Hidden Agenda (2 page)

Ivan hesitated at the sandy trail leading toward the beach. More than likely, Olivia was sitting on the beach. Even during
the colder winter months, she loved bundling up to watch the waves come in off the Atlantic, the early morning sunrises, and the last rays of light vanish from the horizon at sunset.

He set off down the path toward the beach, wondering if Olivia had already guessed—at least partially—the truth about their father. Something had been bothering her these past couple of weeks, but she'd denied it, trying to protect him like she always did. When was she going to realize he was grown up?

He paused as he caught sight of her sitting along the shoreline and started praying. Because he had no idea how he was going to tell his sister that their father was a man they should be deathly afraid of.

O
livia Hamilton stared out across the choppy waters as the sun began to set behind her, leaving a soft trail of pink and yellow light. Clouds formed wisps like cotton candy above the horizon, reminding her of her childhood. For the moment, it was easy to forget why she was here. Most people tended to stay inside this time of year, but she'd always found the stormy blues and grays of the Atlantic mesmerizing.

She pulled her coat tighter, fastening the top clasp to guard against the chilly wind. She should go back up to the house. It would be dark soon, and she'd forgotten her flashlight. But the icy wind wasn't the only thing numbing her heart.

God, I don't know what to believe
. I don't know who I can trust.

She pulled out her phone and reread the emails that had filled her thoughts the past two weeks and had ultimately brought her back to her father's private island.

I have
proof of money laundering and a connection to the Cártel
de Rey, all linked to Antonio Valez . . .

Olivia dropped the phone into her pocket and dug the toes of her tennis shoes into the sand. For years, this private barrier island along the Georgia coastline had been a place of refuge for her and her brother, with its miles of private beaches, salt
marshes, and tidal creeks. They'd spent their childhood summers exploring the forested trails and circling the island in one of her father's motorized skiffs.

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.