The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!) (14 page)

All Cassandra remembered at first was the sound of thunder, and seeing Nick flop backwards as Lester holstered his gun. Then, everything went black. Now, she blinked against harsh light and lifted her hand to her head. It was pounding.

She was somewhere soft. Above her, a canopy of sheer, maroon fabric wafted in a warm breeze. There was fabric under her skin as well, and it was soft, and smooth. She could smell food, something cooking, coming in on the breeze.

With some effort, she pushed herself up, and realized her clothes had changed. She was in a silken shift of some kind; not anything she’d worn before. For a sudden moment she felt terribly exposed, and then violated. Who had changed her clothes? How long had she been out? What else had happened to her.

A moment later, she realized that she recognized the room. It was one of two on the upper veranda of her Father’s estate, the one overlooking a pool and a wide yard. There was an old adobe grill out there that her father had built after a long trip to Mexico when she was six or seven.

This was her mother’s room. It had been redecorated—everything except the mural on the wall. Her chest ached, and tears welled in her eyes.

“I hope you don’t mind,” a voice said behind her, “that I took some liberties with your mother’s old room. I thought it was time to bring it into the modern age.”

Cassandra whirled, and saw Lester sitting in one of two chairs near a small breakfast table, dressed in a white linen suit, legs crossed at the knee. He looked entirely unperturbed at her sudden fury.

“Where is my son?” she demanded, voice shaking with the need to scream at him; but even those words resonated in her aching head to the point that she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Yes,” Lester said, “the sedative had to last all the way here, and you needed a second dose. Easier that way, all around. There’s food outside; you’re going to be famished once your head clears. Ramon is down there. I’m happy to take you to him, but take a look for yourself over the balcony.”

As much as she wanted to kill the man, she worried for her son more. Cassandra turned, and walked carefully to the small balcony outside the great glass doors that let in the breeze and the smell of cooking food. Just as Lester said, Ramon was there in the courtyard, dangling his feet in the pool.

The need to hold him again almost sent her leaping over the edge of the railing. She staggered back, desperate to control the sobs that wanted to force their way out.

She turned back to Lester. “Take me to him.”

“Certainly,” Lester said. He gestured at the wardrobe. “You’ll want to get dressed, of course.”

Cautiously, as though it might be trapped, Cassandra walked to the wardrobe and opened it. There were clothes inside—from beautiful dresses to complete suits to jeans and tee shirts. She took the drabbest collection she could manage and clutched it to her when she glanced at Lester meaningfully.

“No such luck, my dear,” he said. “I’m afraid you can’t be trusted. Yet. Nothing I haven’t seen before, I assure you. By all means, dress.”

Stifling a curse, she turned away from him and angled the wardrobe door for what little privacy she could manage, and pulled the jeans on, a shirt down over her head, and managed to get out of the shift without revealing anything.

When she was dressed, Lester stood and opened the door to the room with a key on his key-chain. So, she was to be locked in a tower after all. She smoldered as she walked past him and into the long hall. The carpet was the same, and again, the walls were still painted that yellow orange of sunrises that her mother had so loved. Everything else was different, though.

She didn’t need Lester to lead her to the courtyard, so she made her own way with him in tow. When they emerged onto the white concrete slab that abutted the house, Ramon looked up from what he was playing with, and his eyes lit up. He ran to her.

When she finally had her arms around him, her heart broke. She clutched him to her desperately, and muttered promises to him that she would never let him go. “Mi Mijito,” she cried, “oh, I missed you so, so much…”

“Is Dad with you?” Ramon asked. “And Grandma?”

She glanced up at Lester. He frowned, and shook his head.

“Uh… no, Mijito,” Cassandra told her son. “Not… not yet. Are you okay? Have you been… okay?”

“Uncle Lester said we could live here,” he said, his excitement cutting Cassandra to the bone. “I have a room with video games, and he said Angus can come and visit!”

Ramon had no idea Lester was the man who’d been hunting them. What would Lester do if she told Ramon the truth? She decided, for now, not to find out. “That’s…” she couldn’t find a word. Instead she rubbed his head, ruffling his hair.

“Ramon, buddy,” Lester said, every bit the friendly uncle he had apparently been playing to her son, “I need to talk with your mom a little bit in private, okay? But we’ll come back soon to eat. Almost dinner time, and Miguel there is a cook par excellence, I assure you both.” The man at the grill, upon hearing his name, turned and waved a spatula at them.

Cassandra swallowed hard as Ramon hugged her again, and then went back to an assortment of action figures spread over the cement by the pool.

She stood, shrugging off Lester’s offer of assistance.

“Walk with me,” Lester said.

They went back into the house, and walked the long hall that would lead to the great room near the front, where her father had entertained guests.

“So,” Cassandra said. “You took over for my father, is that it?”

“You could say that,” Lester said, “yes. Very nearly, anyway.”

She sighed, and shook her head. “What do you even want with a Colombian cartel? Or me? You obviously have the means to run all of this—I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want it and never did. Ramon and I are not a threat to your power here.”

Lester took a deep breath. “Well, as to the first question, the answer is easy. Immense wealth and power. It comes with the cartel, ostensibly, and I want that very much. I couldn’t give a shit about cocaine, or weapons or… any of it, really. But the influence,” he held up a finger, “well, that’s priceless.”

“Fine,” Cassandra said. “Take it. It’s yours. As the heir to Emilio Gonzales, I bequeath it to you. Happy?”

He pursed his lips and opened the door to the great room for her. “I’m afraid it isn’t that simple.”

Of the house she’d seen so far, this room had changed the least. The furniture was all still here. Then again, it had been the room most recently updated—Papa was always careful that he met his guests in the height of style and luxury.

“Sit,” Lester said, “please. I’ll have some tea and maybe something for your head brought.” He gave a nod to the single guard in the room, who vanished. They were alone.

Cassandra wondered, if she went all out, if she could kill him.

There was a letter opener on the table behind the wide couch she took. She didn’t touch it just now, but she kept her eye on it for a moment, judged its distance. Lester didn’t seem to notice.

“The problem,” he said as he sat, “is that your father was well liked. Loved, even. Respected by his people, and by the other cartel leaders. I don’t know why I didn’t know that about him. One had a certain… bias against crime lords, I suppose. So, when I saw the opportunity to take his place… well, I took it thinking I would slip right in, make a small show of force and gain the fear or respect—it didn’t really matter to me which the cartels showed me—and viola; new boss in town. It works that way in plenty of other places.”

“You’re an outsider,” Cassandra said. “You don’t understand Colombian culture.”

“Sadly, this is so,” Lester said. He shrugged. “Fortunately, after I sent Nick to assassinate your father, he was unable to do the same to you. If I’d known at the time what a boon he’d granted me for the future, I wouldn’t have hunted him quite so long.”

Silent thunder shook Cassandra. She blinked, rewinding in her head what Lester had told her. “You… Nick, he…?”

The expression on Lester’s face bordered on pained sympathy. “Ah, so you didn’t know. Well, I wouldn’t have told you either, frankly. I’m not surprised he kept it from you. It’s the very reason I sent him to eliminate you as well. I like to keep it in the family, you know.”

Torn, Cassandra tried to fight the sudden flare of anger. It didn’t matter now. They were both dead.

“I can see your distress,” Lester said. “So, I’ll get to the point. I am not without allies in the, shall we say, court of cartels here. If I do right by you, and by Ramon, and name him my heir, and allow you to… carry on with your father’s humanitarian weakness, then the cartels will grant me their loyalty and become somewhat more cooperative.”

“Do I have a choice?” Cassandra asked, numb and barely able to speak.

“Of course,” Lester said. “Everyone always has a choice, Cassandra. It isn’t much of a choice, in this case. I suppose it goes without saying that if you don’t cooperate, well… your usefulness will expire rather quickly. Frankly it would be easier to raise Ramon myself. But, family is a big ticket issue down here. If instead I marry you, and adopt Ramon formally, well… it goes a long way.”

She wanted to throw up. She might have, if there was anything in her stomach but bile.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it,” Lester said as he stood. The guard returned with a tray.

Lester turned to greet him, and directed the man to set the tray down.

The choice was made in the space of a few tense heart beats. Cassandra snatched the mail opener from the table behind her and leapt. She wasn’t sure where it needed to go, but she warranted most anywhere on the neck was a good bet.

Lester turned, perfectly calm, and guided her into the smaller couch. One hand gripped her wrist, and squeezed. She gasped, and bit her lip to keep from screaming as something gave and her fingers went limp, dropping the weapon.

“Glad we got that out of the way,” Lester said. “And, now I know something about you, Ms. Gonzales. Or Murray, if you prefer. I know that I cannot turn my back on you. If I were you, I would have saved that for later. No patience. That’s your problem. Nick’s, too, in the end.” He let her go, and straightened to address the guard. “Eyes on her at all times, no matter what. Dinner is at seven. See that she attends. I don’t particularly care how she gets there.”

Cassandra cradled her wrist against her chest and snarled up at Lester.

He smiled. “I admire a fighting spirit, Cassandra. I really do. By all means, make whatever attempt on my life you see fit. My men are paid well, but they’ll abandon my cause the moment the money dries up. I’m not naive.” He leaned in close to her, so that she could smell his breath with a hint of whiskey or bourbon on it. “But know that my patience, though vast, is not limitless. It would be a shame for Ramon to lose his mother in a terrible accident. But, then again, it is the losses that we suffer that makes us strong; is it not?”

With that, he left her.

Cassandra flinched when her guard offered her a cup of tea, and slapped it out of his hand. He didn’t seem to care. He merely resumed his post. As Cassandra wept quietly, she felt her grip on hope begin to slip. She had to stay strong. She had to find a way to take Ramon away. But at the moment, she couldn’t begin to imagine how.

Nick and Alex brooded over a collection of dinner, photos, laptop screens, and names. The hotel room in Bogota was spare, cheap, and according to Alex untraceable. But that didn’t mean they had plenty of time to spare.

“I’m thinking,” Alex mused, “it’s at least… an eight to ten man job. Depending on the talent. Who are your top picks?”

Rather than answering verbally, Nick looked over the list. Twenty five contractors had left Lester’s organization in the last eight years. Of those, he would trust twelve to perform, and none to have his back. But, the thing about those twelve was that they liked money and hated Lester. He put check marks next to their names. “These guys. If you can find them—”

“I can find anyone,” Alex muttered, and took the list as well as her laptop to the bed. She hadn’t touched her food.

She was an odd one, Alex. Probably with good reason. She was on virtually every wanted list a person could be on. Alex wasn’t her real name—she hadn’t confirmed that, but he knew it instinctively—so he didn’t know where she ranked on those lists. It was possible she’d had some plastic surgery to change her face. He wouldn’t put it past her, and she could afford the best.

He resisted the urge to ask questions she wouldn’t answer anyway, however, and instead focused on the task at hand.

Get his family back. Kill Lester.

It was a short enough to-do list, but deceptively so. Each of them had a thousand steps involved, and that was what he and Alex had been trying to work out.

Still, no amount of planning eased his mind. There were missing pieces. Lester had shot him in the chest, for instance. Granted, a head shot was never certain, whereas a shot to the heart was… but there were other targets that were more certain in the event of armor, a vest… a stray wallet, even. Maybe it was paranoia, but Nick was certain now, more than ever, that Lester did everything for a reason. He didn’t make mistakes. Or at least, none he didn’t have a plan for fixing.

Nick had gotten into targets’ heads before. That was the job. Be the target, know everything about them, know when they were most vulnerable. Getting into Lester’s head, was next-to impossible.

The other option, of course, was to charge in, take out everyone between himself and his family, including Lester, and do it hard and bloody. It had been done before, and effectively. It was practically a South American tradition. But would Lester be expecting that? Did he
know
he hadn’t killed Nick?

Thinking you had the element of surprise was worse than knowing they saw you coming. Infiltration and assassination one-oh-one.

“How long do you think it’ll take to find them all?” Nick asked.

Alex didn’t answer right away; she was busy with the work of it. But in a moment she looked up and winked at him. “Eight out of twelve so far.”

Jesus. Nick reminded himself not to get on Alex’s bad side. It was bad enough dealing with a man like Lester after him. If Alex wanted to, maybe she really could drop a tungsten rod on him from space…

Of twelve, five showed up. That made six soldiers and one tech for what Nick and Alex both agreed was about a ten man job.

But if Nick had to choose five people to have at his back, it would have been these five.

Lorraine was a demolitions lady. Her jobs had frequently involved rigged cars, houses, boats… anything with a switch that could be flipped.

Morris was a mountain of muscle who was death on two feet with a pair of automatic pistols. If Nick recalled, most of his jobs were group related—take out this or that gang, route this sleeper cell, massacre that rebel encampment. He was grim, and fondled his customized hand guns constantly. He wasn’t happy to be back in the business—he and his husband had retired to Vienna and were happy there. But he was more than willing to go after Lester.

Orelia was a close up killer, the kind that preferred small blades. She was deadly with a set of knives or bare handed. She was also close to Nick’s age; he’d known her in Lester’s ‘training camp’ when they were kids. Then, she’d been happy, optimistic, even if she could nail a squirrel with a throwing knife at twenty yards. Whatever had happened to her since had changed that.

Iruka was a sniper like Nick. She wouldn’t be going in; she’d find a perch on the mountain, and pick off whoever was unfortunate enough to be in the open. She was busy cleaning her rifle, kneeling beside it as if in solemn prayer. For all he knew, she was. She’d always been… odd. He knew she was religious but it wasn’t something she really talked about. Some kind of death cult, as far as he could remember.

Finally, Riley Banks. If any of them were likely to be something a wild card, it was Riley. He smiled easily when he saw Nick. “Fuck man,” he laughed, “look how old you are!”

Riley was six years younger than Nick, but looked like he was in his twenties. He was built like Nick, and like him had been trained personally by Lester. Jack of all trades style, he was good at any range and he hated Lester more than Nick did. With good reason.

Lester had killed his family.

“Finally gonna take that son of a bitch down, huh?” Riley asked, clapping Nick on the shoulder. “Been looking forward to this for years. Rat bastard has it coming. So, what’s the deal? He after you or what?”

Nick wished he could smile with Riley, but he didn’t. And when he explained, Riley’s smile vanished. “Lester has my family,” he said softly, calmly. “My son, Ramon, he’s eight. Cassandra, his mother, my… well, I don’t know yet. I just found out about Ramon.”

Riley blew out a slow breath, frowning, and nodded once. “Okay. We’ll get ‘em back, bud.” He looked around at the assembled crew. “Hell, if you want, we’ll just take the whole damn country over, I guess. How hard could it be?”

Alex laid out the plan. Turned out, it could be… considerably hard.

“There are sixty men there,” she explained, “give or take. Not all of them are Lester’s men, though. You won’t be able to tell them apart, but… there’s a good chance none of Lester’s men are actually Colombian and the cartels only hire local so; I hate to say profile, but the fewer cartel heavies we put down, the better.”

No one was pleased with that.

“Which way we going in?” Morris asked. “South corner? From the mountain?”

“Lester knows we’re coming,” Nick said. “Or at least… we have to assume he does. If he meant to kill me I’d be dead. So, we assume he’s expecting us to infiltrate.”

“And instead,” Alex said, grimacing as she pointed to the front gate on the blown up photo, “we go in the front door. Guns’a’blazin’ style. Pew pew.” She fired her finger pistols. No one laughed. Except Riley. He was eying Alex, too; and she returned the favor, so… who knew?

“What is the vantage point like from the hills?” Iruka asked.

“Clear view of the courtyard,” Nick said. “And all the east facing windows. Steer clear of women and children, obviously; everyone else is fair game.”

Iruka nodded once, and the corner of her red-painted lips quirked up. “So be it.” There was a noticeable space between her and the other soldiers.

“So, what,” Lorraine asked, half a dead cigar between her teeth, “I blow the front gate?”

“And the south wall,” Nick said. “If Lester knows we’re coming, I want him to at least wonder which direction we’re coming from, how many of us there are… we need him guessing, busy trying to keep up.”

“We know where your wife and kid are?” Morris asked.

Nick started to correct him, but let it slide. Besides, after all this… well, that would only distract him right now. “Chances are they’ll be moved to the middle of the house. There’s a panic room there. Other than that… we can sort that out once Lester is dealt with.”

“And,” Alex announced, arms spread wide, jazz fingers wiggling, “that’s the plan!”

Only Riley clapped. The rest shifted a bit, groaned, but gave assenting nods.

They were being well paid. But that wasn’t enough for them to take down an army. No.

Everyone one of them had a reason to hate Lester. And that was worth whatever money it took.

“We roll out tomorrow,” Nick told them.

All five assassins saluted, and Nick left them to clean his guns.

He was going to need them.