Dirty Little Lies (11 page)

Not that it took much for Frankie to push her buttons.

“Next up is Tracy Manning,” he replied. “Her brother might be protecting her for a reason.”

She nodded. If some dickhead had not only fucked with her heart, but murdered her sister and then jetted off to Europe looking guilty as sin, she imagined she’d have all the motivation she needed to hire an assassin to off the guy, money or not. Actually, she’d likely just do the job herself. But fifteen years later? What had stirred up the pot? And why was Bennett the first to go, instead of Bradley Hightower? He was the one who’d pitted sister against sister.

“What about the Hightower brothers?” she asked. “The police reports said Tracy was home in bed when her sister disappeared. I mean, she can’t tell us anything more than her brother did about what happened that night. But I’m betting Brad Hightower could.”

Marisela undid her ponytail, ran her hand through her hair, and then refastened the tie. The pulse at her temples was starting to pound. “We’ve got to find Brad Hightower before we can interview him.”

“Does he have a motive to have his own friend killed?” Frankie asked.

“How do we know if they’re still friends? The Hightowers left the country, and so far as anyone knows, they never came back.”

“Max has a team checking on that,” he reminded her. “Give the office a buzz and tell them to pull us an address for Tracy Manning, too. And financial records, if they can find them. With any luck, we’ll get this taken care of quickly.”

Marisela whipped out her cell phone, wondering about Frankie’s dismissive tone. He’d made no secret of his dissatisfaction with working for Titan, but after he’d survived his bullet to the gut three months ago, he hadn’t said anything more about leaving. Marisela guessed he’d been sticking around for her, and the fact that he was still restless caused a pit in her stomach. Damn if she wasn’t getting used to having him around.

Before she could press the speed-dial link to the home office, the device vibrated, signaling an incoming call. The caller ID read, “
Private
.”

“Marisela,” she greeted.

“Good, I’m glad I caught you.”

“Brynn?”

“Yes, I’m with Ian and we have a lead on the shooter. Is your interview with Peter Manning complete?”

Marisela activated the speakerphone and slid the phone into a holder on the dashboard. “We’re just leaving his place. He gave us the 411 on what he knew about his sister’s death, but so far, we have nothing to connect him to our anonymous shooter.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Brynn said, a chuckle in her voice causing Marisela and Frankie to exchange curious glances. “She’s not anonymous anymore.”

Seven

MARISELA FOUND IAN
sitting on the edge of a queen-size bed in a Jamaica Plain apartment that from a cursory glance, was about ten steps down from the luxury her boss was used to. The place was clean and sparsely furnished, but the stale smell in the elevator and the worn carpets beneath her boots made this place much more her world than his. And from the way he sat with his head cradled in his hands, she guessed be wasn’t taking the culture shock very well.

“You rang, boss?”

He looked up, worry etched on his face.

“Where’s Frank?”

“Brynn caught us on the way up,” she explained. “She wanted Frankie to go with her to interview the guy who hosted the fund-raiser last night.”

Marisela dug her hands into the pockets of her jacket, feeling a chill that had more to do with Ian’s mood than the temperature.

“She said something about you and I needing to talk.”

His frown deepened. “She did, did she? What else did my dear sister say to you?”

Nothing as interesting as what Ian clearly didn’t want her to know.

“Said the interview with the fund-raiser guy would be a waste of time and that I’d better get my ass up here. Made a crack about my being Catholic and needing to hear your confession. What the hell is going on? Whose apartment is this?”

Ian stood, and she noticed that while he had changed clothes from the tuxedo he’d worn last night, his pants weren’t as perfectly creased as they normally were and the knot of his tie was off center by half an inch. He looked tired. Any sleep he’d gotten had not been enough.

“Are you okay?” She didn’t want to care, but couldn’t bite back the instinct.

He ignored her. “This apartment was used a week ago by the assassin who shot Craig Bennett.”

The apartment, with its fading paint and outdated furniture, looked like a standard hotel or motel room after housekeeping had done their work. If there were any clues about the last tenant, she certainly didn’t see them.

“And you know she was here how?”

Ian glanced aside. “I was here with her.”

Not the answer Marisela expected.

And judging by the uncomfortable look that skittered over Ian’s face, he wasn’t thrilled about telling her the ugly truth.

She smiled broadly. “Oh, this is going to be good, isn’t it? Should I sit down?” She grabbed the nearest chair, which had been shoved beneath a small desk. “You give me all the sordid derails,
mijo
. You’ll feel better once it’s all out in the open.”

His steely glare told her he was not amused.

“The entire situation will be more than amusing to you, I’m sure.” he said. “I nearly had to provide my dear sister with a respirator.”

She couldn’t be this lucky, could she? Had he slept with the killer? Why else would he have been with her in her apartment? Okay, there were lots of other reasons why he might have been here, but judging by the crimson skin just above his collar, his sin was obvious. She spun the chair around and sat backward, her arms braced on the back. “So…spill. Don’t spare the details, either. I’ve been around the block. I can take it.”

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard a growl vibrating in the back of his throat.

“Her name is Yizenia Santiago,” he replied tersely.

“You’ve known her name the whole time?”

“I wasn’t informed of her identity until this morning when Brynn examined the note given to Denise Bennett. She recognized the flower.”

“The flower that was like the tattoo I saw on the shooter?”

“Precisely,” he replied curtly, but with a sense of relief. He probably thought Marisela was going to let the sordid stuff drop. They hadn’t known each other long, but he didn’t seriously think she’d let this go, did he? She was just biding her time.

“What can you tell me about her that’s not X-rated?” she asked, her expression serious.

“Yizenia Santiago is a relatively well-known killer for hire based out of Madrid. She has a tattoo of a pomegranate flower on her left wrist.”

Marisela leaned on one hand, exaggerating her interest with a wag of her eyebrows. “Any other tattoos in less conspicuous places that I should know about?”

The color rose on his neck. “None that I recall.”

She nodded. “Right. Still, I have this tattoo on my—”

“I think it’s best that we discuss only the details that are relevant to the case.”

“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly, “but I think how you met her is damned relevant. Can’t be a coincidence.”

He frowned, but answered. “Not likely. I met her at a bar. We came back here. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone.”

Marisela stared at the bed and tried not to conjure images of Ian making love to the
perra
she’d fought in the garden. She shouldn’t give a rat’s ass who he screwed around with. She
didn’t
give a rat’s ass. She’d just thought he’d have better taste.

“Did she ask you about the job at Houghton House?” Marisela asked, trying to make a connection between the assassin and Titan that applied to the case they were working.

He shook his head, “We hadn’t been hired yet.”

“So she wasn’t trying to pump you for information.”

Ian raised his eyebrows. Okay, so maybe
pump
wasn’t exactly the right word. Then again, maybe it was.

“Then if sex was all she wanted, I guess she got it,” she concluded.

He stood up straighter and that arrogant grin she’d come to expect from him returned. “And then some.”

“Cocky, are we?”

“Merely stating a fact.”

Suddenly, she wasn’t so curious about his rendezvous with the killer.

“Why didn’t you put two and two together about the tattoo and the killer the night Craig Bennett was shot?”

“I didn’t remember seeing any marking on her wrist the night I met her in the bar, so I could not make the connection. Brynn, however, identified the tattoo this morning when she saw the note.”

“Brynn?”

Ian crossed his arms tight and his lips drew together in a thin line. “Yizenia Santiago has…ties to our family,” he replied. “Ties I knew nothing about until this morning.”

The bitterness lacing his tone was not lost on her, but Marisela didn’t know whether or not to push. Finally, Ian was talking to her as an agent and not just an employee.

“So it’s no coincidence that you and she met at a bar just a few days before she shot a guy who ended up becoming our client?”

His frown deepened. “Not likely.”

Marisela reached over and patted the seat of an ottoman. He gave a doubtful chuckle, then leaned on the desk instead. Probably didn’t want to sit anywhere other than above her.

“So she set you up?” she guessed.

“Possibly, but for what reason, I have no idea. We had no ties to Craig Bennett then. No plan with Houghton House. Leo Devlin hired us at the last minute after the security he’d previously arranged reported they were stretched too thin. We were backup and only required to protect the borrowed jewels.”

“Where was Max?” she asked.

He eyed her oddly. “What do you mean?”

“The night she met you. I always thought Max followed you around everywhere. Kept you out of trouble.”

“I’m more than capable of keeping myself…”

His denial died a painful death. He rolled his eyes. “He had the night off.”

“Do you always go drinking at that bar?”

Ian nodded curtly. “It’s a place I frequently visit, yes.”

“So she probably went looking for you.” Marisela toyed with her gold hoop earring. “How does Brynn know her?”

“They met in Europe,” he replied briskly.

The hair on the back of Marisela’s neck prickled. “I had no idea she regularly hung out with assassins. I didn’t think they’d be the social types.”

Ian crossed his arms, the sleeves of his jacket tugging tight across his biceps, but said nothing.

“Look, boss, I know I’m not your favorite person,” Marisela said. The fact that she was still employed at Titan after she’d defied Ian’s orders on her first mission testified only to Marisela’s quick thinking and her ability to manipulate situations to her advantage. “But you’ve picked me to find this woman, right? To do that, I’m going to have to outthink her. And to do that, I’ll need all the information you have, even if it sucks that you have to tell me.”

Ian’s jaw clenched, square and unmovable, as if he were fighting the urge to speak. “Yizenia Santiago is not your standard-model assassin.”

Marisela shook her head, confused. “They come in deluxe editions?”

“Some are better than others, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Yizenia Santiago has her own signature. She doesn’t work just for the money, though her price is exorbitant. Yizenia believes in retribution. According to Brynn, she’s fashioned herself into a sort of avenging angel, taking on only cases where the cruel and the criminal escaped punishment.”

Marisela blew out a self-satisfied whistle. “So revenge is her thing.”

“Exclusively. If no horrific deed has gone unpunished, then Yizenia turns down the assignment. No exceptions.”

“Well,” Marisela decided, “now I know why Brynn thought that meeting with that fund-raiser guy was a waste of time. That note given to Denise Bennett pointed us to Rebecca Manning.”

Ian shook his head. “Leo Devlin only arrived in Boston a few years ago and his ties to Craig Bennett are exclusively political. Still, we can’t leave that stone unturned. Hopefully by the time Brynn returns from her meeting with him, he’ll have been eliminated as a suspect and we can concentrate solely on the Manning connection.”

“But you still haven’t explained exactly how Brynn knows her.”

Ian pushed away from the desk and paced from one side of the room to the other, his arms still crossed, his gait clipped and tight. Marisela watched him, tapping into the full store of her patience. Whatever secret the man was considering revealing, it had to be good.

“Did Brynn ever tell you anything about our mother?”

Marisela considered his question. In the months she’d spent with Ian’s twin, they’d talked about a lot. She knew that their mother had died when Brynn and Ian were kids, but now that she thought about it, she didn’t know why or how.

“Was she sick?” she guessed.

Ian frowned. “She was the picture of health until the day three Soviet traitors kidnapped her. Our father was a spy who worked for British Intelligence, even after he’d moved to the States and started Titan. Apparently, he’d been a key operative on a case that ended with several Soviet double agents being revealed to their government. Four died during their capture. Three survived their prison terms and decided upon their release to take our mother as retribution.”

Marisela moved to stand, but Ian directed her to remain still with a simple hand gesture. A flat palm, forcefully presented. She didn’t move.

“My father called in every contact he had to find her, but these men were ruthless. They had nothing to lose. Titan was merely a start-up at the time. Father paid the ransom they demanded, but the kidnappers didn’t live up to their end of the bargain. Our mother died in the muddy hole they’d shoved her in. She was buried alive.”

Marisela clutched at her sleeves, trying to keep her hands from reaching out to this man who was struggling to contain emotions Marisela couldn’t begin to comprehend. She stared down at the ratty rug on the floor, then glanced out the window, not knowing where to look or what to say.

She took a deep breath and faced him squarely. “Ian, I—”