by Meghan March
“Fuck,” I say with a grimace, but Trey looks hopeful.
“Even if he’s erased everything from his past and all connections to his brother, we have to be able to get something with facial rec. People don’t realize how many times a day they’re caught on cameras. I’ll find him.”
“I know. Keep looking, whatever it takes. I’m assuming Jules told you how we found Desiree at Magnolia’s old house.” I glance at Jules as he and Trey both give me a short nod. “So you know what we’re facing if we don’t end this. I’m not taking any chances with her. No fucking way.” I hate adding pressure when they’ve both been working night and day on this, but I’m hanging on by a thread.
“I hear you, Moses. I’m on it. Facial rec is going to take a while,” Trey says. “I’m hoping I’ll have something in the morning.”
“Then we take this fucking asshole out. I want this done and behind us—in hours, not days. I’m sick of him having the upper hand.”
“I’ll find something. He’s going down,” Trey says decisively, and all I can do is hope like hell that he’s right. Because this isn’t how we normally roll. We’re always the ones with information, and we’re the ghosts.
With determination in my every step, I leave Trey and Jules and head back to the suite where hopefully Magnolia is relaxing. I’m ready for my woman and a bed.
When I enter the room, though, I find her setting up chess pieces on the board I brought with us atop a table in the living area. She saw me pack it earlier, and I suppose decided to put it to use. Works for me.
She looks up, a knight in her hand, when I close the door. “I wondered when you’d come back. I thought maybe you got lost, because trust me, it’s definitely a possibility in this place.”
I cross the room, my feet sinking into the thick carpet beneath them, and pull her into my arms. “Doesn’t matter if it’s a maze, I’ll always find my way back to you, mama. That’s one thing I can guarantee.”
“Just don’t take fifteen years to do it again, and we’ll be fine.”
My chest rises and falls with a silent chuckle. “Duly noted.” I gesture to the chess piece in her hand. “You want to play a game before we crash?”
“Yeah. I thought it might help take our minds off everything going through them right now. It’ll be good for us.”
Her features show no signs of the stress she’s under. At least, not unless you know what you’re looking for. I recognize the burden in her eyes, and I’m certain she’s thinking about what happened to Desiree. I don’t like it at all.
“We’ll play all night, if it’s what you want.”
She lets her forehead rest against my chest for a few moments. “Thank you. And thank you for not telling me what happened. As much as I want to know, I really don’t. I’m not sure I can handle it.”
I curl my hand around the back of her head and stroke her silky black hair. “Hush. You’ve got no need to carry that.”
When she’s gathered her composure again, she steps away, and her whiskey eyes look slightly less haunted. I take the knight from her hand and place it on the board where it belongs.
It only takes us thirty seconds to set up the rest of the pieces. She sits in the chair behind the white side, and I take the black. We’ve always switched places for each game, and I remember very clearly the last game we played, and she was the black.
“You remember too,” I say softly.
Her gaze cuts to me. “Remember what?”
“Our last game. You were black. I was white.”
A cheeky grin tips her rosy lips. “And I almost . . . almost let you win.”
My jaw slackens at her confession. “You did no such thing, woman. You weren’t letting me win. I almost had you. If I recall, I beat you good a few times those last couple of days.”
Her smile is secretive enough to give the Mona Lisa a run for her money. “Are you sure about that?”
I scoot my chair closer to the table and rest my elbows on it. “I’ve been practicing for fifteen years. I’m ready. Bring it.”
Nineteen
Magnolia
I threw down the gauntlet, and I did it on purpose. I need this game to suck me in and take all my concentration, because my mind is not my friend tonight.
I should have known that sitting across from Moses at a chess board would be all it would take to tame my frazzled thoughts. With him on the other side of the table, there’s nowhere else my brain can go. Between him and the game in front of me, they take up all my attention, which is exactly what I was hoping for.
We’re six moves in when Moses pauses before reaching for his piece. “We didn’t even wager. I think that was an oversight.”
While the game is the perfect distraction, our back-and-forth shit-talking is one of my favorite parts. “You think you’re going to win, big boy? That’s why you want to wager now, isn’t it?”
“Well, smartass, that is one reason,” he says.
I let my chuckle loose, because I love how he smiles when he hears me laugh. Why didn’t I ever notice that before?
“Then place your bet, Moby. I’ll be happy to win whatever you’re putting on the line.”
His green-gold eyes flash, and I have a feeling I’ll love whatever it is.
“When I win, you let me take you on a vacation as soon as this is done. No questions asked. You just pack a bag and get on a plane with me.”
I lean back in my chair and appraise him. Admittedly, I’m shocked by the wager. “And I’m supposed to be trying to win this game?”
His grin is quick and wide. “If you win, I’ll let you pick the place. We’ll go wherever you want, mama.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” I tell him, stretching across the table to shake on it.
He reaches for my hand, but instead of shaking it, he lifts it to his lips for a kiss.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For what?”
“Giving me a second chance. No matter how determined I was, I needed you to give it to me, and I’ll always be grateful you did. And that you didn’t toss me out on my ass when I dragged my feet on telling you the full truth about how we met.”
I think for a moment before I reply, studying his face. I see the sincerity in his eyes, hear the affection in his words. And the promise they both deliver.
“I was pissed as hell when I first saw you, because I thought it was so easy for you to forget about me, and that’s why you never came back. I hated that you’d moved on, but I never could truly put you behind me.”
He shakes his head. “No. That wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t fucking easy being away from you. Not a single day. It almost fucking killed me at times. You’re an incredible woman, Mags. And it didn’t take long for me to realize I was never going to find another one like you. You’re one of a kind.”
“I want a baby,” I blurt out suddenly.
I don’t know why I said it, but it’s the truth. Maybe because I’ve always wanted a child of my own, but it seemed impossible. Like a pipe dream. And if there’s a chance he’s serious about a family, I refuse to waste any more time.
“I’m getting old,” I add. “I don’t want to wait until I can’t. I want one soon.”
A riot of emotions flash across Moses’s face—shock and surprise being chief among them.
“I’ve got one condition,” he says, carefully schooling his expression.
“What’s that?”
“You have to marry me before the baby’s born. Because I want him or her to grow up with what I didn’t have.”
I press my lips together, laughing to myself, because he’s officially maneuvered me into exactly what he told me he wanted when he came back to town.
“All right. You knock me up, and I’ll let you put a ring on my finger as soon as we get that positive test back.”
Moses couldn’t possibly smile any bigger, which knocks loose my laughter, because we’re totally fucking crazy for considering either concept. Marriage? Parenthood?
He’s . . . well, he’s whatever the technical term is for an underground identity eraser and death-faker, and I’m a retired madam. Mom and Dad sounds like a punch line when used with reference to us.
It’s absurd, but maybe it’s perfect too. If we only dare to go after what we both want most . . . what a life that could be.
The game forgotten, Moses pushes up from his chair and lifts me out of mine. “Then we’re getting started on this project right fucking now.”
I giggle and pretend to resist. “What about my dream vacation?”
“I forfeit,” he says with a smile, never losing step. “You were gonna win anyway. You had me, and we both know it.”
He carries me through the living room and straight to the bed. Like I’m precious, he lowers me to the mattress, taking my mouth in a smooth, drugging kiss.
Soon, when there’s nothing but the taste of Moses on my mind, he goes to work, stripping me naked and working his way down my body with his lips. My hands wander his shoulders and back, etching every line and sinew into my memory.
When he reaches my belly, he presses a kiss there and gazes up at me. “Magnolia?”
“Moses?”
“You’re going to be the most incredible mother. I hope you know that.”
It’s almost like he had my heart, literally in his hands, unbeating, until that moment. With one brief, simple sentence, it comes alive. “I guess we’ll see soon enough.”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s a foregone conclusion. I see it in my mind’s eye.”
His faith in me is a gift, and I drag him back up my body and urge him to his back so I can strip him.
When we’re both naked, I settle between his legs and take his heavy cock in my hands. I might not know how to verbalize what I’m feeling, but I can show him. I suck him deep, laving the shaft and head with my tongue.
He lets me have control, but only for a few minutes. With his muscled thighs tensing around me, he lifts me off his body and flips us again.
“Now, time for some baby-making.”
I can’t help but laugh, husky as my voice is now. “You realize, it’s not necessarily that easy. I’m on birth control.”
Moses shrugs. “Then we’ll practice, and you quit that shit. When the time is right, it’ll happen. I have faith.”
And so we practice, and when I come, I bite down on Moses’s shoulder to keep his name from waking up everyone in the entire damn compound.
And then we practice again.
And again.
Until I drift off, curled around the only man I’ve ever been in love with.
My last thought, before I fall into a dreamless sleep, is that I’m going to have to figure out how to tell him. Three little words can’t be so hard.
But they are. At least, when you’ve never said them before.
Twenty
Moses
There’s a knock on our suite early in the morning, and I carefully untangle my arms and legs from Magnolia’s. After throwing on a pair of shorts, I quietly leave the bedroom, closing the door behind me, and make my way to the one in the living room that leads to the hallway.
“Thank fuck you’re awake.” Trey’s face is beet red, and he’s bouncing like a tweaker on payday. “I texted you like two hours ago, and I’ve been dying to fucking tell you what I found.”
I rub the sleep from my eyes, willing my foggy mind to clear. “What?”
“I found him. I’m damn sure Ortiz has a brother. An older brother. That’s who’s in the picture.”
This isn’t surprising, and basically what we all assumed. Hopefully, there’s more to his urgency than this.
“How did you find out?”
He slaps the door frame. “NOPD caught him on camera running a red light three days ago. It’s a shit picture, but the features are a close enough match to the picture I aged up to get the hit—I combined them and refined the image to get another hit. An article in a tiny fucking free community newspaper from ten years ago that no one would ever have thought to wipe, because it went out of business shortly after. But our guy? They reported he was killed.”
Fuck yeah. There’s always something people miss, and it’s the little details that’ll get you.
“For-real killed or . . .” I start to ask the question, assuming that Trey wouldn’t be this excited if the guy was dead for real.
“Everyone thinks he’s dead for real, but the article said the cartel was suspected to be behind the murder. They were using it as a call to arms to get residents to patrol the border and protect their town.”
Relief shoots through me. Finally, a concrete link to a possible lead. “Thank fuck for that. If they suspected the cartel was behind the faked murder, there’s a damn good chance that’s why he had to disappear. It would also explain why Ricardo’s a ghost too.”
Trey nods excitedly. “Yeah, exactly. Because we fucking know the cartel don’t just go after one person, they go after their whole fucking family too. Whatever he was into, it went sideways as fuck.”
“What’s his name? Tell me everything you got on him.”
“Antonio Reyes. And fucking embarrassingly, I got almost nothing on him except that article and the NOPD picture. Everything else has been erased. I don’t know what the hell he could’ve done to put himself in the cartel’s crosshairs, but they found the body—presumed to be his—in a ravine ten days after he was reported missing by a neighbor.”
Frustration charges through me at the lack of information, but I lock onto what we do know. “Do we know how they identified the body as his?”
“No,” Trey says with a shake of his head. “The article was light on facts and heavy on trying to get people riled up. But I swear this is our guy. Anyone else, I’d have his whole life story by now, but there ain’t shit to find.”
“Why the different last name? Was there anything in the article on his brother?”
“I’m guessing two different fathers. I don’t know for sure yet, but I’m trying to find out. The article just said he was the last surviving member of his family. Apparently, there was a car fire a few months earlier that wiped out the rest of them, but they didn’t mention names. Like I said, community paper.”
Even without names or more details, I’m with Trey—it sounds like this is our guy. “He could’ve arranged the car fire to get his family clear when shit started to go bad then.”
“That’s what I thought,” Trey says and then lights up like a goddamned Christmas tree. “But now we know he’s here from that NOPD red light camera. It’s him, Moses. We really fucking got him.”
“Fuck yeah.” I clench my hands into fists. “Now we just have to find him or draw him out. We need to meet with Mount as soon as possible this morning. Tell him what we got.”
“Yeah, boss,” he says, already turning to head down the hall to his room. “I’ll go get all the shit.”
“Give me ten minutes. I gotta wake up Mags and tell her what you found, and let her know this fucking nightmare is almost over.”
Trey gives me a nod and hurries the rest of the way down the hallway. I close the door and make my way back to Magnolia. When I open the door to the bedroom, she’s awake and watches me walk inside.
“What’s going on?” It’s not surprising that she doesn’t expect good news. Her face is pinched at the brow and she’s worrying her bottom lip.
“Trey found him.”
She sits up, clutching the sheet to her chest. “He’s sure?”
I close the distance to the bed and sit beside her. “T’s fucking good. It took him a while, but now we know why.”
Her head weaves back and forth, as if searching my eyes for answers. “Why?”
“We were right. He’s a ghost too. Supposedly died in a ravine ten years ago. Pinned it on the cartel. Chances are he’s been running this entire time, just in case. It’s one of the more common reasons people call us in, so it’s not a big shocker to find out the cartel is tied to why he’s hiding.”
Magnolia’s b
rain is working. “The cartel wants him dead . . . Can we use that? Let them know where he is? They can take him out.”
It’s an idea I haven’t had a chance to contemplate, but it’s a solid one. Although, it’s dangerous as fuck to get involved with any cartel, whether or not it benefits them.
I squeeze her leg beneath the sheets. “It’s worth considering. Trey’s grabbing his laptop, and he’ll be back in a few. He’ll show us everything.”
She wastes no time, and begins untangling her limbs from the linens. “I’m getting up. I’ll be ready.”
“Sounds good, mama.” Before she gets too far, I lean over to take her lips with a kiss. “And thank you for last night.”
She pulls back to meet my gaze. “Not sure you need to be thanking me when it was a joint effort, but I appreciate the gratitude.”
“You gave me a gift, and that’s what I’m thanking you for.” There’s still a questioning expression on her face, so I clarify further. “Our future. That’s all I can see now. You and me and a family. It’s a beautiful picture, and I can’t fucking wait for all of it.”
She snags my hand and threads her fingers through it. “Yeah. It is, isn’t it?” She wags her eyebrows, and finally some of the fiery Magnolia I adore sparks back to life. “Now, let’s put this cock-sucking asshole in the ground so we can make it all happen before we need geriatric care.”
I kiss her firmly again. “Get up and get dressed. It’s time to end this.”
Twenty-One
Magnolia
Moses leaves the room as I roll the rest of the way out of bed. I’m nearly to the bathroom when my phone vibrates with a call. I backtrack and pick it up, thinking it’ll be a call from Taylor, checking in to let me know how it’s going at the beach.
But it’s not.
It’s from an unknown number.
I almost let the call go to voice mail, but something stops me, so I tap the screen to answer it. “Hello?”