Chapter 21 #2
Without waiting for her to respond, he returned to his seat and slowly placed a red linen napkin on his lap. She had to admit the man was as smooth as he was dangerous. Wearing all black, his dress shirt and pants, he was a force that had all of her senses on alert.
Even though she’d only had to spend one night at Carter’s place in France two months ago, she remembered every detail about the man.
His beard had grown thicker since then, and his eyes somehow colder and more terrifying.
The anger he’d unleashed when she’d told him the lead for his wife’s killer was a dead end still haunted his expression.
Rory would never forget Carter’s rage at the news that Danny, the man he believed had killed his wife, was dead.
Hell, it was unfolding before her eyes now—passionately intense anger.
“You’re still standing,” he said without looking up from his plate of delicious-smelling food. Had they roasted a pig out there? Seared the seafood beneath the heat of his burning stare?
Too bad she hated pork, which was basically a Southern sin, but she blamed the book Charlotte’s Web for her anti-pork position. And also, her love of animals had been born from reading that children’s book when she was younger, along with spending so much time at A.J.’s family’s ranch growing up.
Rory blinked and whipped her focus to the present. Head out of Alabama and back in Puerto Rico.
As if on cue, her brain became aware of her surroundings.
The hum of insects, the soothing lull of the ocean, and if she wasn’t mistaken, Jesse Cook playing a sensual Flamenco guitar solo floated through the air.
She tracked the sound to speakers hidden in two nearby bushes that had pops of red flowers on them.
The music was low, so soft it was as if it were background music in a movie.
“My friends. I want them here. I refuse to eat without them.” She crossed the gray stone pavers and stood behind the chair he wanted her to assume.
When he remained quiet, only nodding toward the chair, she finally relented and sat.
But no food. No way would she fill her stomach when Chris and the others were starving.
“Mofongo.” He pointed to a dish in front of her. “Deep-fried plantains with garlic and crabmeat. Plus, empanadas and many other things to choose from. All excellent.”
“And I said I wouldn’t eat unless my friends do.” She gripped the smooth wood of the chair arms, holding her ground.
It was still fairly warm out for October, but the sky was clear, and stars glittered across the dark canvas overhead.
Carter cut into his food and slowly brought a bite to his mouth—torturing her. Fucker. “Eat,” he said after swallowing whatever delicious morsel he’d waved in her face.
“Not until my friends are free. I won’t back down.” But her eyes fell to the food, and her traitor of a stomach growled loudly. And just to make sure she got the message, punchy pangs commenced inside her abdomen. Geez, was that what pregnant women went through when the baby kicked?
“I didn’t take you and your friends from D.C. if that’s what you’re waiting to ask me,” he stated casually as if discussing traffic.
“Who did, then? Who found out about me, about what I was doing?” She set her forearms on the table, palms going flat on either side of the plate. Fingertips curling in as she tried to ignore the flood of aromas hitting her nose. Don’t take a deep breath.
“The Italian probably knows who you are, and it was one of his teams who was sent after you. He never does anything himself.”
The worst possible answer.
The absolute worst.
“How?” She squeezed her eyes closed and processed Carter’s news that The Italian knew her identity. She’d given up a mission that was dear to her in order to avoid him and keep her family out of danger, and he’d found her anyway.
“Look at me.” A gentle command slid across the table, but she found an unforgiving stare when she peered at him.
Or no, maybe it was apologetic.
He set his napkin to the side of his plate, rose, and slowly unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up both sleeves. “I didn’t betray you. I know that’s what you must be thinking.”
“How could I not?” She was adrift in a sea of what the hells as she tried to map out possibilities.
And each thought kept colliding with another, creating one hot mess of theories and problems her overstressed and overtired brain couldn’t process at the moment.
“If it wasn’t you, one of your men betrayed you. Betrayed me.” She set her hands back on the chair arms and tightened her grip, trying to stay grounded. But fuck roots.
She’d officially been uprooted.
“No one on my team would dare double-cross me. And before you suggest it, if anyone on my staff secretly worked for The Italian, they’d tell him where I lived, and he’d come for me. Because I’m going to assume he doesn’t like me, either.”
Rory stood and set her hands on the table, leaned forward, and commenced panic breathing. “My family. If he knows of me, he might use them to get to me.”
Carter rounded the table, and she spied his dark shoes out of the corner of her eyes.
He was close enough to touch her, but she prayed he wouldn’t.
He surprised her by setting a gentle hand on her forearm, and she lifted her gaze to his dark eyes.
“I sent a team to watch over you and your family as soon as I learned you could be in danger.”
“You did?” she whispered as if she’d lost her voice. “If you knew I was in danger and where I was, why didn’t you tell me?”
He unhanded her and directed his gaze to the ocean, the distant sounds of the waves beyond the stone walls competing with the soft Spanish notes.
“How long have you known? Back in France? Is that why you warned me to stop going after him? You knew he’d discovered my identity?”
“If I’d had any idea back then The Italian was connected to everything, I would have told you,” he growled in a low voice as he whirled around to face her. Anger flared in his eyes. Not angry with her, though. No, she knew that look. He was angry at himself.
“What do you mean? What aren’t you telling me?”
“You know the irony in all of this,” Carter said with a fake smile, “is that my men watched you enter Santiago’s compound, and I had no idea you were walking into the home of my wife’s murderer. We could’ve grabbed him then if only I knew.”
“What?” She sank back down to her chair, lost now more than ever. “I-I don’t understand. I thought—”
“The Italian hired Santiago and his men to murder my wife.”
It took her a second for the shock to wear off before she said softly, “I see you gave up on the idea Danny killed her.”
“No,” he quickly responded. “Danny Fitzpatrick had plastic surgery not long after my wife died, which is why I didn’t get any more hits on him with facial recognition software aside from the one lunch with you.
He became a ghost after that, but he’s alive.
I didn’t know any of this until a week ago. ”
He delivered the news so fast she barely had time to handle the blows that came with it.
No, that couldn’t be right. Danny was a good guy. A friend. There had to be an explanation. The blood rushed from her face. Her heart stammered. “No, Andrew said he died in a diving accident.”
“Convenient, wouldn’t you say?” Carter tossed out a bit of snark with his words.
If her judgment was wrong about Danny . . . then what did that mean about Andrew?
“Danny was ordered to do recon and surveillance of my home. He was also one of the men in my house with Santiago the night Rebecca died.” Carter held up a hand when she opened her mouth to speak.
And despite the many questions that flashed through her mind—like how he even knew any of this—she shut up and let him continue.
“They fucked with the CCTV footage that night as well as the previous day, removing some sections. I saved all the footage I’d obtained from the city for the week of her death, and even though I knew pieces were missing, I periodically reviewed it.
Because I knew in my bones that those assholes had to have slipped up somehow.
I was blinded by rage for so long that it wasn’t until I was poring over all of the footage again this summer that I noticed what I’d missed.
The reflection in the window of a car parked across the street from my house of Danny exiting my home the day before my wife was killed.
That’s the closest thing to solid proof I could get. ”
He really had grown obsessed, hadn’t he?
She was also still having a hard time believing a friend she’d trusted with her “Red Robin Hood” identity could be a killer, could work for the likes of Santiago.
“How . . . I . . .” And speechless was more than just an expression.
“It took time to pull a clean image from the reflection and get rid of the pixelation, but once I did, I ran his photo through a special program to try and isolate where else he’d been around the time of her death. Thank God I saved all of that footage from back then.”
Thank God you’re obsessive? Yeah, she supposed.
“And that’s how I discovered he’d been with you in D.C. It should never have taken me years. I owe Rebecca better than that,” he added in a solemn tone. Rory allowed his sadness to sit between them for a few moments. Letting him grieve. Blame himself if he needed to.
“And that’s what prompted you to search for me, which then led to your men seeing me enter Santiago’s compound.
But at the time, you had no idea Santiago was involved in Rebecca’s murder.
So, when I told you in France Danny had died during a dive while working for Andrew, you thought you’d reached a dead end,” she clarified, more so for herself, finally putting it all together.
“Yes, but if you hadn’t mentioned Danny also worked for Cutter, I wouldn’t have checked into Cutter’s possible involvement with The Italian, and I may not have started tracking your movements last week.”
“So, Danny worked for both Santiago and Andrew Cutter,” she mumbled, still trying to come to grips with this shocking new revelation.
But did that also mean Danny worked for The Italian?
And did Andrew as well? “I’m guessing if you know all of this, it’s because Santiago told you. You ambushed the CIA’s transport?”
Her head was spinning. Fate, how could she not believe in such a concept?
Carter’s hands disappeared into his slacks pockets, and he circled the table but stood behind his chair instead of sitting.
He nodded. “Aside from a connection between Danny and Andrew Cutter, what else led you to believe I was in immediate danger?” she pressed. “And did you use me as bait to draw out The Italian? Is my family bait right now?” She stood again. “What’s really going on?”
His chest rose and fell with a deep breath, and he steadied his gaze on hers. “I think a chain reaction of events may have begun when Santiago was taken into CIA custody, and it picked up speed after I grabbed him from the CIA.”
Chain reaction? What? “I don’t understand how Santiago being taken by you could jeopardize my safety and lead to my friends and me being taken last Friday.
Even if Danny mentioned my name to Santiago at some point, he had no idea what I had been up to for the last three years.
Besides, I breached Santiago’s compound long after Danny faked his death.
Santiago wouldn’t know I was the one taking down smugglers. ”
Carter set a hand to his jaw and slid his palm down the column of his throat. “Actually, it seems that Santiago and The Italian may have known about you for quite some time.”
“What makes you say that?”
“During my interrogation of Santiago last weekend, I forced him to give me access to every file and photo he had saved online in the cloud. One of the images stood out in particular—a photo of two women sitting outside a café, dated almost three years ago. I was fairly certain the woman with the short brown wig and red sunglasses was you. But the other woman . . .”
If Santiago has a photo of me in my disguise with another woman, that woman has to be Jolie. “She was my partner,” Rory interrupted. “Well, eventually, she became my partner.”
“No,” Carter answered, a wave of emotions flicking across his face, “that woman was my wife.”