by Jade Kerrion
“It’s about two years overdue, don’t you think?”
No, no. This was all wrong. Too fast. Too crazy. Too out of control.
Rio pulled away slightly so that he could look at her. “What’s wrong?”
She swallowed the truth and offered a lie. “My family…I just don’t know. They’re not excited about outsiders.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Outsiders? Wait, are you telling me that it’s a problem that I’m not Chinese?”
“No, no.” She backpedaled. “Just that they don’t know you. They’re very private.”
“Then perhaps I can meet them.”
Shit. This is definitely not going right. “I don’t know if it’s going to be a good idea right away. It’s probably better to take this slow.”
“How much slower? We already put it on hold for a year and a half.”
“We can’t just pick up, in twelve hours, something that’s been on hold for a year and a half.”
“Why not?” Rio sat up straight. “Do you have any idea how wretched, how empty, my life was without you? We fixed this, didn’t we?”
She stared at him. He had always called her an optimist, but he was the optimist—always hopeful, always certain that things would work out his way.
It had to be his wealth. Even when he had lived without the trappings of it, it was always in the background, a cushion of utter security. It had blinded him to the realities of life scavenging in the gutters of the real world.
Cixi shook her head. “Nothing’s fixed. This isn’t going to magically repair itself because we had sex four times in less than twelve hours. What about this alternate life that you live in Key West, the one you’re so adamant about me not knowing anything about? All these secrets between us—I don’t want them.”
“I know.”
She blinked, surprised by his immediate concession.
He continued. “I owe you the truth. I just need a bit more time.”
“How much more?”
“A few hours.”
Her eyes widened. Damn it. I need way more. She stammered. “I need a few days.”
“Whatever you need.” He picked up her hand and brought it to his lips, nuzzling a kiss that sent a shudder along her spine. “I’ll make it all right. I swear it.”
I only wish I could promise the same.
Armed with only the faintest touch of makeup and dressed in the sweater and jeans she had worn to Rio’s penthouse the previous evening, Cixi headed directly to 5th Avenue. The crowds of people weaving past each other didn’t bother her. It amused her to recall that once she had thought New York City too busy, too loud, and too crowded. Now, she appreciated the bustle. There was safety and anonymity in the crowd.
Sunglasses in place despite the overcast morning, she browsed through a few stores and added to her ever growing handbag, jewelry, and perfume collection. The hours flew by quickly, and at noon, she strolled into Armani Ristorante and asked for her reservation.
The hostess glanced down at her records. “Certainly. Your guest is already here. I’ll show you to your table.”
The cold shard of anxiety lodged in Cixi’s chest did not vanish at the sight of Zara seated at the table. She had realized, a long time ago, that Zara had a certain propensity for creating trouble and dragging everyone around her into it. The Lebanese-Venezuelan woman rose with a smile, and their cheeks touched briefly in greeting.
“How are you?” Zara asked after they placed their orders for food and drink.
“I’m doing well. In fact, I’ll be swamped.” Cixi stared at Zara, but saw little. Her eyes glazed subtly as her attention turned inward, her photographic memory summoning briefly glimpsed images of bank transactions. Her mind churned through numbers, converting them against a pre-agreed cipher, designed to resemble perfectly innocuous conversation. “I’ve got an upcoming photo shoot in Zhengzhou on August 19th. It’s at the Plaza Hotel at 10:52 a.m. I’ve already got a reservation there, and at another hotel, the Oriental, at 3:21 p.m. on August 26th.”
“It sounds like fun. I’ve never been to Zhengzhou.”
“I’m slated to travel to Venice too, on August 23rd—” Cixi warbled on about her photo shoots, and then about the brands and price tags on the gorgeous dresses she was to model. “Oh, I got this for you.” She reached into her shopping tote bag and retrieved the tiny evening bag—a black purse drizzled with bling—that she had purchased earlier from Versace. “Isn’t it perfect? Eternally classy. You can take it anywhere.”
“Beautiful.” Zara turned the purse around in her hands and then smiled at Cixi. “Thank you. You have wonderful taste.”
Cixi rolled her eyes. “More taste than money.” She laughed, the sound brittle even to her own ears. “Are you busy tonight?”
Zara tilted her head. “What’s happening tonight?”
“A private collector of Ming and Tang dynasty pieces is opening his home for a viewing of sorts.”
“Is he interested in selling?” Zara asked.
“He hadn’t mentioned it, but he might be open to discussing it, if the price is right. How is your art collection coming along?”
“I’m missing one piece. If he’s a collector, he may have it. Tonight, you say? It seems rather sudden.”
Cixi nodded. “Circumstances.” She shrugged. “He decided the time was right to showcase the prize of his collection.”
“Tonight’s perfect. It would be a shame to waste such an opportunity.”
Cixi managed a tremulous smile. And done.
The plan had been set in motion.
The price had been paid.
The assassin had been engaged.
The distance between Manhattan and Washington, D.C., was nothing by private jet. In fact, Rio mused, despite calling ahead for an appointment, he had spent more time cooling his heels at the deputy director’s office than in actually making the trip down from New York City. For well over an hour, he hung out in the lobby and watched the people rushing in and out of the inner sanctum. Something was up, and it was out of the ordinary.
Finally, he was ushered into the office. The deputy director, a lean man with a craggy face, stood up and offered him a handshake and a tired smile. “It’s been a while. How are you?”
“Enjoying life in the Keys. I see you still have this cushy job.”
Peter Smith, who headed up the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) undercover unit, chuckled. “It’s nice having my own place, out in respectable middle-class America, instead of scouring for floor space over at the government building. What brings you to this side of the U.S.?”
“A favor to my mother, and while I was around, I thought I’d check in.”
Peter nodded. “The programming you did on the latest generation of USB transmitters was brilliant.”
Rio grinned. “So it worked?”
“Beautifully. It’s in production. We’ve got the first batch of several hundred already in operation.”
“Good to hear all the hours sitting in front of the computer paid off.”
“You did more than camp out in front of a computer. You’re doing great work out there tracking the traffic out of South America. We’ve never had a more comprehensive view of the action south of Miami.”
“Are you ready to move in?”
“You sound impatient.”
Rio sighed. “I’m ready to move on. I’ve been doing this for two years, ever since my brother died.”
“Therapy for you?”
“Something like that. It allowed me to channel my energy into keeping other kids like him from dying from drug overdoses. But the façade of the beach bum lounging around Key West is getting too costly to maintain. Someone I care about needs to know the truth. I can’t keep it from her forever.”
“I understand. Two years undercover is a long time to put your life on hold. You’ve done great work for the agency, Rio. We’d be sorry to see you go, but we get it.”
“So does that mean you’ll make a move on the drug traffickers s
hunting their goods through Key West?”
“Not quite yet. There’s bigger fish we’re going after.”
“Bigger even than the Colombians?”
“Has X-treme made it down to your neck of the woods yet?”
Rio stiffened. “Yes, it has.”
Peter sighed. “I know you’ve had your personal run-ins with X-treme.”
“X-2, a precursor of X-treme, killed my brother.” A scowl furrowed Rio’s brow. “Wasn’t it bad enough that we had to deal with heroin, cocaine, and ecstasy, and then the slew of prescription painkillers? Some asshole had to take ecstasy and punch up its effects, doubling its lethality.”
“And X-treme is even worse. We’ve just had confirmation, however, that the similarities X-2 and X-treme bear to ecstasy is not entirely coincidental.”
“What do you mean?”
“X-2 and X-treme are both lab-formulated.”
“Did some crazy scientist just throw a bunch of chemicals together?”
“Not entirely. They did it off—something—and we have reason to suspect that the something is human blood.”
“What?”
Peter held out his hand in a calming will-you-sit-down gesture. Only then did Rio realize he had shot to his feet. He sucked in a deep breath and sat down again, not unaware that he was gripping the armrests so tightly that his knuckles were white. “Are you telling me that the kids out there are consuming human blood?”
Peter shook his head. “No, they are consuming something that has a fundamentally similar structure to some protein markers in some types of human blood.”
“I’m not hearing a lot of certainty in that statement.”
“That’s because we don’t have certainty. We have four labs telling us that they’re at their wit’s end too trying to isolate the active material in X-treme. Unless they can isolate it, they may not be able to figure out what makes it lethal in that 5 percent of kids who die from consumption of X-treme. We’re losing our youth—entire generations of kids who think it’s just a kickass version of ecstasy. It’s not.”
Rio exhaled the air trapped in his lungs. “So, was that what all the furor was about?”
“Yes. We’ve tracked X-treme back to a triad, the Jade Dragons.”
“The Chinese triads are behind this?”
“At least for the distribution in New York City and Washington, D.C. That’s the other problem with X-treme. It’s a hydra with too many heads. We can’t neutralize a single source; we have to take them out one by one. Anyway, we’ve identified a few active members of the triad, and we’ve been tracking them. Today, one of them met with a mercenary with South American ties. The last thing we need is a hookup between the triads and the drug cartels. All that furor you saw was around issuing a subpoena on the restaurant’s surveillance equipment. We had to get in on their conversation.”
“Hear anything interesting?”
“You tell me.” Peter tapped a command on his computer and gestured to the large screen mounted on the wall.
Cixi?
Rio’s eyes widened.
No, it can’t be.
But it was. She was seated across from Zara Itani—two women chatting about photo shoots, designer dresses, and luxury accessories.
Peter glanced at Rio. “You know her?”
Rio nodded, just mentally sharp enough to lie. “Yes, we met once. She used to date Lucien Winter.”
“Yes, that’s Zara Itani. To most of the world, she’s a socialite, one of the idle rich. She is, however, the owner of Three Fates, an agency of mercenaries that pulls from the ranks of ex-special forces as well as terrorists.”
“Equal opportunity, huh? How does she keep them in line?”
“By being better than any of them. She’s not afraid about damaging her manicure.”
“It sounds like she prefers Armani and Versace to Smith and Wesson.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t object to spending her questionably earned income on high fashion. The person she’s with is Mei Li, the daughter of Shen Long, leader of the Jade Dragons.”
Rio’s heart thudded and tumbled gracelessly. “What?”
“She appeared rather unexpectedly about a year and a half ago, and is building her career as a supermodel. Chanel has signed her on as their spokesperson.”
“She can’t possibly be…Shen Long’s daughter.”
“She is. Shen Long’s image is respectable enough, a wealthy financier of real estate in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., but he is the leader of the Jade Dragons. He inherited it from his father. His son, Guan Yu, will take over after he’s gone.”
“What does this have to do with…” He swallowed Cixi’s name in time. “Mei Li?”
“She launders their money.”
Rio’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“She launders it. She’s well paid, certainly, for her career, but not well-paid enough to drop cash on her penthouse, expensive art, cars, jewelry.”
“No, it can’t be.” The woman he loved could not possibly be the daughter of the man responsible for circulating the drugs that had killed his brother.
“My team’s working on trying to make sense of their conversation.”
“It’s just photo shoots…” Rio frowned. “No, it’s not. I’ve only met Zara once or twice, and she’s not frivolous enough to care about a photo shoot halfway across the world.”
“Not to mention, the photo shoot is entirely fictional. I had someone verify Mei Li’s schedule with Chanel. She’s not headed for China or Venice any time soon.”
“And she certainly wouldn’t fly to Venice between two apparent appointments in China,” Rio noted the discrepancy in the dates. “It’s code for something.”
“Exactly,” Peter said. “We’re not sure what. Coordinates? Bank accounts? What could she possibly want from Zara?”
“Or what could Zara want from her?”
“More likely she wants something from Zara. Zara’s a mercenary; her deadly skills are for sale to the highest bidder.”
“Why don’t you bring Mei Li in for questioning?” Rio asked.
“We don’t want her to know we’re on to her yet. We don’t have anything that definitely ties the triad to the distribution of X-treme. We need evidence, and we can’t afford to blow any leads we have.”
“Interrogate Zara, then.”
“We can’t.” Peter cleared his throat sheepishly. “Zara’s protected.”
“What?”
“She does work for the U.S. government—things that we don’t want to be caught doing.”
“We’re in bed with the enemy?”
“Zara’s not the enemy, at least not while you’re paying her.”
Rio shot to his feet and paced the room. “You don’t want to alert Mei Li that you’re on to her and her family—I get that—but there’s got to be a way to get to Zara. What about her family?”
“Her father’s a Princeton professor with an utterly impeccable reputation. She has a daughter—a few months old—but she’s so well protected we’d need to bring in a SEAL team if we wanted to snatch her. Besides, that’s not how we do things—especially not with someone who is a valuable ally on her good days.”
“Her boyfriend, then.”
Peter shook his head. “She dates—uses men—across the board, but none seem to hold any sway with her.”
Rio’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not how Lucien described it.”
“Lucien Winter? What did he say?”
“That Zara loved someone else. Someone better than him.”
“There are few people in the world richer than Lucien Winter.”
Rio scowled. “Maybe he didn’t mean wealth. Not everyone goes through life with dollar signs in their eyes.”
“So, who’s Zara’s mysterious lover?”
“Lucien would know. I’ll ask him.” Rio frowned. “Zara and…Mei Li said something else about tonight. What is it?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. What we do know is that both
women left for Washington, D.C., shortly thereafter.”
“They’re in the city now?”
“Yes. Zara lives in D.C. Shen Long, Mei Li’s father, owns multiple homes and condominiums in the area.”
“They’re moving into place,” Rio mused aloud. “But for what?”
“A drug deal, perhaps, but we’ve got our eye on all the cartels. No one’s lined up for a trade in D.C. tonight. But if something is indeed happening tonight, and if it involves Zara, it’s bound to be big and disastrous. She’s not capable of doing anything on a small scale.”
“Zara’s the key,” Rio said. “We have to figure out what…Mei Li hired her to do.”
“An assassination, most likely. It’s Zara’s specialty.”
Rio pressed his hand against the unsteady palpitations in his chest. Damn. The flood of revelations was wreaking havoc on his ability to stay calm, and staying calm was key to keeping his arrhythmias under control. “I’ll find out.”
“All right.” Peter frowned. “But didn’t you come here to talk about leaving?”
Rio’s scowl concealed the ache in his chest. “Not just yet.”
Cixi had lied to him. She was the daughter of a drug lord, and she had known within moments of their meeting out on that rainy street corner that he had lost his youngest brother to an X-2 overdose. Had she known who he was? Had she known that he was a DEA undercover agent? Had she seen then a perfect reason to ingratiate herself with him when he had been at his most vulnerable, most desperate for comfort and love?
She had accused him of using her for cover.
Was the truth worse? Had she been using him as a bargaining chip to return to her family? “I know a DEA undercover agent. I can get close. He loves me. I can control him…”
Anger layered over the resentment lodged in Rio’s chest until it became a hard knot that could not be moved.
The right next step, the procedurally correct process, was to report his relationship with Cixi.
And he would, but not just yet. Not until he squeezed the truth out of her one way or another.
Chapter 7
A quick call to Lucien Winter sent Rio to Anacostia, a Washington, D.C., neighborhood devastated by poverty and pockmarked by gang warfare. Even with his self-defense training, he felt the uncomfortable pinch along his spine as he parked his car on the roadside and strode toward the free clinic.