirty years except a lot of regret, but he had a clear conscience.
Nothing he did to Jacques would matter.
Suddenly, Senior felt light.
Free.
“I forgive you,” he said as his legs gave out beneath him and his sight faded.
Felipe was there, trying to prop him up, but his hands were going right through him.
“Papá, come on. Hold it together.”
“I have to forgive him,” Senior said.
“I don’t need your forgiveness.” Jacques reached into his jacket, and the last things Senior saw before he blacked out were Felipe shuddering, double images of his son that didn’t quite match, and a glimpse of dark bangs over an angry, pretty face.
He heard Jacques scream.
Senior would have smiled if he could.
No, not son. Sons.
Maybe Fabian didn’t want to be there, but he’d probably always follow where that little Shrew went, if not the other way around.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Astrid finally allowed herself to take a deep breath as she helped Dana and Tamara pack up cargo.
They always hoped to have casualty-free encounters. They didn’t quite manage that this time with Senior being in some odd suspended state, but at least they’d all survived. No Shrews were hurt, or any of their lovers.
“Lovers,” she whispered, and scoffed, then dropped a case of unused walkie-talkies onto a handcart. The sooner they got loaded up and on the plane, the sooner she could go home and yell at her brother.
And when she was done with that, maybe she’d get a good night’s sleep, or even several days of sleep in some warm place. She had some vacation time due to her, and Cancun sounded marvelous right about then.
When she got home, she would get to work finding someplace to live. Not just a crash pad to be shared with some other Shrew, but a place where an adult woman could feather her nest. Whether or not she ever had an egg to brood over in that nest could be something she worried about later. It seemed ever doubtful that anyone would want her for that. She’d thought she’d had something with Fabian—and that she’d read pure thought and emotion off of him—but maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe she saw what she wanted to see because she was so desperate for it, and it simply turned out to be a cruel mirage. He and Felipe might have been identical, but she shouldn’t have expected them to be the same.
“Fuck,” Dana muttered.
Astrid looked at the team leader and found her scowling at her cell phone.
“What happened? Another shitty case?” Astrid asked.
“No. We need to get out of here and get Felipe home. Sarah had a check-up today and was apparently contracting all the way through it.”
“She’s been contracting for a while,” Maria said glibly.
Dana pinned her with a dirty look. “You knew that and didn’t say anything?”
Maria shrugged. “She told me not to. I respected that.”
“Fuck. Fair enough. Anyway, the hospital won’t let her leave. They’re going to try to keep that baby cooking a while longer, but the doctors may not have much of a say in the matter.”
“I’m excited to meet that little girl.” Astrid grinned for the first time in what felt like eons as she pushed her cart toward the plane’s loading area. “Can you imagine how fierce she’s going to be? They don’t make cool socks for babies, but I did get her a fabulous onesie. It’s got pink ribbons and combat boots printed on it.”
“I saw that onesie, and knew immediately who bought it,” Felipe said, dropping a couple of canvas duffel bags onto the tarmac.
To say the man looked stressed would have been like saying New York was a sleepy little town.
He shifted his weight, cracked his knuckles, and nudged their equipment closer to the private jet company worker’s reach.
“If Sarah’s not freaking out, you’re not allowed to freak out,” Astrid said.
“That’s exactly why I’m going to freak out. Someone should, and it might as fucking well be me. And somehow we have to transfer my father and explain to someone what’s wrong with him.” He raked his hands through his loose hair and swore vociferously in what sounded like some hodgepodge of Spanish and Fr
ench. It made Astrid renew her drive to learn a foreign language—just so she could improve her swearing vocabulary.
A heavy pair of arms looped over her shoulders.
She started, smiled as she relaxed into the surprising, welcome embrace, and then noticed something wasn’t quite right.
That wasn’t her acrobat’s scent. And his thoughts she gleaned via the slight connection from his naked wrist against her neck weren’t like Fabian’s, either. Fabian’s mind was a beach with gently crashing waves. It was a laidback retreat. This man’s mind was a river rushing over a waterfall—a thrill ride.
She didn’t like it.
She ducked out of the embrace and turned to David.
He had the temerity to grin. “You were going to leave without saying goodbye?” he asked before she could get a word out.
“That had been my plan.”
Felipe stepped in closer, still cracking his knuckles.
David took a step back, his gaze falling to the other man’s hands. Even if he didn’t know the cause of Felipe’s agitation, he read the situation well enough: stay back.
Maybe he thought Felipe was just a protective coworker. It was actually true, but somehow, she knew Felipe wasn’t merely expressing professional concern.
David cleared his throat. “So, that was a crazy take-down Astrid and…” He squinted. “You did it? It was you, wasn’t it? You put down Jacques.”
Felipe’s jaw tensed, and he nodded. “It was both my brother and I. Working together like we used to on the trapezes. We don’t need to talk. We already know what to do. And I’m Felipe. You can’t tell any of us apart, can you?”
“Well, I can tell you apart from your father, though barely, but I don’t think anyone could tell you and your brother apart.”
Astrid could. She’d know which was the right Castillo with just a glance out of one eye.
She scanned the group behind her, all waiting for the equipment to be loaded before they piled onto the waiting plane. They were going home with everyone they’d flown out with, minus one. Fabian was with his father. She hadn’t seen him since he’d climbed up in the ambulance and they’d shut the door on them both.
“Sometimes, I wonder if things would have been much different if all three of us were together all along,” Felipe said. He stopped cracking his knuckles and stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. “Jacques always played the safety of me and my brother off each of us so we didn’t take any risks. We were kept drugged a lot of the time, and we couldn’t phase on a whim like we do now because he kept a psychic on hand who was tuned into the general wellbeing of everyone in the troupe. If she didn’t communicate to him subtle changes that indicated potential of a threat, he’d hurt her. We didn’t want her hurt. She took care of us when we were kids.”
“I don’t think it would have been any different.” Astrid squeezed his shoulder. “Instead of worrying about just one other person, you would have each had two to worry about. Maybe things would have been even worse given the rancor between Jacques and your father.”
“Yeah, well, we won’t have to worry about Jacques again for a while. It’s kind of the FBI to allow the Shrews to monitor him while he’s jailed. So…thank you for that, Marsh.”
“Hey, you guys know more about what that guy is capable of than anyone. If he’s doing anything suspicious while he’s being held, you guys will be able to tell us. Might be able to shake some more names out of his network if he slips up.”
“He’ll slip up,” Dana said, rejoining them. “His ego is too large and he has no conscience. He’s out for himself, so eventually he’ll play the wrong card and put someone else in the line of fire. We’ll get them, too.”
The group floated away as if on cue, leaving Astrid standing with their expensive cargo and David watching her watch the luggage.
She could feel his gaze boring into the side of her face, and endured it for a while. His stare discomfited her. Had he been Fabian, she might have laughed, knowing he was probably thinking something silly. David, though…it was hard to know what a man like him was thinking when he stared at the ex-girlfriend he’d so thoroughly fucked, and not even in good ways.
She threw up her hands and turned to him. “Damn it, David. Don’t you have someplace else to be?”
He shrugged. “My flight’s due out in about an hour. Flying commercial. Government employee and such.” He chuckled, but Astrid didn’t see the humor in the situation.
“Maybe you should be at your gate. You wouldn’t want to miss boarding.”
“I figured we could talk.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Really?” His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “I don’t believe that. I think you have plenty to say.”
“Okay, I recant my statement, then. I could say a lot of things, but I doubt doing so would do me any good, and besides…” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Try me.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“The Astrid I knew would chomp at the bit for a good argument.”
“And I seem to recall that particular predilection, amongst others, were unflattering traits a few years ago. Remember that?”
He didn’t answer.
“Figures.”
She turned back to the plane and watched the loaders haul a crate of guns into the cargo hold. Maybe the Shrews had gone a little overboard with all the weaponry. Dana always said they could never be too prepared, and Astrid tended to agree. What the Shrews lacked in size, they made up for in bullets and attitude.
“I was wrong to do that,” David said.
“To do what? Give me the words and tell me what specific thing you were wrong for, because there were so many.”
He grimaced. “Okay. Fair enough. Look, maybe I had misguided expectations about the way women should behave. I let other people influence me. I honestly believed that you were broken.”
“I wasn’t then, but you successfully took care of that, let me tell you.”
“I’ll never be able to apologize enough.”
“You’re right. You won’t. Perhaps the Castillos are in forgiving moods today, but I’m not. When I was in that hospital dying—when doctors were about to give up on me—all I had was anger and my brother.”
She cringed even thinking about him. She was going to kick his ass clear across the state as soon as she saw him.
She stared at her scuffed sneakers and kicked a small rock on the tarmac. “It was very telling for me, you know, when you didn’t show up at the hospital. You had to have known. Someone would have told you I was there, and maybe even why. But there was nothing from you. Not even a get-well card. That told me everything I needed to know.”
“I was scared.”
“Guess what?” She scoffed. “Me, too. I saw that white light beckoning for me to walk into it a dozen times, maybe, but I refused to just die because I guess I’m too damn stubborn.”
“No, Astrid. I don’t mean that. Though, I’m sorry about that. Really, I am. I mean I was scared of you. Didn’t know how to handle you, and that’s why I signed you up for the study.”
“I didn’t need to be handled. Or changed. There was nothing wrong with me.”
“I know that now. I…see it. The way that guy Fabian talks to you. He’s not scared of you.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m not scary.” Or maybe Fabian had simply seen worse. Now that he didn’t need her, though, he’d probably move on. He had freedom ahead of him and no urgent need to leave the United States. He could go wherever he wanted. Do whomever he wanted, too. She was under no illusions that it’d be her.
“Nah, you’re scary.” David reached out to clasp her shoulder, and this time she didn’t pull away. “I was just wrong before in thinking that was a bad thing.”
Astrid met his gaze and searched his face for a lie, but there was none there. Maybe he was even a little scared. Maybe he always had been and she hadn’t seen it.
“I don’t guess there’
s any hope of us having another go?” he asked. His grin was hesitant. Unsure. Certainly not the cocky smile she’d once been so attracted to.
She shifted her weight.
Weeks ago, she might have considered it with a good-enough apology. She would have felt like she’d brought her biggest foe down to heel.
But now, that wasn’t enough. Pure compatibility was a powerful aphrodisiac. She just hadn’t known what that felt like until she’d met Fabian. She knew what to look for now. What to hold out for, because she didn’t have it with David.
“No, huh?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Coffee sometime, then? I’m down in Raleigh and Charlotte a lot. I’d still love to catch up.”
“I could do that.”
“Good.”
Felipe rejoined them, and though David didn’t exactly look afraid of the man, he dropped his hand from her shoulder. “I’ll call the agency sometime next month to get in touch. I’ve got some training exercises in The Triangle.”
“Cool.”
He backed away, waving, and Felipe sent a nasty glare after him.
“What?” Astrid asked and turned to watch the last of the cargo get loaded into the plane.
“Nothing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Fabian held his breath as his father’s eyelids fluttered and face screwed up in a grimace.
Felipe Senior blew out along breath and opened his eyes slowly as if his body couldn’t quite remember how the process worked. He blinked several times, tested his fingers and toes for movement, and turned his head slightly toward the figure to his left.
“Am I in heaven? Did I die?” he asked Doc when she picked up his hand and turned it over to feel his wrist. “Are you an angel?”
She smiled. “No. You’re not dead. You’ve been in a medically induced coma for the past week. I had to keep you unconscious so you wouldn’t try to shift again while you didn’t have your wits about you. Your boys worried that we were going to lose you.”