by Julie Leto
“What are you talking about?” Parker asked.
“You think this is her, don’t you? The hired killer taking out those guys who hurt your sister? But they didn’t really hurt your sister, did they?”
Manning sat back, his body language cocky. “This woman offered me her story and I rook her up on it.”
“When?” Marisela asked.
“Right after she popped Cole. She called.”
“And you failed to share this detail with the police? Or with us?”
The woman tried to stand, but Marisela had not released her wrist. She whimpered. Marisela silenced her with a deadly look.
Manning swigged his beer. “I wanted the story. And I wanted her to succeed. Those creeps might not have killed my sister, but they drove her and Tracy to ruin their own lives. Maybe not Bennett so much, but Hightower for leading her on. Using her to cover up what he was. And Cole. He dumped my sister in a marsh.”
“He saved Tracy from being publicly blamed for Rebecca’s murder,” Marisela corrected.
“It was an accident!” Parker insisted. “She would never have been charged.”
“Maybe not, but Evan Cole was trying to protect Tracy and you know it. He didn’t deserve to die.”
Manning’s eyes sparked with hatred and recrimination. Toward whom, Marisela wasn’t sure and she didn’t care. Right now, she simply wanted Yizenia Santiago—the real Yizenia Santiago—in her clutches instead of this poor excuse for a look-alike.
“Who ransacked your apartment?” Marisela asked.
He glanced longingly at his beer. “I couldn’t find my recorder.”
“The loud music? The door left open?”
“I was in a hurry, okay?”
“Bullshit,” Marisela snapped. “You wanted us here and you set us up to think you might be in trouble. Little nervous about meeting with a killer, maybe? Wanted us as backup?”
He didn’t deny the accusation, but the point was, his motives didn’t matter. He still didn’t realize he’d been duped.
“If she was really selling you her story, why’d she send an imposter to meet with you?” Marisela asked, turning toward the woman she still held tightly in place.
“You’re hurting me,” the woman insisted.
“No kidding, really?” Marisela asked, her tone ice cold.
The woman’s eyes widened. “Who are you?”
“Someone who can make the woman who hired you tonight look like Mother Theresa, that’s who. Answer our questions and you’ll get out of this with all your bones intact, ¿comprendo? We just need answers.”
The woman’s face paled. “She said the whole thing was a joke, to teach a reporter a lesson about asking too many questions. She paid me to give him the run-around, make him look idiotic if he printed anything in the paper! That’s all! I swear! Look, if my boss finds out, I’m going to lose my job.”
“Boss? What boss?”
“The owner of the restaurant.”
“You work here?” Marisela asked, a tingle dancing its way up the back of her spine. “Oh, God.” A realization hit her.
Marisela glanced over her shoulder. As she suspected, the friendly hostess was gone. The one with the blue eyes. Contacts. And the hair? Either a quick dye-and-cut job or a very convincing wig.
“I’m the hostess.”
Marisela growled as she tore to her feet, causing a clatter of flatware and china and crystal. Patrons of the restaurant turned to gawk, but Marisela was through the crowded dining room before anyone could stop her. She reached the hostess’s stand to find it deserted. Well, almost.
Propped up in the bowl of chocolate mints was a flower. Deep red, trumpet-shaped, with ruffled edges on a dark green stem.
Yizenia had escaped yet again.
Or had she?
Sixteen
MARISELA DASHED OUT of the restaurant, startled when a dark burgundy sports car screeched to a stop in front of her. The tinted window slid down and Ian, his pale green eyes intense, motioned to the passenger door.
“We have her,” he said. “Get in.”
Marisela hadn’t even slammed the door when Ian pulled back into traffic. He maneuvered the vehicle with skill, practically leaping over the potholes and elevated manhole covers and weaving around slow-moving cars.
“You picked her up?”
He shook his head, his grip firm on the steering wheel and stick shift. “Not yet. We needed confirmation, which you just provided.”
Marisela opened her palm. The silk flower was crushed in her hand.
“How’d you spot her?”
“Brynn was stationed on the roof across the street with night-vision binoculars. She recognized Yizenia when she fled the restaurant. We’ve tailed several women tonight, but the minute I heard you on the com system, I knew we’d found our killer.”
Marisela couldn’t miss the keen determination in Ian’s voice. He clearly had a personal vendetta to settle. What she didn’t know was why he’d waited to retrieve her before he made his move on Yizenia.
“She doesn’t know, does she? About Tracy? About the fact that the guys were innocent?”
Ian shook his head. “Brynn is convinced Yizenia has no idea, that she bought whatever line her client fed her. If Yizenia knew the real story, she never would have pursued Craig Bennett or Raymond Hightower.”
“She would have hit Tracy, for certain. Evan, too, maybe, for dumping the body.”
“Exactly,” Ian confirmed.
Figuring out the truth had only plunged them deeper into a web of lies and death. Before, they had an assassin on the loose who was following a relatively clear-cut pattern. Now she was a wild card, operating on who knew what kind of faulty information. Tracy was in a safe house, but Marisela wouldn’t rest until Yizenia was stopped from her misguided mission—once and for all.
“Is Yizenia still under surveillance?”
Ian touched the screen on his GPS system. A red dot flashed.
Marisela whistled, impressed. “You tagged her?”
Concentrated confidence ratcheted up Ian’s smile. “Max called it a classic twist on the bump and run.”
Pickpocket-slang. Just what had Max done before he joined Titan?
“She’s on foot, probably headed home,” Ian informed her, after touching his earpiece. He had agents up ahead of them. No way would they lose her.
Marisela’s brain swam as her eyes focused on the blinking red dot. They were so close. Close to catching the killer. Close to ending the case. “What was her point of the meeting in the restaurant? She never actually spoke to Parker Manning and I don’t think she intended to. The stand-in she hired thought the whole thing was a joke. The only person she spoke to was—”
“You,” Ian said.
He cut around a corner a little sharp, throwing Marisela sideways. Their shoulders touched. The look he gave her, though brief, brimmed with speculation.
“What?” she asked defensively.
“Why did Yizenia speak with you and no one else?”
“You heard the conversation,” she reminded him, not liking the accusatory tone of his voice. “She didn’t say anything that even made sense.”
He glanced at the GPS and made another turn through a dark alley, slowing to avoid the trash cans piled along the walls. “I was listening. Were you?”
She frowned. “Only halfway. To me, she was just some chick making small talk. I was trying to focus on the conversation at the table, remember?”
Ian pulled out onto a narrow street, then slowly eased into a parking space, slipping into the tight spot with ease. The red dot had stopped moving. He put the car in park, then contacted Max and asked him to cue back the conversation Marisela had had with the fake hostess—with Yizenia.
She winced as her voice, Yizenia’s voice, Parker Manning’s and the duped, genuine hostess’s overlapped.
“Max, isolate Marisela’s conversation with the hostess,” Ian ordered. “Play back Yizenia only. The real Yizenia.”
“
You finally get the invitation to the big date, you go out once or twice and find the experience interesting. Exciting. But little by little, you want more. More thrills, more passion. More…purpose.”
Marisela listened carefully. “She wasn’t talking about men, was she?”
Ian shook his head. “I believe she was talking about Titan. About your career choices. After you shared your theory with Max regarding Yizenia’s coming to your rescue last night, I pinned my sister down for more information regarding her old friend.”
“I would have liked to have seen that,” she quipped.
He smirked. “Figure of speech, I assure you. Shortly after I hired you, Brynn requested a copy of your dossier. She also remembered that she’d been with Yizenia when she read it and that she mentioned you in conversation.”
Marisela wasn’t sure why, but the whole idea creeped her out. “Why would she do that?”
“My sister thought I was losing my mind.”
Marisela didn’t like that answer any better. “Nice. What did Brynn tell her about me?”
“Do you honestly care?”
She took a second to think about it. There was nothing a Titan dossier could tell her that she didn’t already know about her own life. “Not particularly.”
“The bottom line is that Yizenia seemed very interested in you, asking all sorts of questions, which according to Brynn struck her as idle conversation between friends. Her opinion has since changed. It seems clear that Yizenia set up this meeting tonight to draw you out. Talk to you.”
“What does she want with me?”
Ian grinned, opened the glove compartment on the sports car and extracted a long, thin leather case. “That’s what you’re about to find out.”
* * *
Yizenia dialed the number one more time. When the recording came on yet again, she slammed the phone down on the cradle. Disconnected? How dare he! In all her years, a client had never treated her with such disregard. The remainder of her fee had shown up this morning in her Swiss account, yet how could he possibly believe the job was completed?
One man remained. The man who had been key to the whole sordid tale.
Bradley Hightower.
Yizenia dragged her fingers through her hair, disconnected the clips that held the blond hairpiece in place and threw it across the table. She massaged her scalp, trying to ward off the suspicions surging through her bloodstream. Why would her client back off now? That they hadn’t found Bradley Hightower yet was simply a setback. A delay. He’d clearly hidden himself well, likely because he understood the true magnitude of what he’d done as a young man—first, lying to girls too naive and too starstruck by his family’s money and power to grasp the full breadth of his betrayal, and then killing one when she became inconvenient, thus dooming the other to a downward spiral of loss and despondency.
Her client had provided a detailed account of Tracy Manning’s life. Locked in a cycle of self-destruction, the young woman had clearly never recovered from the tragedy of her sister’s murder. Yizenia knew the girl’s hopelessness. Her loneliness. Her rage. Didn’t she deserve justice?
How could a man who claimed to have been Tracy’s lover lose his stomach now for the violence of real retribution?
While Yizenia had hoped to have a message from her client awaiting her return, tonight hadn’t been a total loss. She kicked off her shoes and reveled in the opportunity she’d had to watch Marisela work, up close. She could be crude, but effective. Under Yizenia’s guidance, she could learn style. She could excel.
But how to lure her? What would a woman like Marisela Morales need in order to tempt her into the vocation of revenge for hire?
Yizenia was twisting her arms around her back to release her zipper when she heard the click. Instantly, the atmosphere in the room shifted. Someone had come into her apartment. Yizenia continued to undo her dress. No need to alert her intruder.
She moved casually toward her bedroom.
“You can stop right there.”
When she heard the voice, Yizenia couldn’t help but smile. She turned around, slowly, with her hands visible, since she assumed Marisela Morales had a gun.
She was right.
“You won’t need that,” Yizenia told Marisela, who held the weapon straight and steady.
“I’ll be the judge of that, thanks.” Marisela spared the apartment a quick glance. “You’ve moved up.”
Yizenia grinned. Since abandoning her last apartment, she’d indulged in the nicest restored and furnished space she could find. This job in Boston had taken more time than she’d anticipated and she’d grown tired of living in squalor. The luxury of original polished hardwood floors, hand-carved masonry cornices, and luxurious hand-tooled leather furniture reminded her of home. The genuine Art Deco light fixture threw golden beams of light across the geometric patterns on the carpet and glinted like fire off the silver barrel of Marisela’s LadySmith .357 five-shot revolver.
“I prefer to live in a certain style, sí. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Okay, then let’s try a little humility regarding your line of work.”
Slowly, Yizenia lowered her hands. Marisela moved her gun only an inch, but her meaning was clear.
“I’m unarmed,” Yizenia assured her. “I detest handguns. They lack elegance.”
“They do the job.”
Therein lay the difference between them. Yizenia admired the girl’s raw courage, but she mourned her lack of sophistication. Still, standing in her presence electrified Yizenia with possibilities—and sapped her energy at the same time. Around Marisela, she felt both invigorated and old. The dichotomy fascinated her and repelled her, yet she couldn’t curb her need to discover if Marisela was truly the one.
“Why did you follow me?” Yizenia asked. “The only way to stop me is to kill me. And if that were your aim, you would have done so by now.”
“Not necessarily,” Marisela said, her tone even. “First, I want to know why you sought me out.”
“Are you so certain I did?”
Marisela rolled her eyes. “Why else did you lure Parker Manning to that restaurant when you had no intention of ever exchanging a word with him? You don’t care about him. He’s not your client.”
Yizenia nodded. What did it matter if she shared this truth with Marisela? She had no intention of revealing her client’s identity. She had a reputation to protect, standards to uphold. Protecting the identity of the client—even when the client had acted in ways that bordered on insulting—was as important to Yizenia as completing the job itself.
“How do you know you were my ultimate target tonight?” Yizenia asked. “Yes, I knew Titan was watching Parker Manning, and yes, I did initiate the meeting as a way to draw my opponents into the light. But perhaps I was simply looking for Ian again. I’ve been in this city longer than I planned. A woman cannot always fight her most intimate urges.”
Marisela’s mouth quirked. “Okay, yuck.”
Yizenia laughed from deep in her belly. “You mean to say you do not desire this man? What’s not to want? He’s handsome, rich, powerful. No woman can resist that combination.”
“You have no idea what I can and cannot resist. So if you’re trying to make me jealous, you’re wasting your time.”
Yizenia laughed again. “Mija, I make it a rule never to waste anything.”
“Then let’s not waste any more words. Why did you want to talk with me? What about me interests you?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Yizenia raised her wrist, tugging back her sleeve so that her tattoo was bright and visible, even in the dim light.
“We are both so very much alike,” Yizenia said.
Marisela’s eyes narrowed. “So you have a tattoo. So do I. Big deal.”
“It’s not the marking itself, mi hermana. It’s the symbolism. El espíritu. Your tattoo comes from your gang, sí? From the women who taught you the power of violence.”
“And the consequences of it.”
Yizenia sniffed. “You try to convince me now that you are peaceful?”
Marisela snickered. “Not likely. But I’m not reckless.”
“And I am? Child, if that’s what you think, you have not been paying proper attention.”
“Oh, I’m paying very close attention. I want to know why you’re in my business. What do I have to do with you?”
Yizenia glanced at her watch. She supposed the time had come to answer a few questions, to begin the dialogue she’d been toying with instigating for days now, perhaps months. She’d been intrigued by Marisela Morales since the first time she’d heard her name. The invitation to work in Boston had been a twist of fate—a dictate of destiny. Best to take advantage of the situation now rather than later. Because later, she will have slipped away.
“I will tell you what you need to know,” Yizenia promised. “After you lower your weapon. You may hold it, of course, if it makes you feel…safer around me.”
The dig sparked a snort. “Yeah, well, I think I will hang onto this, thanks. You being the big, bad, and all. See, not reckless.”
American sarcasm. The lack of wit amazed her.
Yizenia gestured to a long couch in the parlor area. Marisela took the seat nearest the door, forcing Yizenia to sit with her back to the window. Yizenia admired the woman’s keen strategic move and for a moment considered that her escape would be difficult. Yizenia had no doubt that Marisela had not come here alone. Her colleagues from Titan were likely monitoring their every move, listening to every word they exchanged. This annoyed Yizenia rather than worried her. She’d always planned this conversation to be private, but she’d reveal nothing of consequence except to Marisela.
“Brynn is aware that I’m here?” Yizenia asked.
Marisela cradled the gun in her lap casually, but with the barrel still pointing directly at Yizenia and her hand still firm on the grip. “She helped us find you.”
Yizenia smiled. “She’s a smart woman. I had no illusions that she’d retain any loyalty to me once I betrayed her trust by seeking you out.”
“Then there’s that little matter of you trying to kill our client.”
“Business is business. Next time we meet, I’ll bring her a bottle of her favorite cognac. It’s a very rare vintage and very expensive.”