Killer Secrets

Killer Secrets Page 22

by Lora Leigh

  "You are amazingly adept at going for the jugular, Ian," he said quietly, his voice bitter as he sat down in one of the leather chairs placed in front of the desk. "Perhaps in that, you are more like me than I would have wished."

  "Perhaps," Ian acknowledged, and it didn't sit well with him, seeing parts of Diego in himself, recognizing that heredity played more of a role in what shaped him than he liked.

  His gaze locked with Diego's as the other man stared back at him intently. Black eyes, bottomless, deep, merciless. Diego Fuentes wasn't known for his softness or his mercy.

  "You do not find pride in being my son, do you, Ian?" he finally asked soberly. "It is a source of disgrace rather than pride. All I have built." He lifted his hands to encompass the study. "It is as nothing to you, is this not true?"

  Ian leaned back in the chair slowly and regarded the cartel lord.

  "I'm here," he finally answered, his voice firm, cool. "As I promised, doing the job I promised."

  "For the lives of your friends who have turned their backs on you and revile you. For women who would spit on you should they have the chance. For this, you are a part of all you have fought against, all your life. With the man whose responsibility it was to protect you and your mother as a child and failed. For this, you reward me by being my son?"

  There was sadness in his voice and for a moment, just for a moment, regret flashed through Ian as well. As a child he had dreamed of his father rescuing him and his mother from the hell their lives had become. Always running, always fighting to live, to survive.

  Once he had realized who and what his father was, the betrayal he had felt had nearly crushed him.

  Diego frowned as he watched him.

  "As a young man, I thought I knew all I needed to know of human nature." He broke the stare they had maintained, blinking at a suspicious moisture in his eyes before glancing down at his still hands as they lay on his lap. "I thought I knew the shades of betrayal and a man's honor, and how to categorize each." His gaze lifted then. "I learned I was not nearly so intelligent as I believed. And by the time I learned this lesson, it was too late. Those who could have comforted me, who could have been the family I so long for now, are no more."

  Ian crossed his arms over his chest and flattened his lips at the hidden message there. Had Diego figured out the reason he was there? There wasn't a chance. He would have been dead had he figured that out.

  "There's a point to all this?" Ian asked him.

  Diego shook his head, his eyes drifting closed for a second. "There is a message in all things, Ian. Just remember, the mistakes you make at this moment in time will follow you always. Not just into your nightmares, but into your future, and into your soul. There is no greater pain than the realization that you have destroyed the ties that would maintain you as you age. Those ties are important."

  "Diego, you're making about as much sense now as Sorrell's terrorist rhetoric does." It also struck at the heart of this mission. Diego's and Sorrell's heads. He would deliver them personally to Nathan. Payback. Atonement. Monsters didn't deserve to live, did they?

  Diego sighed wearily before a bitter smile pulled at his lips. "You handle the business as though I have retired and have no say in it. You ask for no advice, you prefer I know nothing of the plans you implement. You are aware, are you not, that this is not working?"

  They had no choice but to make it work. When the mission was over, the cartel would come down. Ian had made that vow to himself and, silently, to the friends who had always backed him. It would come down, no matter the price.

  "I know your fingers are still in there." Ian glowered back at him. He didn't need Diego's fingers there.

  "You cannot reform an old lion from striking out at those who threaten his territory," Diego pointed out. "Those who have died by my hand, those who have suffered, were there to destroy me. I protect only that which is mine."

  An old lion. As though the drugs he sold had no effects, no liabilities. Hell no, he was the candy man selling sweets, that was all, and the big bad SEALs and terrorists just wanted to smack him down.

  Son of a bitch, was this how monsters justified their evil? Was this how he had justified the blood he had spilled while he had been here? Defending territory? He could feel the blood staining his hands, hear the wails of the dead in his ears, and fought to remember that they hadn't been innocents. They had been drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and animals. No more than Diego himself was. No more than his father was. His chest clenched at the involuntary thought.

  Ian leaned forward, laying his forearms on the desk, and replied coldly, "Good men die to protect the innocent. You deal in death, Diego. Just as I deal in it now. Don't try to spray perfume on shit here to make it more presentable. You're a drug lord. We sell death to children. We prostitute them, we dope them up, and we make a profit from it. Period. We aren't lions protecting our home. We're snakes devouring the eggs of humanity."

  Diego blinked back at him as though in surprise. "You have given this much thought, I see. Why then are you here?"

  Because he had no choice. Because it was his life or the lives of those who had become his friends, his family. He was one man, alone. They were men with families, with lovers, with something to lose.

  "That was the deal, remember?" he reminded Diego mockingly, hiding the fury now. Because now, he did have something to lose. "I save your cartel from Sorrell and you give me what I need to save my friends and take out the spy plaguing us. A simple exchange."

  "With no emotion involved?"

  "Goddammit, I took your fucking name." Ian came out of his chair in a surge of fury. "What the hell do you want from me, Diego?"

  "I want you to call me father!" He was out of his seat as well, his own anger unleashed, twisting his expression into a grimace of emotional rage. "I want to know that when Sorrell dies, I will not then have to worry about your knife at my own throat. That I will not have to die by the hand of my son."

  "As your brothers died by your hand?" Ian snarled. "Is that it, Father? Want to make sure the past doesn't bite your balls off? Son of a bitch!" Ian raked his fingers through his hair before swinging away from the other man.

  Diego had paled at the word "father." Hope had sprung in his eyes like a kid at Christmas, sending an emotional blade ripping through Ian's soul.

  He would not feel mercy for this bastard. He would not regret. He would not let himself ache for things that could never be.

  "You . . ." Diego cleared his throat as he paused. "You rarely care or allow my opinion to matter."

  Ian flexed his shoulders, careful to keep his back to the other man.

  "It doesn't matter now." He felt like grinding his teeth in fury before he turned back to Diego. And saw, once again, the familiar features that he saw in the mirror each morning.

  The hair and eye color were different. Ian was slightly taller, but the shape of the face, the curve of the lips, the arch of the brow, they were the same. He took many of his looks after his sire, and other things as well. Things he didn't want to admit to, didn't want to face.

  Diego's smile was slightly less bitter, perhaps more hopeful, and Ian hated that. He hated that he would feel that twinge of regret even more.

  "What the hell did you come in here for?" Ian snapped. "I have work to do and meetings this evening. I don't have time for bullshit."

  Diego nodded. "Yes, you are busy building the cartel, its people and its product, as well as protecting it. I am here to tell you that the matter of your micromanagement is not suiting me. You will turn over the new routes to me in the morning and you will begin coordinating with me once again. You are a force to be reckoned with, and I admit this, but I am not so old nor so ineffective that I will allow myself to be pushed out. And there is the small matter of how this will end once Sorrell has been identified. Should you walk away, you will not leave me ignorant of my own world."

  Ian nodded easily. "Agreed."

  Diego would be as dead as Sorrell when this was over, s

o what would it matter?

  Surprise flickered in the other man's black eyes, surprise, hope, and God help him, a father's love. Ian hated the fucking emotion more than anything else. Son of a bitch. He didn't want this. He didn't want to feel. He didn't want to regret and God only knew that he didn't want to risk more than he had come in risking to begin with.

  "We will meet in the morning then." Diego nodded briskly before heading for the door. "Will you and your lovely Miss Porter be taking dinner with me before you leave this evening?" He turned as he gripped the doorknob and faced Ian once again. "I have had the pleasure of speaking to her again this afternoon by the pool. She is an intelligent, beautiful young woman. Not exactly the type of female you have surrounded yourself with on other occasions."

  Ian stared back at him silently. He would no more discuss Kira with this man than he would discuss his mother.

  Diego nodded easily, apparently accepting his silence. "I would enjoy your company this evening if you have time," he finally said. "We need time to know one another, Ian. Time to let the past heal."

  He didn't wait for a response. He opened the door and let himself out before closing it behind him softly, leaving Ian alone.

  He turned and faced the wall, his hands propped on his hips as he inhaled slowly, deeply. He didn't have time for this. Sorrell would be moving in soon, as soon as Antoli managed to capture Ascarti from the heavily secured yacht still anchored off Aruba's coast. Even if they couldn't take him, Sorrell would know his identity was threatened more than ever; he would come to Ian.

  Nearly a year of waiting, watching, and it was almost over. He would make certain it was over.

  Turning back to the desk, he pulled up the file that contained the pictures they had been taking of the yacht that week. Ascarti was there, as well as over two dozen unidentified suspects. Deke was working through the identifications upstairs while Antoli and Trevor worked on shooting more pictures and uploading them to Ian.

  Progress could be counted in phases, Ian reminded himself. This was just a phase of it. Securing his position here, within Diego's life, within the cartel and its members. When it was over, the cartel would fall like a house of flimsy cards. It would be gone. Washed away like so much dust in the face of a good cleaning. This was just another phase leading to the end, and the emotion, the surging regret for what would never be, would be over once the mission was over. Idealism was a fool's game here. There was nothing ideal in the world he was fighting within, there was only the end result.

  There was only success.

  At least, that's what he told himself. What he tried to convince himself of. The mission mattered. Success mattered. Revenge mattered, and nothing else.

  So why the hell did his heart feel like a ragged wound and why did he remember so clearly that bleak night that Nathan and his father had rescued him? Why did he remember screaming for a father that didn't exist?

  * * *

  Twenty-one

  SHE WAS CALLED THE CHAMELEON in the covert underground she had operated within since her twenties, but that night, Kira had to admit that when it came to hiding who and what they were beneath layers of personality shifts, Ian had her beat.

  From the moment he had walked out of the study earlier that day, she had sensed the carefully banked fury just beneath the surface. A fury fueled by the emotions roiling in his liquor-colored eyes. Somehow, Diego had managed to get to him this time in ways he hadn't before.

  Throughout the day, Ian had managed to hide it. He was patronizingly patient with Diego, laughing with his bodyguards, and playing the role of the heir to a major drug cartel to the hilt. But Kira could sense the tension rising inside him and it wasn't rising from the mission alone. There was something else, something dark, something angry that she couldn't put her finger on.

  His mood continued well into the evening, and as the sun finally began to set, Kira moved to the wide balcony doors that led from the bedroom rather than the sitting room. From here, she could see the upper story of the villa she had leased and the glow of lights in the bedroom Daniel had taken.

  This wasn't the first mission she had taken that her bodyguard wasn't directly involved. Actually, it would have been odd had he been involved rather than watching from the sidelines, ready to lend assistance should the danger become more than she could handle herself.

  As she leaned against the heavy roof support and stared out at the villa, a frown worked at her brow. She could have sworn she glimpsed an additional shadow moving in the room.

  She blew out a rough breath and pushed her hand into the pocket of the silk capris she wore, her fingers running over the slender cell phone she carried. She knew Durango team was over there, knew something was brewing, and it was driving her crazy.

  Ian refused, point-blank, to meet with his former team, determined to handle this mission as he had begun it. Alone. Except for her.

  She had to admit she was a bit surprised that he hadn't attempted to have her kidnapped and stashed in a safe location until it was over. Or until he was dead.

  Dead would be a possibility if the snatches of information she had overheard were true. Ian's plan was to send a team in to capture Ascarti, the one man suspected of knowing Sorrell's true identity. Even DHS and the various law enforcement agencies around the world had kept their hands off him. They tried to place agents in close to him, tried to trail him, track him, and eavesdrop on him, but they hadn't attempted to take him because the fury Sorrell would unleash was just too dangerous. Whoever held Ascarti would feel the full force of the terrorist's fury. Unless they managed to get Sorrell at the same time.

  But who would care if that fury came down on a drug cartel and a deserter from the U.S. Navy? She closed her eyes and swallowed back the nervousness rising inside her. Ian had been steadily pushing Sorrell, challenging him indirectly by the sheer fact that he had managed to derail every attempt the terrorist made against the cartel.

  But Ian had gone from defensive to offensive this week when he snatched the two men responsible for firing the missile at the limo. And he had killed them.

  Logically, Kira knew he'd had no other choice. Once he snatched the men, he had to send Sorrell a message. That he wasn't playing. That he meant to protect his own territory. But she had to admit, she hadn't believed he would do it. How she thought he would handle it, she wasn't certain, but she saw he was harder, more determined than she had ever believed possible. Determined enough that the risk to Diego Fuentes's life by his son was greater than she had imagined.

  She needed to report that, at least to Daniel. It was her job to ensure that Fuentes lived to fulfill his agreement with the U.S. To send DHS the vital information he obtained regarding terrorists and rumored strikes, while he maintained his hold on the drug business.

  DHS wouldn't arrest him, detain him, or otherwise strike directly against his main base of operations, and neither would the Colombian government. The Fuentes cartel was handled with kid gloves until the drugs left the processing labs; after that, it was fair game.

  It was a dirty deal. Ian would never forgive her or his own government once he learned the truth.

  She crossed her arms protectively over her breasts and lowered her head, trying to hold back her own guilt and feelings of helplessness.

  Hell, Ian had a right to his fury, to his need for blood. He'd had no childhood because of Diego's bitch of a wife, Carmelita. And Nathan. God, what Fuentes had done to Nathan was nothing short of evil. An evil the United States government was protecting.

  Did the end justify the means? She didn't know anymore. She knew this mission had changed Ian. It had made him harder, made him colder.

  "You're thinking too hard."

  She swung around at the sound of Ian's quiet voice from the open doorway, her heart tripping in her chest at the softened tone.

  She had believed him hard, but she heard something more in his voice now. Almost regret. His expression was in shadow, but she could feel the tension radiating from him.