Killer Secrets (54 page)

"He and his bodyguard will be armed," he told
her. "Handguns only. Tehya's weapon will be Velcroed to

the small of her back, and Antoli will be carrying several
weapons. When things go to hell make certain

you're in position to either take the weapon from Sorrell's
bodyguard or to collect one from Antoli. His

job is to protect Tehya above everything else; that leaves
me and you to watch each other's backs.

"Durango team and teams four and eight will converge
on the estate after Sorrell is inside. They have to

take out any forces that follow behind Sorrell before they
can move in to help us. We'll be on our own in

that room, Kira, don't kid yourself about that." His
gaze bored into hers. "We have to keep Tehya safe,

as well as ourselves, until Reno and the team can get to
us. Understood?"

She nodded sharply.

"Let's go then." He breathed in roughly.
"Reno and Macey will have Tehya here within minutes and we're

only hours from Sorrell's arrival. We can expect him—"

"—to be either late or early but never on time,"
Kira finished for him. "When he shows the birthmark,

check it closely, then check his bodyguard for one. He's
not above a switch. Make him speak to Tehya

to confirm voice identification and pay attention to the
bodyguard's body language as well as Sorrell's.

Above all things, remember Sorrell has stayed unidentified
to this point for a reason. How did I do?" She

flashed him a knowing smile.

"Dangerously efficient." The smile he gave in
turn was easier, more confident. "Let's get this done. I think

I've had enough of Aruba. I'm eager to get home."

"Ian." She caught his arm as he moved to turn
toward the door. "There's something you don't know."

His expression closed. As though he did know, as though he
had been waiting, watching. She felt her

throat tighten, knowing she had to tell him the truth about
Diego and DHS. She didn't have a choice. She

couldn't let him kill without the facts.

"About Diego?" he asked harshly.

"There's more to this than you know."

"Don't." His voice cut like a knife. "I
don't want to know."

She stared at him in surprise. "Ian, you have to hear
this."

"Later."

"There won't be time later. It'll be too late,"
she gritted out.

She could see the suspicion in his eyes, and knew he was
aware that things weren't as they seemed. That

Diego had escaped justice all these years for a reason.

"You know," she whispered.

"That Diego plays games with DHS?" he asked, a
bitter, mocking curve curling his lips. "I know."

"And you didn't say anything to me?"

"You didn't say anything to me either, Kira," he reminded
her as she loosened her hold on him. "I've

always suspected it. We were pulled out of the game when
Nathan went missing, given strict orders not

to kill Diego when we went after the senator's girls. Every
time we've struck against him, we were

hampered, our hands tied. I knew he was in bed with those
bastards."

"There's a reason." She licked her lips
nervously. "It's not just a game with DHS."

"Of course it is." Bitterness filled his voice.
"Doesn't matter the reason for it, it's still a game."

He reached out and touched her cheek, running the backs of
his fingers over it. "That's why you came

here, wasn't it? To protect Diego."

"No." She shook her head. "It was never
about Diego. I came here because of you. I used Diego as the

excuse."

He leaned forward and kissed her lips. "Thank you for
that, Kira. But this isn't about DHS or what they

want. This is about letting a monster roam free because
politicians and paper pushers believe the

information he gives is more important. The needs of the
many outweigh the pain of the few. I can't see it

that way. I won't see it that way."

"He's still your father," she whispered. "No
one would blame you for walking away."

He inhaled deeply, staring over her shoulder for long
seconds before his gaze came back to hers. The

sadness, the somber acceptance of responsibility, darkened
the fire in his eyes and dug creases of pain

into his face.

"Because he is my father, the blame would be more mine
than DHS's," he told her. "He's my

responsibility, because I'm here, in place, with the means
and the chance."

"DHS won't let you forget it."

"I have their agreement signed, sealed, and protected.
It releases to the major newspapers across the

world the minute Sorrell's death is announced. I'm not
stupid. I know how that game works too. Now

let's go. We'll argue over it later. Later."

He said it as though he had said it to himself often.
Later. Now was the time to face Sorrell, to face the

decisions he had made over the course of years. Kira only
prayed that both of them could live with those

choices.

Thirty

KIRA STOOD CONFIDENTLY, AMUSEMENT GLITTERINGdeliberately in
her eyes, when the

limousine entered the gates of the Fuentes estate and
pulled up to the sheltered entrance to the house.

She stood at the bottom of the steps, but didn't deign to
open the door to the luxury vehicle. The

chauffeur moved from the front, irritation lining his face
as he glanced at her.

She gave him a jaunty smile and stepped back as he swung
the door open.

Sorrell and his associate, she presumed. They stepped from
the vehicle, exuding arrogance and

superiority despite the black masks that covered their
faces.

"Kira Porter." A flash of a smile, familiar and
faintly disarming, touched his mouth.

She arched a brow and glanced at his companion, instantly
knowing who Sorrell was, and it wasn't the

charming, smiling masked man facing her.

She turned back to the charmer though. "Sorrell?"
She peered at him as though uncertain, unknowing.

His smile was condescending. "You will take us to Mr.
Fuentes, I presume?" His hand wrapped around

her arm, the thin leather gloves doing nothing to disguise
the strength in the grip.

"You presume right." She flipped him another
smile. "We'll just go through the door here."

The doors were open wide, showing the deserted foyer that
awaited inside. "Ian's waiting in the study,

as well as his father and your daughter. She's a beautiful
young woman. A shame she was raised without

her father."

A blessing was more like it.

The fingers tightened on her arm.

"Let's not bruise the skin." She tapped at his
wrist with her opposite hand. "Ian gets upset when I get

bruised. Mars the skin. He's funny about that."

As was Sorrell. Rumor was that he would kill if merchandise
was bruised or in any way broken. He

liked giving pain himself, and he knew how to do it without
leaving a mark. She restrained her shiver and

moved into the house, very aware of the hand holding on to
her.

The grip was strong—the bodyguard, she presumed—and he was
heavily armed. Beneath the long

jacket he wore was a harnessed automatic weapon, most
likely Uzi-type. A backup at his ankle and she

was betting on another at his back.

The broader, stouter figure who walked on the other side of
her wasn't as heavily armed. He was

dressed casually in dark slacks and jacket. A weapon at his
back would be expected, most likely

another handgun harnessed beneath his arm from what she had
glimpsed of his jacket.

To come here unarmed would have been idiocy. But it made
the upcoming meeting and the plans that

were in place harder to execute. She wasn't armed. Ian
would be. Teyha and Antoli would be.

Not for the first time, Kira wondered at the plan they had
in place. In theory, she agreed with Ian. If they

arrested Sorrell, he would soon escape, one way or the
other. The only thing they would gain would be

his identity and his wrath, and Nathan Malone would never
be same. On the other side of the coin, the

imminent bloodshed raked at her conscience.

They were monsters. They were evil. They were killers of
the worst sort. But how did that make her,

Ian, and Durango team any better?

"In here, gentlemen." She stopped before the
door, well aware that Deke and Trevor were watching

from the upper landing, well hidden from the two visitors.

The door opened wide, revealing Tehya, for all intents and
purposes bound to the high-backed chair

across the room. The chair had been placed in front of the
wide windows, the drawn shades lending a

creamy backdrop to the brilliant, bloodred waves of hair
that flowed around her.

Antoli stood behind her, a Glock held in the hand resting
comfortably by his side.

"My daughter." There was a sigh from behind Kira
as Tehya's gaze clashed with the men behind her.

That voice was soft, almost reverent.

"What a beauty you have become," Sorrell
whispered.

Tehya sneered back at him. "Perfect breeder, am
I?"

A long sigh whispered through the silence. "You are my
child. You would have been adored. You will

be adored. Treasured."

"And bred in an incestuous relationship." Her
expression contorted in fury.

"I would have loved you."

"You would have destroyed me as you destroyed my
mother and everyone else you've ever touched.

You bastard!"

At that moment, Kira felt the barrel that pressed against
her forehead and the tightening of the fingers on

her arm.

"Mr. Fuentes." The stouter, barrel-chested man at
her side snapped at Ian and Diego as angry tension

filled the room then. "There will be no negotiations.
Release my daughter and send her this way, and the

lovely Miss Porter might live to see another day."

She hated it when men went back on their word. It just
pissed her off.

Her gaze sliced to Ian as he leaned back comfortably in his
chair, his legs lifted and resting on the corner

of his desk as he watched Sorrell with no small amount of
amusement.

Antoli's gun lifted to Tehya's forehead and Diego sipped at
his whisky from where he sat beside Ian's

desk in a comfortable leather chair.

"You know, we can do this the easy way, or the hard
way," Ian said.

The gun at her head said.

"Perhaps the easy way then." He muttered his cue
to Kira.

Kira dropped. She simply bent her legs, pulling them up,
and let herself fall and roll as Ian's bodyguards

swarmed around the two men.

There was a curse, a grunt, and as she rolled to her feet
in a crouch, it was to see the two men

unmasked. And she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
There had to be a mistake.

She had known there was something familiar about the two
men, known that she should have recognized

something about them, but the French accents had thrown her
off. The supposedly natural accents, the

arrogance in the tone that she hadn't heard before.

It wasn't any of the men they had suspected. The associate
he had brought with him wasn't Gregor

Ascarti as they had assumed it would be.

The men, unmasked, were friends, associates of hers and
Jason's, European but not French, and so well

respected that she knew the knowledge of this would rock
the world.

"Kenneth," she whispered, staring at the younger
man, seeing the familiar brown eyes, the thinning brown

hair.

He inclined his head regally as she turned her gaze to his
father.

"You killed my parents," she whispered.
"Then cried at their funeral."

Joseph Fitzhugh, distantly related to royalty, and friends
with the current president of the United States.

Good friends. Hunting-and-fishing-type friends.