In Good Conscience

by Gardiner, Cat

  The hallway was eerie and the staircase looked dangerous, but she ascended all the same—three flights of a creaking and groaning staircase. It sounded like it was going to collapse under her weight. She stopped on the second landing before ascending to the third floor, and placed the coffee carrier at her feet. Pressing speed dial on her phone, she didn’t have to wait long for her sister’s quick answer.

  “Jane?”

  “Hey, sissy.”

  Liz whispered, “You’re in big trouble.”

  “Am I?”

  “Kinda. Maybe not. I’m not sure yet if I should thank you or beat you.”

  Leaning against the wall, she propped the sole of her boot against the decrepit plaster wall and teased. “Was the sex at least mind blowing?”

  “Best. Ever. Look, I can’t talk on the phone right now.”

  “Okay, then open the door and I’ll come in. You can fill me in on all the naughty details of your train ride.”

  “What? Where are you?”

  “I told you, silly. I’m in Prague, downstairs, looking up at your apartment door. I brought you tea.”

  Her sister hung up and then she heard the deadbolt slide.

  Quickly, she grabbed the coffee, ran up the last flight, and slipped into the apartment. Before even a hello, the cup of tea slid from the caddie and Liz was making a sip hole on the edge of the cover.

  “God, you’re a lifesaver. I so needed this,” she whispered.

  “And hi to you, too.”

  “Sorry. What the heck are you doing here and how did you find me?”

  Glancing around the long hallway, littered with papers and a smashed vase surrounding a round table, she couldn’t help but to remark. “Boy, this place is almost as big a dump as I just came from. You think Darcy would have put you up in better digs, huh?”

  “There’s a reason we’re holed up here,” she replied leading the way to the living room. Plopping down on the sofa Liz prodded for an explanation just as she expected she would. “Jane?”

  “Okay, so … like … um … don’t be mad. I’m here with Charlie.”

  “Charlie? So Fitzwilliam was right; Obsidian knows.”

  “Yes. But it’s a good thing. You don’t have to worry about Darcy’s meeting with Diablo in the park. Crash has his back. He’s there now, rifle ready to take that a-hole down.”

  Her sister sighed in relief and sat back on the pillows. “How did you find out that he was alive? Dad?”

  “At first Charlie discovered activity on one of the passports missing from the stack that you turned over to Rick and then Dad came clean on Operation Black Ice. I’m not really sure how I feel about his involvement—and lies—but, whatever, I’ll think about it when I get home; I need my mojo intact to protect you. How are you feeling, mommy?”

  Liz raised her eyebrows. “How do you think I’m feeling? I’m a nervous wreck and feel absolutely helpless to help him. If you could have seen him, Jane; I hardly recognize him as the man I married. He was so cold when he left …” Her voice trailed and her gaze fell to the archway leading to the foyer as if lost in a daydream. “But then … he came back. It was the gazebo in Seville all over again. So intense …” Liz licked her upper lip. “So desperate …”

  “Gazebo? What happened in Seville?”

  “Um … nothing.” She snapped from her vision and shook her head with a small smile playing on her lips.

  “Ohhhh. A shag in Seville.”

  “Neveryoumind.”

  Liz glanced over to the coffee table at the carrier. “What’s in the box?”

  “Macaroons!”

  “Gimme,” she begged.

  “So, you forgive me for bullshitting you?”

  “Sure … I’ll just add you to the list of everyone else who has done me wrong. I don’t care anymore. My one and only wish was granted—the rest is insignificant. I’ll leave it at that, but you should have told me.”

  “I was afraid to.”

  Her sister said nothing further on the subject, just bit into a macaroon and looked in the direction of the hallway again.

  Just like that, the air had cleared. Liz didn’t take her to further task about hiding what she knew about Darcy, or the train, or the role their father played. She didn’t ask what the other members of Obsidian had done to help him either. The details didn’t matter—all that mattered was her husband’s success and safety when facing Diablo and the fact that he was alive.

  The alarm on her sister’s phone beeped and she put the half-eaten sweet back in the box. “He’ll be meeting face-to-face with him in sixty minutes. Tell me again that Charlie has his back.”

  “Don’t worry.” She reached out and took Liz’s hand in hers. “I promise you, everything will be hunky-dory. Iceman is totally bad ass and Charlie has his back if anything goes tits up.”

  “This isn’t a movie, Jane. This is real life; everything goes tits up.”

  Jane rose from the sofa, ignoring her sister’s crankiness and vacated the living room toward one of the three front rooms. “I know it’s not a Bond flick, but it sure is exciting.”

  “Tell that to the three guys we buried because of Pemberley. I don’t think they thought it was exciting.”

  ***

  Oh, yes, he knew the blonde-bubble-head señorita in the café. Carlos recognized her almost immediately. How could he not? After following Fitzwilliam and the British reporter from Peru to America, he watched her come and go in her muscle car to the apartment on U-Street in Washington. If it weren’t for that blonde, he might not ever have found where Iceman and his woman lived out in rich suburbia. She’d led him right to their horse farm in Virginia.

  About to leave for the park to execute whoever this El Negro was, he considered what she was doing here and Prague—in a building a street over from Jefe de Jefes’ compound.

  At the street corner parallel to the building she went into, he leaned his elbow on the roof of one of Morales’s black Mercedes, pressed speed dial and said, “You’ll never guess who is here in Prague. I think you have been set up, Jefe. It’s the sister of Iceman’s woman—the one who led me to them.”

  He continued to monitor the building and grinned from ear to ear when the third floor front room’s curtain pulled to the side. “Yes. I am sure. I’m looking right at her.” The girl glanced over her shoulder and the curtain closed.

  “Is she alone?”

  “I don’t think so, but I have a few minutes to spare before I get to the park. I’ll go take a look if you want.”

  “Yes. I think that is wise.”

  “It seems coincidental, doesn’t it?”

  “There are no such things as coincidences.” Diablo paused. “Bring her with you. I am sure I will find some use for her.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes.”

  Knocking against the roof, the driver cut the engine and the two men escorting him to the park emerged.

  Carlos was three feet ahead of them, his long black coat billowing in the wind behind him as he crossed the cobblestone street toward the third floor apartment above the jewelry shop.

  29

  Hero

  “Jane! Get away from the window.” Liz admonished from the doorway connecting the dining room to the bedroom.

  “Sorry, I just wanted to check out the view from here. You could see the river, you know.”

  “And people can see you! That stone building is the back of Morales’s townhouse! Fitzwilliam watched all the happenings over there, all night.”

  “Holy moly! You know—”

  “Sush!” Liz whispered harshly, ears suddenly perked to the creaking stairs heavily laden with more than one body.

  She rushed toward the pistol on the table in the living room where Fitzwilliam had left it, but it was too late.

  The door kicked in, slamming against the wall with a resounding whack, and the doorframe splintered.

  Both Jane and she froze, pressing their backs against the walls. She in the
kitchen, two rooms away from the gun and Jane, in the bedroom—defenseless. Her heart thundered against her rib cage and all she could think or react to was the memory of being back in the panic room as though she was back there—frozen in silent terror as the wave crashed over her here-and-now reality. A cold sweat instantaneously erupted on her skin; her eyes were wide as she struggled against the tide. Horror immobilized her and she could hear her pulse throb in her ears only to be supplanted by the sonic-sounding blast of Pemberley’s demise. Before her, her mind’s eye she saw the burst of flame come at the bunker door only a second before she had slammed it closed.

  “I know you are here, señorita,” the voice called. “Come out and we will not kill you.”

  “Fuck off, ass-wipe!” Jane yelled, slipping into the kitchen and crouching low beside the refrigerator.

  Liz turned her head toward her sister in what felt like slow motion. Had she had any wherewithal, she would have grimaced and silently admonished Jane at the outburst but when she withdrew a gold tube from her pants pocket Liz simply furrowed her brow and tilted her neck in wonderment. Now is not the time for lipstick!

  The old wood floor creaked underneath the heavy boots that stood at both ends of the hallway; only a lathe wall and rooms each end of them separated them from whomever.

  “It is time,” he said, “that you come to meet Diablo.”

  Liz gasped and quickly covered her mouth.

  “Fuck you and that fucker,” Jane yelled out with foolish hubris. “He’s got bigger problems then us two girls to worry about!”

  “Oh! So there are two of you?”

  “Shut up!” Liz mouthed to her sister, her mind finally emerging from the bunker with startling clarity. She was tougher than the woman trapped in the panic room. She was Iceman’s woman. She conquered the Dragon. She had a child to protect. Her hand finally reacted, moving to her favorite belt buckle. If only she could get to the pistol.

  Suddenly a tall, fat thug appeared in the archway connecting the bedroom and kitchen. His girth filled the threshold; his nasty smirk twisted his face and his mocking laughter rang out when he sized her up. And then he charged her, but her sister’s—probably “borrowed”—lipstick fired into his chest.

  But the brute kept coming—now at Jane—despite the bullet wound!

  Cornered, Jane tossed the empty, one-shot weapon at him then readied her stance for a fight.

  Liz withdrew one of two concealed knives encased within the buckle and rushed at him from behind, screaming, “Get away from her!”

  With all her strength, she swung her arm wide around his thick back and stabbed the fisted, small blade into his carotid artery at the side of his neck, tugging it upward to his ear—just like Fitzwilliam had taught her to do.

  He fell only inches from Jane’s feet, blood pumping from his sliced tree-trunk neck as he gurgled and struggled to stop the bleeding. He’d be dead in under a minute and she didn’t have time to consider that she’d just taken a life.

  Grabbing her sister’s shaking hand, she tugged her over the dying blob and they ran toward the dining room—and the pistol in the living room. She could feel her sister trembling from shoulder to fingers and she held onto her tightly. Reality bites and the first sight of blood must have shaken Pussy Galore’s mojo to her core.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry, señoritas,” the apparent leader said with an expression of surprise then recognition when he stopped them in their tracks before getting to the living room. “Or should I say Señora Darcy?”

  Her free hand wasn’t quick enough to grab the other knife from the buckle. He’d already grabbed both her wrists just as the third massive soldier wrapped his arms around Jane’s willowy body, pinning her against him to keep her from thrashing, which was moot because Jane was shell shocked. All her sister could manage was a breathless, stumbling, “Y …y … ou?”

  “Once again you have led me to Iceman’s woman,” he replied. “Now, would you like to see me kill your husband, Señora Darcy?”

  “My husband is already dead, dickhead,” she spat.

  “I think—not. You are a clever couple. We thought you had been killed. Yet you miraculously survived in Virginia.”

  “Oh, he’s dead I assure you. Shark bait at the bottom of Hungry Bay after he blew your boss’s mansion to shit!”

  He rotated his hands inward causing a painful burn and twist to her wrists but she did not wince. She refused to give him that satisfaction.

  “Let us go and see for ourselves, and if you are right, if he is already dead, then Diablo will have other uses for you both.”

  He sneered when his eyes dropped to her breasts and her eyes darted to the gun calling to her only six feet away. She calculated the odds of success if she struggled to break free and thought of her sister’s immobilized fear. Narrowing her eyes, she stared him down, confident that Fitzwilliam would kill them all.

  “Yes. Let’s go see if—,” she challenged but did not complete her sentence before the unexpected auto injector needle stab into her neck.

  ***

  A miserable, drizzling rain fell as Darcy strode through the grassy field toward the brick wall located at the perimeter of the Vyšehrad national park overlooking the river. Shrouded by the ominous mist, the revered basilica loomed at his back and the ancient castle fortress hugged the rocky promontory to his left.

  At this time of the year, this section of the 10th Century site wasn’t scheduled to open until later and it also provided the cleanest route following the kill shot to Diablo—just in case something went wrong. He stopped at the very position where only three hours earlier he’d prepared for his getaway.

  Stone-faced and emotionless, he lifted his chin to the cold breeze, meeting it head on and stood with his hands tucked in the pockets of his black leather jacket. Gazing out across the river and the dark dreariness encapsulating the city he thought how sweet revenge tasted. Diablo had crossed the point of no return when he targeted Liz. Oh, the satisfaction he would get at seeing the evil bastard’s expression when he put two and two together.

  “Diablo has just arrived,” Bennet said into the comms. “I count at least six of his men already in position, the closest of which is behind the art gallery 50 feet to your left. He has a machine gun, I think.”

  “Does Morales approach alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And will I have unexpected back-up support this time, Dad?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say, Son, but … my Janie is in Prague if that is any indication.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” The hair stood on the back of his neck. Just because he appreciated his sister-in-law’s efforts in getting Liz to Venice, didn’t mean he trusted her not to screw things up. This wasn’t a friggin’ movie! The fucking women in his wife’s life had caused nothing but problems!

  “So you’re saying Charlie is in Prague as well?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Humored, he shook his head pondering whether Bennet was getting into his role. Admittedly, he felt better about this meeting, knowing that somewhere—unseen by any human eye—Charlie was strategically positioned with a rifle. That would make two shooters who had his back, and before Diablo or his henchmen knew what hit them, he’d be gone and they’d be dead in under five mikes.

  Glancing at his wristwatch, he noted the precise time: zero seven hundred hours. He thrived on punctuality and felt oddly at ease with the imminent meeting.

  Through the swaying tree branches reaching over the walkway like tentacles of death, he could make out Diablo’s approach at the far end of the path. He wore an opened black trench coat, which revealed a dark suit. Sunglasses, even in the rain, shielded his eyes, and as he drew nearer, he could make out just how much his hair had turned grey in the last four months of creeping sabotage to La Muerta Mundial cartel operations. The set to his mouth gave Darcy a chuckle.

  “That’s far enough,” he said when Morales was about three meters from him. Close enough for the fucker to get a good
look at him.

  Recognition crossed Morales’s face, then a smirk and head shake. He lightly laughed in the revelation that he’d been bested by a dead man—or was it something else? Surprise had not crossed his countenance.

  “Darcy, a solider is approaching from around the supply building to your right,” Bennet said into his ear. “And there are now only two of Diablo’s men remaining in the trees. Charlie has been a busy fellow.”

  A removal of Diablo’s sunglasses preceded his cavalier posture, “I hope you do not mind, but I brought my secretario and he would like to divest you of any weapon you may be hiding.”

  “I am the weapon.” He readied his hands. Oh, how he’d love to snap Luis’s neck for Pilar, but he held back.

  “We shall see.”

  Luis patted him down from chest to legs, to back. “Apart from a vest, he is clean, Jefe.” Then held out his hand. “But I will take that receiver in your ear, señor.”

  Complying with a sly grin, Darcy placed the small earpiece in the center of Luis’s open palm. “How is Pilar, Luis? Did you tell your boss that she got away with the help of El Negro, just like Señora Morales?”

  “What is this?” Diablo asked with a head twist, his face burning bright red, and not from the chill in the air.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk. You failed to tell Jefe de Jefes that you did not kill her as instructed? Such betrayal and disloyalty from a trusted lieutenant,” Darcy added

  “You lied to me, Luis?”

  “No … I—”

  Morales removed the pistol from under his coat and shot Luis in the back. Just like that: no warning, no words, just an irrational, unglued reaction at having lost everything including the loyalty of his most trusted man. Oh yes, revenge has no bounds; he’d even managed to strip allegiance to Diablo. And now he knew that the bastard carried a weapon.

  Morales pointed the barrel straight at him.

  “How do you know this about the woman in Panama?”

  “Because I am El Negro, otherwise known as Iceman, and I have been systematically ruining you since Moscow. I am the phantom of your nightmares; I am the ghost who destroyed your empire—first by rumor, then by fire, and finally by financial ruin. Your death in the same manner in which I killed the Lord of the Jungle, your father will be my final revenge.”