Schooled in Revenge (7 page)

“You always said you never trusted the guy,” Cruz murmured. “And don’t you remember that paper of his you found? The one with the—”

“I remember it,” Reena snapped, her heart in a vise. “What’s your point?”

“Take a look.” He handed her a stack of grainy photographs from his own file.

“What is this?” Reena asked, looking down at the images. Her gaze was drawn to a man with glasses. He looked more like a computer programmer than someone who belonged in the world of murder for hire.
“Who
is it?”

Crossing the room, Jon leaned over Reena’s shoulder to look at the pictures. “They look like security camera screen shots.” He froze, eyes glued to the photos. “What the fuck?”

Reena glanced at Jon. “What is it?”

He pointed to the man meeting with Wells. “That’s Frederick Cain.” He looked at Reena. “You said they never found the person who killed your mother?”

She nodded, despair encroaching on the serenity she’d found focusing on revenge. “Cruz’s brother, Simon, was arrested and found guilty, but there’s no way he did it.”

Jon stood, running his hand through his hair. “This is crazy.”

“What’s going on?” Ava asked.

“Frederick Cain is a hit man,” he said, turning to them. “Actually, that’s not totally true. He hires people to do the dirty work. But he’s the guy you call when you want to take someone out and don’t want to do it yourself.”

“How do you know all of this?” Reena asked, her mind working to put the pieces together.

“Because Cain and his people are the ones who killed my fiancée.”

Reena stood up, wanting to crawl out of her own skin as everything began to fall into place. If Wells had Cain kill her mother and framed Cruz’s brother—a safe assumption given the photos of them meeting in Cruz’s revenge file—and Cain also killed Jon’s fiancée…

Their missions were connected. They were out for revenge against the same people.

“According to these printouts—hacked government files, police reports—Cain is exactly who Jon says he is,” Cruz said, looking at the contents of the file. “But no one’s ever been able to nail the dude. Hell, no one’s even connected him with a crime. Ever.”

“Cain has friends in high places,” Jon explained. “And everyone has a price. He orchestrates everything and then pays off the right people to keep it all quiet. Convenient, since most of the people he’s paying off are the same ones paying him to commit their own personal sins.”

Reena’s despair receded, transforming into the cold fury she’d relied on since coming to Rebun Island. Now it all made sense; Senator Wells hired Cain to kill Reena’s mother so he could take her seat in the Senate.

“This is weird,” Cruz muttered, picking up the files and consulting them one by one. “Every one of our files has a calendar page with May first circled and marked with ‘10 p.m., Starling Vineyards, Napa Valley.’ ”

Ava froze, shaking her head. “What did you just say?”

Cruz handed her the files. “See for yourself.”

Ava flipped through the folders before sinking onto a chair, her face a mask of shock.

“That mean something to you?” Cruz asked.

“Starling Vineyards is mine. Was mine.” She looked up at them. “It was in my family for three generations before it was taken from me. Every year on May first a gala is held there.”

“What kind of gala?” Reena asked.

“It’s a formal event: wine, food, dancing, the whole nine yards,” Ava explained. “My grandmother started the tradition. After she passed, I upheld it. Apparently the bastards who stole my life have kept it going.”

“May first is next week and it looks like both Senator Wells and Frederick Cain will be there,” Jon said.

But there was something Reena didn’t understand. “Why are they meeting at some château in Northern California?”

Ava looked away, her mind coming to some unpleasant conclusions.

“Do you know something we don’t?” Reena asked her.

Ava sighed. “I’m guessing it’s because of William Reinhardt.”

“Who’s William Reinhardt?” Jon asked.

Ava opened her file and removed a picture of an elegant
man with salt-and-pepper hair and a thinly groomed beard. “This man.”

Reena had never seen the man before in her life. “What does he have to do with anything?”

“Well, I’m assuming a senator wouldn’t be well acquainted with hit men,” Ava said. “If Jacob Wells wanted someone to take out your mother, he’d need a connection to find that kind of someone.”

“And this guy, Reinhardt, is that connection?” Cruz asked.

Ava shrugged. “Who knows? But it makes sense. He’s a big-money investor who uses questionable tactics to get what he wants. It’s made him a very wealthy man, and according to Takeda’s files, he and Senator Wells were roommates at Brown. Plus, Reinhardt’s been rumored to have associations with Cain, using him and his men to intimidate, and sometimes worse, to get what he wants.”

“And to get his friends what they want,” Reena said angrily. “Even if it was murdering my mother.”

Reena storms into a seedy motel room, bare and grimy, made up of two wiry twin beds and a termite-infested desk. Cruz follows Reena inside, shutting the door and locking it behind her.

“The media won’t give us two seconds together. Won’t give me two seconds to myself,” Cruz says, pacing the tiny room.

“This place is disgusting,” Reena says, looking around.

“Yeah, well, at least they won’t find us here.”

“I wouldn’t even be able to find us here,” Reena says.

Cruz crosses his muscular arms across his chest. “Funny. I haven’t been able to find you for the last six months.”

Reena looked down, guilt crowding out her happiness at seeing Cruz. The shooting of Reena’s mother and Simon’s subsequent arrest had sent both their lives into a tailspin. At first, they had banded together, finding solace in each other’s company, and eventually, each other’s arms. But then Simon’s trial had begun, and Reena’s life had turned into a media feeding frenzy. Overwhelmed and distraught, Reena had done the only thing she could at the time. She’d run.

Reena grabs Cruz’s hand and pulls him next to her on the edge of one of the beds. “I’m sorry. I’m going to explain, I promise. But first, tell me about Simon. How is he holding up?”

Cruz stares at her a minute, as if trying to determine if he can really trust her to come clean.

Finally, he shakes his head. “He’s hanging in there, but I think he’s starting to crack. We used to think we could get him out on appeal, but the lawyers say that’s probably not going to happen unless we can introduce some kind of new evidence. I just…”

Reena tips her head, forcing him to look at her. “What?”

“I just feel so fucking helpless.”

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, wrapping her arms around him. She knows that the brothers hadn’t had an easy childhood. But they had each other, and that had gotten them through the hard times. It must be killing Cruz not to be able to help Simon.

“Is the press still speculating that you were in on it?” Reena had been shocked and horrified when the media had
gone after Cruz, insinuating that, as an aide to Reena’s mother, he had fed Simon information that allowed him to get close enough to take the shot that had killed her.

He waved off the question. “I’m done in politics. Ruined. But I don’t even care anymore. I just need to clear Simon.”

“Have you found out anything new?” Reena asks. “Anything that might help?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve hit so many brick walls, my head is bleeding. I’m at a dead end.”

She hesitates. He’s as stubborn as she is. Once she tells him her plan, there will be no going back. For either of them.

“I think I might be able to help,” she finally says.

“Have you found something? Some kind of new evidence?”

She takes a deep breath. “I found someone,” she says. “Someone who can help us clear Simon’s name. Someone who can help us find my mother’s killer. Who can teach us how to avenge them both.”

“Avenge?” Cruz shakes his head. “What are you talking about?”

Reena stands up. There’s only one way to make Cruz understand. Only one way to make him see.

She walks calmly over to the bedside table, smashing her fist into the lamp on its surface. Shards of ceramic fly through the air before falling to the dilapidated carpet at their feet.

Cruz stands, a look of shock on his face. “What the fuck was that?”

Reena picks up a piece of the demolished lamp. “He’ll show us everything we need to know,” she says, launching the
ceramic shard like an arrow at a dingy clock hanging on the wall.

It hits the target square in the center. Bull’s-eye.

Cruz stares at her like he’s never seen her before. “Everything we need to know for what?”

Reena meets his eyes. “Revenge.”

The group had been silent, each of them trying to process everything they’d learned from their files, when Reena finally looked up at Ava.

“I see the connection between Wells, Cain, Reinhardt, and the rest of us, but what do they have to do with you? How are you connected to all this?”

“The man who took my family’s land was my husband,” Ava said. “Well, I thought he was my husband. But he didn’t do it alone.”

Reena raised her eyebrows. “Reinhardt?”

“The one and only,” Ava confirmed.

“He got someone to marry you to take your land?” Jon asked.

Ava was surprised to find that she was no longer embarrassed by the admission. No longer angry at her naïveté. No longer angry at all. The fury that had consumed her had been replaced by something cold and calculating. A beast that demanded not vengeance, but justice, just as Takeda said.

“There’s not much room for expansion in Napa,” Ava explained. “The existing vineyards are old and family-run.
There’s no way they would sell, especially not to someone like Reinhardt who was all about profit, who didn’t understand the real value of the land and the responsibility of that legacy. My parents had died, my grandmother…” She shrugged. “I was alone. And Charlie, Reinhardt’s lackey, was very, very good.”

Cruz nodded his understanding. “Those kinds of people are all the same. They have no respect for anything.”

“Exactly,” Ava said. “And Reinhardt didn’t just ruin me and my legacy. From what I hear, he’s introducing his brand of intimidation and coercion to the other vintners in an attempt to increase his stake.” She called up a fresh round of determination. “I let him in. It’s my job to set things straight.”

“Well, I guess now we know why Takeda’s been training us together,” Cruz said.

Jon throws his file onto the desk. “I’m done with Takeda’s training. I’m going after Cain and everyone who works for him.”

“You can’t do that,” Ava protested. “Not yet. ‘Death by a thousand cuts,’ remember? We have to be smart.”

Reena walked over to Ava. “If we can expose these sons of bitches, they will all go down. Including your former boy-toy. I thought you wanted vengeance.”

“I do. I just think we should talk to Takeda before we do anything rash.”

“He’ll only try to stop us,” Jon said.

“Which is exactly why we should give him a chance to explain. To advise,” Ava said. “He’s taught us so much already. We have to trust that he knows what he’s doing.”

Jon looked at her. “Seems to me that trusting people is what got you here in the first place.”

“You don’t need to remind me of that,” she snapped. “Not a day goes by that I don’t remember.”

He held her eyes, a different kind of spark running between them as she fumed.

Finally, he sighed, walking over to her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But we don’t have much time before May first and I think we should do something.” He surprised her by putting his hands on either side of her face. He looked deeply into her eyes. “You deserve to breathe easy, Ava. We all do.”

“Agreed,” Cruz said.

Ava folded her arms across her chest. She was outnumbered. If they were determined to go, what could she do but go with them? It seemed they were in it together now.

Reena’s expression softened. “Listen, I get where you’re coming from. We all want to do the right thing here. The best thing. But we’ve lost so much, Ava. It’s time to do something about it.”

“Not without me you won’t.”

They turned to see Jane standing in the doorway, already dressed in black.

“How long have you been there?” Cruz asked.

“Long enough to know that if what you said is true, I’m connected to your mission, too. Which means one of the men you’ve been talking about is responsible for what happened to me.”

“We can’t be sure of that,” Ava protested. She stood up and gazed at the large antique mirror hanging above the desk. “For all we know there’s another player we haven’t been introduced to yet.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jane said, stepping farther into the
room. “I’ve been in the dark too long. This is the closest I’ve come to figuring out who did this to me.” Her eyes turned steely. “If you guys are leaving, I’m coming, too.”

Reena put a gentle hand on Jane’s arm. “I know where you’re coming from, we all do, but you don’t even have your memory back. If what Takeda said is true, you could be traumatized by confronting your past before you’re ready.”

“Takeda?” It was the first time Ava had ever seen humor in Jane’s eyes. “You’re ready to leave right now. To dismiss everything he’s done for you, everything he’s taught you. But I’m supposed to stay and mind him like a good little girl.” She shook her head. “I think I’ll take my chances. Besides, if I don’t remember who I am and what happened to me before you get your revenge, I’ll never have a chance to get mine.”

“She has a point,” Jon said.

Cruz piped in. “And you never know. Maybe the real world is just what she needs. It might jog her memory or something.”

Jane brushed the blond hair from her face. “Did I have a folder?”

Ava shook her head. “I’m sorry.”