Hidden Agenda

by Lisa Harris

  Her father’s visits to the island had been few and far between. But Olivia had learned to accept his absence the same way she’d accepted her parents’ unconventional relationship.

  Memories of her mother were more abundant. When Olivia and Ivan were young, Maria Hamilton loved to lounge beneath the Georgia sun, reading romance novels and drinking iced tea while her children built sand castles or gathered bouquets of wildflowers.

  The winter their mother died, everything changed.

  The burly tree trunks covered with Spanish moss, the flowering magnolia trees, and the blue jays and warblers nesting in the woods she’d grown to love suddenly lost all their beauty. In one moment, life changed forever.

  Olivia swept away the haunting memories and the nagging doubts roused by the emails. While Antonio Valez might not be perfect, she’d seen how hard he worked to get where he was financially, and even more important to her was the fact that he’d loved her mother until the day she’d died.

  More than likely the anonymous emails were sent by a jealous rival trying to smear her father’s name. Being rich wasn’t illegal. The information she’d been sent was completely bogus.

  At least that was what she wanted to believe.

  She scooped up a handful of sand and let the tiny grains fall back onto the shore. Like every good reporter, she’d learned to be open-minded to the truth, while at the same time striving to be skeptical without being cynical. But this investigation was different. Because it was personal.

  Which was why she’d come up with a plan. Tomas had told her that her father was coming to the island tomorrow. She desperately wanted to just come out and ask him if the claims were true and let him put all of her fears to rest. He’d tell her there was nothing to the lies she’d been told. That he hadn’t risen in the ranks of the cartel and that his business wasn’t being used to launder drug money. But if there was even some truth to it … how would her father respond to her inevitable reaction? Would there be dangerous consequences for her and Ivan?

  She stared at the pebble left in her hand and dusted off the traces of sand that clung to it, wishing she could erase the traces of doubt threatening to consume her. She’d done her research on the cartel, and what she’d found terrified her. Cocaine could be brought in from Peru for two thousand dollars a kilo. By the time it was broken down into grams and distributed, the retail value of that same kilo had ballooned to a hundred grand, because of the unquenchable demand from buyers.

  She pulled her arm back and hurled the small stone toward the icy waves. If the accusations were true, it meant that everything she’d grown up believing had been laced with deception. Her father’s relationship with her mother, his identity, and even his financial support that had come from drug money. But what haunted her even more was the possibility that her father could be a traitor to everything she believed in.

  Something snapped behind her, and she jerked her head in the direction of the noise. Ivan walked up to her, carrying his art pad and pencils for the graphic novel he was sketching under his arm. She blew out a sigh of relief and tried to erase the fear she knew was etched across her expression. Unless she discovered the truth behind the emails’ accusations, Ivan didn’t need to know why she’d decided to return to the island this Christmas. He might be nineteen, but that didn’t lessen her desire to protect him.

  He plopped down on the sand beside her. His usual smile was missing as he began signing. “We need to talk.”

  “What’s wrong?” Her stomach took a dip as she signed back.

  His swift hand motions were as direct as his gaze. “We need to leave. They killed someone. Father’s men. I saw them.”

  The knot that had been growing inside squeezed tighter. “Whoa. What are you talking about?”

  “I saw Tomas shoot a man. Someone working for the government.”

  Olivia shook her head, unwilling to draw a line between the anonymous emails and Tomas assassinating a man. Because there had to be a mistake. She hadn’t come looking for proof her father was guilty. She’d come convinced she could prove his innocence.

  “You’re telling me Tomas murdered someone?”

  Ivan nodded, the frustration in his expression growing as he signed. “I saw him, Olivia. Saw what they said. Another man was there. They will kill him tomorrow. They’re saving him for the boss.”

  “Who’s the boss?”

  Even as she signed the question, Olivia knew the answer. The tension in her gut that had been there for the past two weeks finally snapped as she saw her brother raise his thumb to his forehead, the other fingers splayed as if waving. One of the very first signs of a trusting young child’s vocabulary. Father.

  Olivia’s mind screamed in defiance. No. Her father was not a part of the cartel. Didn’t have hitmen who carried out assassination orders. Didn’t execute government agents.

  “You’re wrong.” She tried to swallow the lump growing in her throat as she signed her response. “You must have misunderstood.”

  She knew Ivan could read lips as easily as she heard the spoken word. But that didn’t mean she was ready to shove her father into the category of villain.

  “I didn’t misunderstand what they said, or what I saw,” Ivan signed. “They shot a man, Olivia. I saw everything.”

  “Do they know you were there?”

  “No.”

  Which meant they were lucky. Very lucky. If her father’s men knew there had been a witness to the murder, Ivan’s life would be in danger. She had to get him off the island.

  “Have you ever suspected he was involved in something illegal?” Ivan signed.

  Her hands balled into fists, her fear of the truth morphing into anger, before she answered. “Someone sent me some information, but I didn’t … couldn’t believe it was true.”

  Until now.

  She stared out across the blue-gray ocean as the last slivers of pinkish sunlight began to fade on the horizon. She’d spent the last decade investigating the news, but most of the stories she covered dealt with PTA meetings and petty crimes, not murder. This time, she was in way over her head. And this time, it was personal.

  “They left one man alive,” Ivan continued. “They will kill him if we don’t get him out of there.”

  “If we don’t get him out … ” Olivia’s voice rose along with her signed response. She’d read what the cartel did to people who crossed them. “Ivan, they’ve already killed a man. They will kill us if we get in the way.”

  Ivan’s gaze held hers. “You’ve always told me to do the right thing no matter what the cost.”

  She dug her fingers into the sand. Statements like that were easy to spout off when there wasn’t the chance of getting murdered by a cartel hitman. But she wasn’t going to risk her life, let alone her brother’s life, for a stranger. If they were caught trying to help this guy, all three of them would end up dumped off the Georgia coast in a watery grave.

  But Ivan’s words wouldn’t leave her alone.

  “Who is this man?” she asked.

  Ivan shrugged. “Another agent. A spy. I think they were here investigating something and got caught.”

  Olivia frowned. Ivan had definitely been reading too many spy novels. “We don’t know anything. What if he’s one of them, and we get in the middle of a cartel feud or something? We can’t get involved in this.”

  “So we do what? Run? And leave a man to die?”

  “We don’t have a choice, Ivan.” Running sounded like the best thing to do, especially when compared to any plan to stay there to find out the truth about her father. The truth wasn’t supposed to be wrapped up in a web of murder and deceit. “We’ll go to the house, pack up our stuff, and tell them we need to go back to the mainland. We can call the police or the FBI and have them figure out what to do. We’re not getting involved in this.”

  “It will be too late.”

  Olivia frowned. “We don’t know that.”

  “They’re going to kill that guy in the next twelve hours if we
don’t stop this.”

  “We aren’t responsible for his life.”

  She cringed at her clichéd responses. She’d never thought of herself as particularly brave. She didn’t like to take risks. So far, she’d been able to avoid doing hard-core journalism and had settled for the ease of reporting small-town news and writing freelance articles, where the biggest challenge came from ensuring she made her deadlines. She preferred life that way.

  Ivan touched her arm, getting her attention again. “You’re always telling me to pay attention to what really matters. This matters.”

  Olivia bit her lip. She had come to the island to search for truth, but in the process had convinced herself that any evidence she found would exonerate her father. Was she willing to seek out that truth even if it destroyed everything she knew and loved?

  She battled against the doubts slithering through her mind. “You don’t understand what’s at stake here.”

  “And you don’t understand that I’m not a child anymore.” Ivan’s brow furrowed tightly as he signed his response. “How can we close our eyes to what’s happening right in front of us?”

  Olivia looked away, but Ivan wasn’t done. He grasped her arm before continuing. “What do you know about our father you’re not telling me?”

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at it. The wallpaper was a photo of her and her mother taken the year before she’d died. Sometimes the seven years that had passed since her death seemed like just a few days. She could still smell the floral scent of her perfume. Hear her singing Spanish love songs in her deep, sultry voice. Hear her laughter at the dinner table …

  Olivia handed Ivan the phone, then stood up and brushed the sand off her jeans. “Two weeks ago, I received some emails from an anonymous source. They say they have evidence that our father is involved with the cartel. That his real estate business is nothing more than a front to launder money.”

  Maybe she hadn’t known the truth, but there had always been questions. As a reporter, she was supposed to seek out what was real, but she’d let her emotions distort the truth in order to allow herself to believe in a man who had never existed.

  “The truth scares me, Ivan. That’s why I don’t want to get involved in this. If finding out the truth means that everything I’ve ever known is a lie—that our father is a criminal—I don’t know how to deal with that.”

  She waited while he scrolled through the emails, one at a time, a pinched look of pain marking his features.

  He handed her back the phone. “I couldn’t have believed this … would never have believed this if I hadn’t seen what I saw today.”

  She nodded, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop the feeling of an inevitable tsunami washing over her and dragging her out to sea. If this was true, no matter what happened, life as she knew it would never be the same.

  “Do you think he ever loved us?” Ivan’s next question burrowed through her. “Do you think he ever loved her?”

  She had to believe he’d loved them. “In his own way, yes.”

  “And now? What happens now? Are you willing to turn him over to the authorities?”

  She blinked back the tears. “He’s our father.”

  “I saw a man murdered. They’re planning to kill another man. And if he ordered those hits, you and I know he’s ordered others. Maybe many others.”

  Olivia struggled to process everything Ivan had told her, but one thing seemed clear. They needed to decide what to do right now, and deal with her father later. Because no matter which direction her emotions were pulling her, she couldn’t have a man’s blood on her hands.

  She looked back at Ivan, her jaw tensed. “Where is he?”

  “They have him locked up in the cottage.”

  She’d never questioned the reasons behind the tight security. Or her father’s drivers and multiple staff and bodyguards. She’d thought they were simply to keep him and his family safe from people after his money. “We don’t have a key.”

  Ivan frowned at her excuse. “We don’t need a key. I’ve snuck into that cottage dozens of times during rainstorms when I needed a quiet place to draw.”

  Olivia drew in a deep breath. She’d spent her life trying to protect her brother. How was it that now she needed to protect him from his own father?

  “What if we’re wrong?” she asked.

  “Why are you defending him?”

  Why was she defending him? He hadn’t given them his name, never legally acknowledged Olivia and Ivan as his children. Their mother had met him three decades ago. She’d always been aware that there were other women in his life, but everyone knew that Maria Hamilton had managed to cast a spell on Antonio Valez. And because of that, even after their mother’s death, he’d continued taking care of them financially. But a monthly check had never been Olivia’s greatest need.

  She stared out across the darkening waters toward the rising moon and wrestled with her conscience. She turned toward Ivan and signed in the twilight, “How do we get him off the island?”

  “We’ll need the keys to the pontoon.”

  “And you think we can do this without getting caught?” she asked.

  Ivan nodded before signing his answer. “If we decide to do this … we can’t get caught.”

  3

  Thirty minutes later, Olivia shoved the rest of her essentials into her backpack, then swung it across her shoulder before leaving her room for what might very well be the last time. The rest of her stuff would have to stay for now. Getting off the island had to be their first priority.

  Mentally, she rehearsed her and Ivan’s plan and realized there were far more questions than answers. What if the man was unconscious? How were they going to physically lug a hundred-and-eighty-pound-plus man from the cottage to the dock? What if Ivan had somehow misinterpreted the situation? What if the man they planned to rescue was nothing more than another thug? What if they got caught?

  What if … ?

  Olivia tried to push aside the flood of doubts as she ran her hand down the polished wooden railing of the staircase like she’d done a hundred times before. As much as she wanted to ignore it, the past vied for attention among the chaos of the present. Because the island, its remote beauty—and her father—were etched into who she was.

  Her gaze shifted to the chandelier hanging from the entryway’s vaulted ceiling. After visiting the island for years on vacation, her father had finally bought the house when she was eighteen. Built almost a hundred years ago, the updated residence still held on to the southern charm of the original architecture—original fireplaces, paneled walls, balconies, and mahogany French doors, coupled with all the modern conveniences of the twenty-first century.

  Shifting her backpack on her shoulder, Olivia stepped into the chef’s kitchen, lit only by a light over the stove. All she had to do was grab the pontoon keys hanging beside the fridge, then meet Ivan at the cottage. By the time Tomas realized his man was gone and they weren’t coming back, the three of them would already be on the mainland, safe and sound.

  The large retro wall clock hanging in the corner of the kitchen rhythmically ticked off the seconds. She paused halfway across the white-tiled floor, holding her breath and listening for the sounds of footsteps. The only people who should be in the house at this hour were her father’s staff and maybe one of the guards.

  She let her breath out slowly, relieved at the quiet. But even if someone did see her, it shouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t have been the first time they’d taken the pontoon out to go to the mainland. Every summer Ivan studied the local waterway charts, and he knew how to follow the channel markers. He could navigate the water like a local.

  She reached for the string of keys hanging on the wall for guests and felt her stomach knot. The keys were gone.

  The overhead light snapped on above her, illuminating the modern fixtures, the stainless steel appliances, and the dark wooden cabinets.

  “Miss Hamilton?”

  Olivia took a step
backward at the sound of the guard’s voice and turned around.

  José smiled across the room at her. “I’m sorry, Miss Hamilton. Didn’t mean to scare you. Thought I heard a noise in here.”

  She forced a smile. She’d always liked José, but now she couldn’t help but wonder if he was simply a night guard her father had hired or a low-ranking member of the cartel. Or if he’d ever acted upon orders from her father to execute someone who’d gotten in his way.

  Olivia’s mouth went dry. “I was … looking for the keys to the pontoon. Ivan and I thought we’d go into town.”

  It was the truth. There was no reason for him to suspect anything.

  “It’s kind of late to be out on the water, Miss Hamilton.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Olivia repositioned the backpack across her shoulder. “You know Ivan. He’s more at home on the water than he is on land. Besides, the mainland isn’t far.” She swallowed the fear creeping up her throat. “Do you know where the keys to the pontoon are?”

  José frowned, clearly unconvinced. The tall, solidly built man wasn’t much older than Ivan and had been working for her father the past four or five years. Did he know there was a man waiting to be executed a hundred yards from where they were standing?

  “Like I said, it’s late, and we typically discourage guests from going out after dark.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Olivia forced a smile. Hoping he couldn’t sense the fear emanating from her pores or hear the erratic pounding of her heart.

  José hesitated a few seconds before responding with a smile. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Though if my father happens to call, asking where we are, you won’t tell him, will you?” She paused, wondering if she’d gone too far. “He worries too much.”

  “I don’t blame him. It can be dangerous out there if you’re not careful.”

  “We’ll be extra careful. I promise.”