Chapter 4
NADIA
Nadia was an expert at compartmentalizing and she stuffed everything she wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with inside the locked cabinets of her mind.
The pain in her cheek. The knot on the back of her head.
The nausea and dizziness. Getting shot at.
Her mental anguish was beyond measure and if she let it get to her, she would shut down.
She donned a veneer exterior, armor she wore well.
“Ruiz who?” she demanded when she overheard the name.
Thomas held up a hand to give him a moment, then his face contorted into a terrified rage, a state she’d only witnessed him in once before.
“How the hell did he escape a maximum-security prison?” he asked the person on the other end of the call.
“You don’t know?” He listened for a beat, seething.
“Then tell me this, Kane. A very small, curated circle knows where I live. How the fuck did they find me?”
“What do you mean?” Nadia heard the barely audible question coming from his phone.
“A sniper just shot up my house. My friend was hit.” He paused to listen.
His hazel eyes met hers and he touched her elbow.
“Yes, she’s alive. We escaped, barely.” Another pause and Thomas pulled the phone from his ear.
“Do you need to see a doctor?” he asked her and she shook her head.
She’d live. The hospital was the last place she wanted to be.
She wanted to know what had happened then she wanted to get her car and go home.
The soul-crushing pressure to flee from whatever this was would hit her hard once she loosened her grip on her self-control.
When she did, she wanted the privacy of her home.
“Agree. We can’t go back,” Thomas said into the phone. He paced away from Nadia.
While he spoke, she typed a string of keywords into her search app and a horror unlike anything she’d ever felt gnawed at her insides. The notorious cartel leader and head hitman captured and arrested almost a decade ago had escaped prison. The headlines already topped the search hits.
Sirens sounded in the distance and they both heard them, their gazes meeting up again. Nadia could tell that Thomas was beside himself, his anger a barely restrained fury as he finished his conversation and ended the call. He walked over to her.
“Fernando Ruiz escaped?” She needed to hear his confirmation despite the dozens of headlines she’d just skimmed.
Thomas nodded. “Apparently.”
“How?”
“Kane didn’t say.”
“Who is Kane?”
Thomas slid his phone into his front pocket. “Kane Mitchell, special agent with the DEA. I used to report to him about Phil.”
Nadia nodded, piecing the past together.
It had been years since she read about the Hidalgo Cartel and Fernando Ruiz’s capture along with Phil Donato’s arrest. Thomas’s brother had plea bargained for a reduced sentence.
He served his time and was released four or so years ago, around the time James resurfaced.
“Was Ruiz the one shooting at us?”
“Not likely. Kane thinks he’s gone underground. More likely he, or his sons, ordered the hit.”
“The hit.” Nadia mouthed the surreal words. Someone had been sent to kill Thomas and she’d been caught in the middle of it. She pressed a hand to her stomach, the nausea returning.
“Are you all right? You look ill.”
“I’m fine,” she said, teeth pressed together.
“Go sit down.” He gently prodded her arm.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she flared, feeding into her anger so she wasn’t overcome with terror. “I need my car.”
“We can’t go back. It isn’t safe.”
“Then take me home.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve been instructed to go to a safe house.”
“You’ve been instructed.” Nadia jabbed a finger at him. “Not me. This isn’t my problem.”
“We can shelter there until it’s safe to leave,” he continued as if she hadn’t said anything.
She skewered him with a venomous glare. “For how long?”
“Until Ruiz is back in custody. When someone else won’t be sent to take me out.
” His attention shifted east toward his house.
Nadia wondered if he could ever return home now that the cartel knew where he lived.
She couldn’t wrap her mind around never returning home herself.
Her traitorous heart pulsed through a sharp pang of empathy for him.
“Give me an idea of what you’re thinking. A few hours? A day? And don’t you dare say ‘I don’t know.’”
His cheek spasmed as he clamped down on what she guessed were those very words. “Soon,” he said after a beat. His tone told her otherwise. They could be holed up in the safe house for days, weeks even. Longer.
“I can’t go with you. I have a job, a life. People need me.” She’d committed to watching Aimee’s kids tonight.
“Nadia, please.”
“No! You sucked me into this once before and it nearly ruined everything good in my life. Never again. Take me home. This isn’t my problem.”
“It is now.” He closed the space between them, his face inches from hers. “They know you were with me. Your key is back there, so is your car. Where’s your purse?”
Realization hit her with such force her lips parted in speechless horror. She’d left her purse in the car with her license.
“They know where you live, Nadia. I won’t let them go through you to reach me.”
She lifted her chin. “You think very highly of yourself. I’m not going with you.”
“You’re scared. I get that. Take it out on me.” His delivery became gentler, but she found it insulting.
“Don’t placate me!”
“They will KILL YOU!” he yelled back, his control snapping.
“But before they do, they’ll strangle, stab, and beat you.
It goes without question what else they’ll do if you’re captured.
Don’t believe me? I’ll show you how messed up James was after they finished with him.
I have pictures.” He reached into his pocket for his phone.
She pressed a hand to her forehead and looked away. “God, no, I don’t want to see.”
“Then trust me when I say that once you got involved, you became a target.”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t just disappear. I have clients who rely on me. My mom! Aimee too. Do you realize what me going off grid will do to them? Especially Aimee after everything she went through with James.”
“You don’t come with me and I will tell Aimee you lied to her. That you’ve been lying to her for ten years.”
Nadia saw red. “You wouldn’t dare,” she seethed. “Blackmail is beneath you.”
“Nothing is beneath me if it keeps you alive.”
“Aimee was right. You are a monster.”
Thomas withdrew. A fleeting look of pain darkened his features. “If it means keeping you alive then I guess I am.”
She looked at the ground, feeling guilty for lashing out. But the reality of what they’d escaped from and the uncertainty of their future was bearing down on her. She. Was. Terrified.
“I can’t protect you if you don’t come with me,” Thomas said.
“Protecting me isn’t your job or responsibility.”
“I protect anyone who means something to me. Whether you like it or not, that includes you, Nadia Jacobs.”
She looked up at him, his declaration a surprise. She never believed she was that important to him. She never wanted to hope.
He held her gaze.
Uncomfortable, she glanced away first. He’d only said that to her because their emotions were running hot.
Nadia turned around and walked away to think, stopping at the edge of the turnout where it dropped downhill.
She wasn’t wired or trained to deal with life-or-death situations.
But she also didn’t avoid a challenge when faced with one, preferring to overcome rather than walk away. She refused to feel like a victim.
She hated to admit it, but Thomas was right. They needed to go somewhere safe, find out what was going on and lie low until this blew over. Then she’d make the decision about when she could get her car and go home.
She returned to where Thomas waited, arms at his side, warily watching her. The past crashed over her as they stared at one another, anticipating the other’s next move. Like they had a decade ago in the funeral home.
This time, their next move had to be together. She also intended to have more control over her involvement. Which would be zero if she had any say about it.
“I’ll go with you but give me a second. I have to make a call first.” Aimee and Ian were expecting her to stay with their kids tonight so that they could go out. They’d worry when she didn’t show.
Thomas grabbed her phone just as the call connected and Aimee said, “Hi, Nadia!” He chucked it down the hillside. She saw the phone hit a boulder, shattering the screen.
“You asshole!”
He did the same with his phone and turned to her. “I’m not taking any chances with our location. We’ll pick up a couple burner phones on the way.”
She fumed. “Better throw your Tesla down the hill too.”
He glared at her and swore. “You’re right. We have to ditch the car.”
He blanched when he said it, but they could both agree his car was a giant beacon on wheels. They needed to dispose of anything that could be used to track them.
She fired him a smug look and, crossing her arms, walked back to the car so he wouldn’t notice how badly she was shaking. More than ever she questioned her decision to visit the mortuary the night before James’s funeral. What had she been thinking?
Going there had changed the course of her life.
And it was happening again.