Where Evil Waits (13 page)

S
ASHA STAYED TO WATCH
the flames, a sense of victory coursing through his veins. He knew he should go; sooner or later, even in this remote area, someone would see the fire and call it in. Even more likely, Kara’s new bodyguard would come back, hoping to find clues to who had shot at them.

But he couldn’t drag himself away. The roar of the flames, the crackles. The blinding light and searing heat. The smell of a giant bonfire.

The power.

He got out the phone and snapped a picture, then another, then another, trying for the perfect shot. Every time he took one, he’d look up and find a better one—bigger flames, wider angle, something. So he kept waiting, backing up, taking pictures of his handiwork. Finally, he had the ultimate picture: the broken window on the third floor, giant flames licking at the exact spot where Kara had stood.

He laughed out loud. Oh, that was perfect.

He punched in Kara’s cell phone number. He hesitated to use this phone—he’d been so careful not to ever use it
for anything but tracking Kara, and he’d never done that from the stable. But now that they knew he’d found her, they would disable her GPS settings. Then they’d retrace his steps and locate this phone, anyway.

So he might as well make it easy for them.

He typed in the message, attached the new
wonderful
picture. Hit SEND and felt a surge of glee wash over him.
Take that, Kara, with your new identity and your new bodyguard. See what good all your efforts we—

A movement caught the corner of his eye. Sasha froze. He blinked, squinting through the trees at the narrow lane to the house. A car? He waited a few seconds and watched, the foliage blocking most of the view and the fire too much in his ears to hear anything. But sure enough, a moment later, the nose of a car came into view.

A cruiser.

Shit. Police.

“My house is on fire?” Varón repeated. He clenched his teeth. Kara thought his jaw might snap.

“I’m sorry, man,” Knutson said.

A snarl came from Varón’s throat, something rabid. His hands balled into fists. “Fucker burned up my house?” He looped a few steps, as if looking for something to hit. He stopped in front of Knutson. “Did it start in the garage?”

“Looks that way. It’s still going, but they’re trying to get it out. Not an easy place to get to with fire trucks. A couple of our men are there, too.”

“There was gasoline in the garage,” Varón said. “He didn’t plan this. He just took the opportunity when he saw it. Goddamn that bastard.”

Kara reached for Aidan’s hand. He squeezed it back, tight. Shock painted his face.

And fear. What if they hadn’t gotten out?

Varón raked his hand through his hair. After a moment, he shook his head and visibly pulled himself together.

“You know what to do,” he said to Knutson, and Kara realized there would be nothing else said as long as Kara and Aidan were standing there. “Let’s move on.”

Knutson nodded. He held out both hands, one each to Kara and Aidan. “Take these. Clean phones so you can contact each other. Don’t use them to call anyone else.”

Kara took the phone, surprised to feel her fingers shaking.
Let’s move on.
The fire at Varón’s house hadn’t changed anything. They were still here to deliver Aidan to Vince Knutson.

She almost choked on the tears clogging her throat. With every fiber of her being she searched for a reason not to split up from her son, but couldn’t find one. This wasn’t going to end just because she’d faked her death. The killer had found her and shot at Aidan, and the place where they’d taken refuge had been torched. Even Varón was being targeted now.

Kara looked at Knutson.
He had a son once.
She had no way of knowing how much of what Varón said was true, but couldn’t shake the feeling that Vince Knutson might be Aidan’s best bet. If Varón had been interested in tracking down the killer before, he was doubly committed after the house fire and the quickest way to end this madness was to help him figure out who the hell was doing this. And make sure Aidan stayed out of sight until they did.

He threw his body over me
. And now, Knutson arrived with dedicated phones so they could stay in contact with one another. It seemed an unlikely bit of sensitivity for outlaws—almost as if they didn’t want her to be worried.

Of course they didn’t, she reminded herself. They needed her to focus on the killer.

“It’s what I promised,” Varón said. “You can contact each other anytime.”

She looked at the new phone, going to CONTACTS. There were three. She dialed the first, and the phone in Aidan’s hand rang. She disconnected and dialed the next. Knutson’s phone chimed. All right, now the third. She had a feeling she knew whose number this was.

Varón. He reached to his belt and cut off the call.

“Satisfied?” he asked, and closed in on her. “Damn it, I just ran through gunfire and dropped a Porsche. Now my house is in ashes. I want this killer as much as you do.”

Not possible,
Kara thought, but then she looked at him. He looked like he wanted to kill the next ten people he saw.
All because he was worried about his shipment of drugs?

She didn’t have time to think about that right now. She was leaving her son.

Tears welled up and she looked at Aidan. He was oddly compliant—she hadn’t expected that. Maybe she’d overestimated his maturity. He was still a child. Literally running for his life.

And for him, she had to be strong. If she let on that she was even more terrified than he was, it would only scare him more. “It will be okay,” she said, taking his hand. “Go with Knutson. Do what he says. As soon as it’s safe, I’ll come for you.” She looked at Varón with a silent, icy promise:
If he’s not okay, I’ll make you sorry you ever lived.

Varón dipped his head in a nod.

Kara fought back the tears and hugged Aidan, the fiercest hug she’d gotten from him since he was little. “I
love you,” she whispered, and in a very small voice, he said, “I love you more.”

They separated and Aidan gave Varón a strange look—almost sheepish—then followed Knutson to the same car that had kidnapped them from the riverbank some fourteen hours earlier. Fourteen hours. It seemed impossible to imagine how much their lives had changed in so little time.

Kara watched them drive away, her chin quivering with pent-up emotion. When Knutson’s car was out of sight, Varón touched her arm. “We need to move. Let’s hit the restrooms,” he said, and pulled two bags from the backseat of the new SUV. He handed one to her. “New clothes. Go change.”

Kara took the bag, wondered about it, but was too drained to argue with him. He walked her to the women’s room entrance and she held herself together until she got inside, then sank against the wall and cried. Fear and regret and uncertainty welled up. Emotion overflowed in huge, hot tears and gut-deep sobs, and a hundred terrible scenarios ran through her mind about what Knutson might have in store for Aidan.

Eventually, the tears ran out as sheer exhaustion settled in and reason clawed to the surface. She’d done the right thing: She’d gotten Aidan out of the line of fire. Nothing Knutson was planning could be worse than being shot or strangled with barbed wire.

She dried her cheeks. Reaching into the bag, she found a dark green dress, slipped into it without much thought, and donned a pair of strappy sandals. She stepped back out to the mirror and looked.

Whoa.

The dress was a slinky halter with an open back and
a deep vee neckline. At the vee, a large brooch collected the ruching from across both breasts, which fell in elegant drapes of fabric to the hem in the middle of her thighs. The shoes added three inches and the sassy hair looked the same as it had before she’d slept on it or outrun a shooter.

She found a supply of makeup in the bag and touched herself up from the tears as best she could. Heavier than she was accustomed to but not quite what Madelena had done.

Whatever it was Varón had planned, she had to follow through. He had Aidan.

She came out and found Varón standing where she’d left him, clean-shaven and wearing a new set of clothes. Dark slacks and loafers, crisp butter-yellow shirt with a Ralph Lauren logo and the sleeves folded up over muscular forearms. She knew the strength of those arms now, and the skill. Both were frightening.

His gaze trekked down the bodice of the dress and to her legs with sheer male admiration, but when his dark eyes found hers, they were soft. “Are you all right?” His voice was so gentle it was almost her undoing. Damn him. She didn’t think she could handle tenderness just now, especially from him.

She took refuge in sarcasm and gestured to the dress she was wearing. “Why wouldn’t I be? Knutson is quite the manservant. I don’t suppose I should wonder how he got the sizes right.”

“He’d be insulted that you’re surprised.”

She smoothed a hand down her body, tugging the short dress a little lower. The problem was this: Varón was right. She didn’t dare wear the conservative garb she normally did. The change in just hair and makeup wouldn’t be sufficient
to conceal her identity should she run into someone who knew her. She would have to play the role assigned.

Varón took her bag of discarded clothes in one hand, and the other hand slid to the small of her back. He ushered her back toward the SUV, his touch shooting through her body like electricity. It was possessive, commandeering, and so charged with energy Kara knew she wouldn’t be able to sever the current until
he
decided to turn it off.

“You don’t have to have your hands on me,” she complained. “You have my son, damn it. Where do you think I’m going to go?”

“Nowhere,” he said. “You’re not that stupid.”

He maintained the contact all the way back to the Escalade. Once inside the car, he opened the skylight and handed her yet another new phone he pulled from the glove compartment. This was an iPhone, like the one they’d left in the Porsche.

“This has the same number and all the information from your old phone,” Varón told her, starting the engine. “Sans the tracking capabilities.”

Kara frowned, but got it: Like it or not, they didn’t want to eliminate the killer’s preferred choice of communication. But the idea that she was expected to hear from him again brought a chill. So did the realization that Varón had managed to have a new phone programmed with her original number in a matter of hours, and then delivered to a new vehicle.

“Is there any place you
can’t
reach?” she asked.

“Phones are easy. A ten-year-old could have programmed a new phone with your number and transferred the info from the old one.”

“But a ten-year-old didn’t. Someone in the phone company did.”

“Someone with the skill set of a ten-year-old, who appreciated a little bonus in his pocket. That kind of person isn’t hard to find.”

“Or someone who valued both his kneecaps?” she asked.

“You’ve been watching too much TV. Kneecaps are pretty rare.”

Kara sank back into the leather seat and studied him. Classic, chiseled jaw and nearly-black hair, suntan, deep-set eyes that showed nothing more and nothing less than he meant for them to. In depositions and on the stand in a courtroom, he’d never displayed a hint of anything beyond insolent thug. He’d barely said ten words, letting his lawyer speak for him and subjecting Kara to insolent male regard at every turn. But more recently, traces of human being had occasionally surfaced.
Stay back from the window so you don’t get cut… He threw his body over me… That fucker burned up my house.

Kara looked down. “I’m sorry about your house,” she said. The words came out unplanned.

“It’s just a building.”

“It was a building that was your home. I know that’s hard to lose.”

“For you, maybe. I’m different.”

“No shit,” Kara said.

Varón shook his head, a faint smile growing on his lips. “We’re an unlikely partnership, aren’t we? A month ago, you were pushing me toward Death Row and now I’m not only your cohort in crime, but your son’s babysitter.”

“If anything happens to him, you won’t have to worry about Death Row,” she said. “I’ll kill you myself, faster than you can blink.”

“So noted,” he said, settling back against the seat.
The tension that had seized him when Knutson gave him the news about the fire seemed to loosen its grip a touch. He dropped his wrist atop the steering wheel and pushed the cruise control button.

“How did Knutson lose a son?” she asked.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Leukemia. He was ten.” He glanced at her. “He’ll take care of Aidan.”

She let out a deep breath. “I know he will—so long as you tell him to. But if you were to give a different order, he’d carry that one out, too, wouldn’t he?”

“Obedience is one of his more valuable traits.”

“And what happens when I run out of useful information about this killer? What orders will you give to your minions if I become a burden or cross you?”

“Don’t,” he said darkly.

Right. Kara touched her stomach. Every conversation with him was a roller coaster. The turns were so sharp she felt queasy.