The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!) (10 page)

“It was a long time ago,” Cassandra said airily. “Who can recall all the details at this point?”

He smiled at her again, and gave her a nod of concession. “Alright.” A short pause while he gazed at her. She felt goosebumps course over her skin. “I’m glad I found you.”

“So am I,” she said.

“It’s only another couple of hours until we get to the island.” Nick pushed open the swinging door to the pilot’s cabin. “I need to start keeping an eye out for the shelf and the reefs. You should get a little sleep, check on Ramon. I’ll come get you when we arrive.”

Cassandra stood, and buttoned her jeans, and then leaned into Nick and kissed him again, long and languid. “Okay,” she said when she left him leaning in for more. She smiled. “I’m glad you let me in, Nick. I want to know you. I want Ramon to know you. Even the things you’re afraid for us to know. Whatever happens between us… we’re your family. That’s not going to change. Okay?”

“Okay,” Nick breathed.

Cassandra touched his cheek, and then left him to navigate as she descended the stairs into the cabin below. She was exhausted, finally. Getting a bit of a nap before meeting her son’s grandmother wasn’t the worst idea—though, she imagined that making a good impression wasn’t all that difficult when your partner was a paid assassin.

Ramon wasn’t happy about being left behind, at first. Nick took him in the morning to meet the goats, however, and there were a number of newborns that changed his attitude quickly. He and Ellen spent some time with them after she made them all breakfast, while Nick and Cassandra looked on, and when it came time for them to leave he cried but didn’t throw a fit.

He even hugged Nick, and told him to keep his mother safe.

Cassandra held it together until they got to the boat, and then let Nick hold her while she cried.

She was confident that she could get them in and out of the Gonzales estate—she really did have years of practice evading her controlling father and his watchful guards, whose principal task was to make sure she was never out of sight—but she would have been lying to herself if she said she wasn’t afraid.

They took to the sea, and she spent the first several hours breathing through the sharp anxiety that already made her heart pound and the air come with difficulty into her lungs.

Arriving in Cuba brought back memories. Old, old memories of being here for the first and only time on her long journey to the US. The marina they stopped at to refuel was busy and crowded with travelers and tourists—many more than she remembered, now that travel to Cuba was no longer illegal. It was bright with color and thick with the scent of food to match the tropical masses.

They stayed long enough to eat and prepare for the next leg of the journey, and then slept on the boat when they had a chance. The following day, they reached the port of Barranquilla, where Nick purchased a car with cash and no questions or paperwork other than the title, an old reliable white Chevy with just under a hundred thousand miles. All it needed to do was get them to and from Bogotá, so the fact that it lacked a working radio or AC wasn’t that much of a deterrent. That, and the lack of available choices.

Being not only far, far away from Ramon but also entirely out of contact was excruciating. Cassandra found herself chewing her nails, and ultimately clipped them to keep from falling into her childhood habit. It was strange how she had forgotten so much but just a few hours in her home country was already bringing it all back. She could almost see her father’s estate in her mind’s eye, growing closer all the time, becoming more detailed. Somehow, she had a sense of expectation and excitement—like she would find Senora Muñoz, her mother’s elderly maid, still there diligently attending whoever was the lady of the house now.

But of course, that wasn’t likely. Even if Senora Muñoz was still alive, which was unlikely although if anyone was going to live to be a hundred and fifty it was that woman, she certainly wasn’t going to be working for anyone who wasn’t a Gonzales.

The fifteen hour drive south was punctuated by a single stop in San Alberto, halfway there, where they stayed in a hotel. The only rooms available were single beds, and Nick offered to get them two rooms but Cassandra only laughed at him. They shared the bed.

For a little while, before they slept off the day’s drive, it was nice. Even Cassandra’s worries and nervousness about the ‘mission’ faded a bit into the background as they laid in the sweltering room, stripped to their underwear on top of the blankets.

“So,” Nick asked, “you know your way in and out? Secret tunnels or something?”

“Or something,” Cassandra said. She winked at him.

“You know,” he said, “I have a hard time imagining you sneaking out. When I first watched you, in Newark, you seemed like such a good girl. What were you sneaking out for?”

She grinned as she recalled. “I used to meet Hector Martinez in the orchard near the house,” she said. “He was the son of one of the maintenance crew men that came by once a month to keep everything in shape. Those old houses need constant work, and all the equipment for watering gardens and crops… Anyway, he was sweet, and handsome, and completely unpretentious. It was a nice change from my supposed friends—all sons and daughters of the other cartel leaders, and they all loved being rich.”

Nick rolled onto his side and propped his head up. “You didn’t?”

Cassandra could barely remember now, in all honesty, but she did remember that there was something more… real, somehow, to Hector than to the other boys she was allowed to be social with. “I don’t know that I noticed, more like,” she said. “At least not until I started sneaking out to see Hector. I used to think that when I did run away, it would be with him. We’d go to the US together, and…” she sighed, and shook her head. “Well, we didn’t.”

“What happened?”

Cassandra touched Nick’s frown of concern with her fingers and smiled. “Nothing terrible. His father got a job offer he couldn’t turn down, and moved far away. Maybe because of my father; but if he knew about Hector and me, he never said. Hector went with him and never came back. I was crushed, and inconsolable for days but couldn’t tell anyone why.”

“So your father didn’t find out and have him publicly executed?” Nick asked.

She sighed, and shook her head. “Of course not.” She touched the cross around her neck. “My father… he wasn’t a good man, really. Not if you think about it in terms of the total amount of good or evil we deliver on the world. But when it came to the people close to him, to his family and to the people that worked for him, their happiness was his first concern. Everyone who worked for his estate was well paid, many of the men supported large families on their salaries. When there were medical issues, he pitched in to help. He was generous, and just. He didn’t slaughter people for looking at him wrong like some of the other cartel leaders did, and probably still do. If he took a life, it was because that person endangered everyone else, not just him. He had lawyers for when he got into trouble, and officials he’d paid off.

“No, he… he was a good man in his heart. It was just that the only people he cared about were those closest to him. He didn’t care what happened to the rest of the world. He didn’t care about the harm he was doing to anyone outside the family.”

Nick reached up, and gently touched the gold cross, thoughtful for a while. “I’m… sorry. That I thought he could do something terrible like that. It would have been nice to know him.”

Cassandra shrugged, and then laughed. “Now, if he knew I’d gotten pregnant by a babeco, there’s no telling what he’d have done. But, if he could have gotten past that… who knows? Maybe you two would have gotten along. You’ve certainly got a little in common. For his family, there’s nothing Papa wouldn’t do.”

Nick was quiet for a long moment, and then cleared his throat. “We should get some sleep. Long drive tomorrow.”

Cassandra kissed him, and turned over. It was too hot for them to spend much time pressed close together, but for a time Nick held her, and Cassandra imagined a future that never could have been, but might have been almost nice, if it had been possible; if her father hadn’t been killed. She supposed she’d never know.

They reached the estate the next night. Going in under the cover of darkness was, obviously, a must so they were able to sleep in for a while. They drove past the place just once during the daylight hours to get a feel for what it looked like, and then they trekked up the mountain behind the estate and used binoculars and a sniper scope to do preliminary reconnaissance.

If there was anything about her homeland Cassandra didn’t miss, it was the oppressive heat. Even in the higher elevation, the sun was relentless throughout the day and slipping gradually into the evening wouldn’t help until it was gone from the sky entirely. Even with cover, her clothes were soaked with sweat and stayed that way.

Still, there was something magical about seeing the estate from this vantage point. From here, she could see the house, the garden behind it, and the sprawling fields inside the walls that were dotted with fountains, gazebos, and topiary displays. She could almost trace the paths she used to run along between them. There was the fountain where she sat alone and cried after her mother died. Just before it, she’d had a fight with her father because he wouldn’t give her time to be alone.

That had been right before she made up her mind to leave. Papa had started talking about which of the young men she should marry, based on who he thought would make the best heir to the Gonzales estate. Someone loyal, and strong, but also of strong moral fiber. There weren’t many choices, and Cassandra hadn’t cared for any of them.

Nick took his eye away from the scope, and pointed. “There’s an old servant’s entrance at the northeast corner,” he said. “That’s probably our best bet.”

Cassandra withdrew from her memories and shook her head. “No. It’ll be carefully watched. Everyone knows about that entrance.”

“Do you have a better suggestion?” he asked earnestly.

“On the southern wall,” she said, pointing so he could look through the scope, “there’s an old secondary entrance to the wine cellar. It’s covered up, and it comes out behind a false door in the cellar. Father never knew about it, and it’s not in any plans. There are also no cameras in the wine cellar; or at least there weren’t before, but we’ll have a good vantage point before we come out.”

“Okay,” Nick said. “And when we get inside?”

She grinned. “Well, that’s the fun part. The wall around the estate is hollow; There’s a tunnel that runs all the way through it, and another door down into the pantry there, by the eastern side of the house.”

“Why?” Nick wondered.

Cassandra shrugged. “Back when the house was built by rich Spaniards, they didn’t want their guests to see the natives coming and going. A lot of the bigger villas in the region have a similar system. All of it is hidden, and it was the sort of thing everyone did but no one talked about publicly.”

“Alright,” Nick said, nodding thoughtfully as he swept the scope along the route, “so we get into the pantry.”

“It’s at almost the center of the house,” she said. “There’s a dumbwaiter that goes up to the floors above, all the way to Papa’s office. There are no cameras in there; or there weren’t before, anyway. Papa didn’t want anyone recording what went on in that room, and it’s secure. Anyone who wanted to get to him would have to go through a small army.”

Nick glanced at her. “Someone did get to him.”

She frowned at him. It paid to be pessimistic in these sorts of things, but still—a little optimism would have eased her nerved. “Yes,” she said, “someone did.”

“It’s not a bad plan.” He sat up from his scope and checked the sun, then his watch. “We’ll go when it gets dark. We’re just here for information for now. Watch for anyone coming or going, anyone who looks like they run the place. If we can identify who’s in charge down there I can take the shot from here and we don’t even have to go in.”

Cassandra shook her head slowly and sighed. “Nick… I think you’re missing the point.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

She settled back against a broad, smooth rock in their little nest and picked up a smaller one to occupy her hands. “All of this happened because there was a hole in the first place—a need. To unify the Cartels. If you shoot whoever is in there now, what does that accomplish? The next person will just come after us, too.”

“And when that person dies,” Nick said, “the one after that might think twice about it.”

Cassandra shook her head, “Violence will only make more violence. I want our first priority in there to be finding out who is after us, and then finding a way to convince them we’re not a threat.”

With a sigh, Nick rubbed his forehead and scratched his jaw. “Cassandra… I don’t think the world works that way.”

“Once we have proof,” she said, “assuming there is any, we can contact the other cartels. We have leverage. They’ll bargain on our behalf. I know most of the men who run them, I have since I was a girl.”

“Let’s just… take one step at a time,” Nick said. “Focus on what’s in front of us. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just… we need more information. That’s why we’re here. Okay?”

Cassandra watched him for a long moment, and then looked away. Being with him, feeling almost safe… it was good. But did he have only one grim solution to every problem? And if that was the case… was it worth it to live a life drenched in blood, haunted by the deaths of the people it cost to live it? Good or evil, Cassandra didn’t want more deaths on her conscience. There was a better way. There had to be.

Night fell, and while there were some obvious lieutenants and managers on the estate, there was no one that seemed to qualify as a leader. That wasn’t unusual in Cassandra’s opinion. Her father was loved by everyone in his circles—but there were people who wanted him dead. There was at least one who got their wish. He rarely spent time in the open, and that was the way of men like him. Live in the darkness too long, and the light became dangerous.

The descent to the edge of the orchard was perilous, but manageable, and afterwards the hike down the relatively flat ground made Cassandra feel light on her feet. They trekked silently between the trees together, Cassandra leading when they needed direction and Nick leading when they had a heading.

It was a sprawling field of cherimoya and guava trees, thick with the scent of the fruit that had fallen prematurely and rotted on the ground. No one watched it now, and from the weight of the branches Cassandra wasn’t even sure anyone was working the orchard. Maybe the current owner didn’t care for it. She hoped he at least allowed the locals to come and take their fill but doubted it.