Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
MY EYES SAUCERED and met Black’s. He shrugged, a tiny movement that told me he didn’t have a clue the baby belonged to Carlos either. And I’d just told Jane he’d exploded. Tactful, Emmy, real tactful . She must have been devastated. I knew this because I’d gone through the same thing nearly nine months ago, except for Carlos there would be no miracle comeback.
And Black had just found out he’d lost his brother. He may never have known him, but in some ways, I guessed that made it worse because now he never would. And the part of me I hated was pleased Carlos had died, and pleased Carlos was the father of Jane’s child, because that meant it wasn’t Black.
Jane recovered slightly and spoke again. “Carlos was kind. Not like the others at the compound.”
“Can you tell us more about him?” I asked gently.
She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue again, but nodded. “He saved me. Evil filled that family, pure evil, and he was the only good thing in it. At first, he didn’t speak much, but then he learned. We talked for hours when nobody was watching, about our lives and what we wished they could be. For years, we both dreamed of escaping from that terrible place.”
“Hang on, hold up a minute. Carlos was a prisoner too?”
“Not behind bars maybe, but Hector and Diego controlled him. They were cruel men. I’m glad they’re dead.”
“Do you know why Hector favoured Diego?”
“Because Diego was his biological son and Carlos wasn’t; that’s what Carlos told me. Every time he did something wrong, they would throw it back in his face.”
That fitted with Diego’s “stepbrother” comment. “So if Carlos wasn’t Hector’s son, why did he tell people he was?”
“Hector and his first wife adopted him. She’d always wanted a baby, and they tried for years and couldn’t have one. So one day, Hector came home with Carlos as a surprise for her. She adored him. Carlos said his early years were wonderful, but Hector changed when she died.”
I’d read about that in research notes Mack and Luke put together. “She got shot in a drive-by, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Shot. And without her there, Hector pushed Carlos away and left him to the servants to raise. Things only got worse when Hector remarried and had another son.”
“Diego.”
“Yes. He doted on Diego. They did the whole father/son bonding thing. Hector took him out shooting and fishing while Carlos got left at home. If he asked to go too, Hector would tell him it was a family outing, and he didn’t consider him family.”
“What a cruel thing to tell a child.”
“Hector was a monster.” Jane shuddered as she remembered. “But as Carlos got older, Hector put him to work doing the accounts. He’d spend all day with the spreadsheets, and then in the evenings he would come to me.”
“So he wasn’t allowed to leave the compound either?”
“Occasionally he left. He had meetings with lawyers, accountants, suppliers, people like that. Usually, one of Hector’s henchmen would fly or drive him wherever he needed to go.”
“Any idea why Carlos went to America?”
“I think so. He wanted to leave Colombia, and for the last few years, he kept telling me he had a plan to get us both out of there but it would take time.”
“What was the plan?”
“I didn’t know all of it. He said it was better that way, but if things went as they were supposed to, we would have enough money to escape and hide from Hector and Diego.”
“Where was the money coming from?”
“Carlos didn’t say, and I was afraid to ask. The whole idea of escaping seemed too good to be true.”
“Do you think he was serious?”
“I didn’t at first. Then one evening about a year ago, he came to my room. I’d never seen him so…animated. He had this light in his eyes. Hope.”
“Why? Did he tell you?”
“Hector had sent him on a trip overseas. He didn’t usually do that, but they’d been having some problems with that government program, the one where they spray the coca plants with something that kills them, and Diego and most of the men were busy dealing with that.”
“I bet they were.” Eduardo had told me all about Plan Colombia. It had caused him a headache too, at least until he found the right people to bribe. Government officials flew over the fields, spraying herbicide over the coca. Unfortunately, the chemicals also killed any other plants they touched, destroying crops and causing health problems for the people living in the targeted areas.
“Hector received a report from someone in his sales network that the DEA was nosing around. He sent Carlos over to find out who and shut them down. Except when Carlos got back, he told me he’d found his brother. I didn’t believe him at first, but he insisted, over and over, and I began to think it might be true.”
“It must have been me,” said Black. “I was working for the DEA a year ago.”
Jane nodded, and another tear slipped down her cheek. “He promised Hector he’d fix the problem, but when he went back to America, he was really going to meet you. He planned to ask you for help to get us out of Colombia. Even though it seemed impossible, he was convinced you would be able to set us free. Except he never came back.”
“But I did,” Black said.
“Yes. Even though Carlos said there was a good chance he wouldn’t return, I kept hoping.”
Black shifted her closer in his arms. “And you couldn’t grieve either, could you? Because nobody knew about the two of you?”
Her tears fell harder as she shook her head. “I was supposed to try and escape. He left some money and a memory stick in the hut.”
“That’s what’s in the envelope?”
“I need to post the stick to Blackwood Security in Virginia. Can you help me?”
“Sure.” I pointed at Black. “You’re sitting next to the Black part of Blackwood Security. That’s where we’re from.”
“Really?”
I rummaged in the wardrobe until I found one of my business cards in a jacket pocket, then flipped it over to her.
She held it in both hands and read, then took the memory stick from the envelope and handed it to me.
“Do you know what’s on it?” I asked.
Hair flopped across her face as she shook her head again, and she pushed the stray strands behind one ear. “Carlos said I was better off not knowing. And then it didn’t matter because I was stuck at the compound. The thought of leaving on my own scared me more than staying.”
“Do you have any idea what Carlos did while he was away?”
“No, but Hector was furious when he found out. His phone rang, and five minutes later, he started shouting about money and lawyers and trust accounts. Diego was angry too. He put his fist through a wall when he got out of the meeting with his father.”
“Short fuse, then.”
“What does that mean?”
“He loses his temper easily.”
She bobbed her head. “Always. I knew it was something to do with Carlos when Hector stormed past and yelled at his security chief to get him back to Colombia immediately, no matter how difficult that might be. I didn’t have any way of warning him. All I could do was pray.”
“Money. It was about money,” Black cut in. “In the time I was there, they only let me out of the cell once a month, and Diego drugged me first. The coward stood at the door and shot me with a tranquillizer dart. He was too much of a chicken to just open it.”
“Knowing that makes me wish I’d drawn out his death a bit longer. Really had fun with him.”
“Much as I like you to be professional, it’s a nice thought. Anyway, before he let me out for the first time, he made me practise imitating some guy’s voice. He played recordings over and over for hours. Always in Spanish, his end of mundane phone conversations about money transfers and profit margins. After a while, I started hearing his voice in my sleep. That must have been Carlos.”
A cruel punishment, made all the worse by it being Black’s unknown brother. “Most probably.”
“After Diego doped me, he’d wait just long enough for me to become coherent again, then we’d meet with some lawyer. I had to speak in Carlos’s voice, and Diego told me to agree with everything he said and sign when I was instructed. Whatever cocktail he gave me messed with my head, so I didn’t follow everything, but the gist was that the lawyer needed my signature to transfer assets back to Diego.”
“I bet Carlos tied the money up to protect himself, knowing they couldn’t kill him as the money would be lost. Except they did, accidentally, so they had to use the next best thing.”
Black leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Me.”
“Yep.”
“Diego was pure evil. As well as the drugs, he said if I didn’t do exactly as he asked, he’d kill Jane in front of me.”
The colour drained from Jane’s face. Black noticed and held her tighter.
“That’s what happened to Lorena, isn’t it?” she whispered.
“I didn’t answer one of the lawyer’s questions fast enough. Diego pulled me through to the room opposite and made me watch from the window while one of his henchmen shot her.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“So you went along with him?” I asked, then immediately regretted it. I’d made it sound like I disapproved.
“What else was I supposed to do? I was stuck there, so spaced out I could barely walk let alone take on his army. I didn’t care a dime about whatever I was signing for, but I needed to keep Jane alive. She was the only person left who wasn’t loyal to Hector. Nobody else was around to help me.”
I winced as that dig at me hit home. But Black was right; I hadn’t helped him. Instead, I’d been off gallivanting around England and Syria and Jordan and Egypt and Japan and America. If only I could turn the clock back, I’d have done everything in my power to find him sooner. I’d also have inflicted a whole lot more pain on Hector and Diego. Death by a thousand cuts, maybe. I’d always wondered if that worked. An old friend of mine once got up to eight hundred and three, but then the dude quit on him.
My thoughts were interrupted by Jane’s trembling voice. “What happens now?”
I remembered her earlier comment about her family, or rather, not knowing whether she had one. “You can come home with us.”
“Of course.” Black gave her that smile again. “We’ve got two houses in Richmond. You can stay in either one.”
“Actually, it’s just one at the moment,” I told him.
“What do you mean one? Just one house? Did you sell mine already?” He sounded surprised and a bit disappointed.
“No! Of course I didn’t sell it. I’d never do that. In fact, I’m living in it. It’s mine that’s uninhabitable.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
Where did I start? “Well, there was a fire, but the sprinklers put that out. So there’s water damage. And some bullet holes, a lot of bloodstains, the kitchen got taken out by a grenade, and quite a few of the doors and windows are missing. Oh, and the guardhouse is flattened.”
His fists clenched. “Ramos?”
“That was the line he crossed.”
“How bad was it?”
“Mick died, and Seth’s in the hospital with third-degree burns to his face, arms, and torso. Hector lost fourteen men. I’m officially dead, and the FBI is trying to work out what to do with the bodies. Agent Stone said the medical examiner’s complaining we’ve taken up all his morgue space.”
“Too many good people have been hurt,” Black said, rubbing his temples. “Are the police going to cause problems?”
“I doubt it. We shot as many as possible from the front. Plus, on the bright side, for the past eight months, they’ve been convinced I killed you or at least hired someone else to, so I can prove they’re wrong on that.”
He groaned and leaned back against the wall. “Did they arrest you?”
“They didn’t have enough evidence. There were witnesses to say I didn’t pull the trigger, and the lawyers fought them over access to our bank accounts.”
Black clenched his teeth as I turned back to Jane.
“So that means there’s one house left. But it’s quite big, so we’ve got plenty of spare rooms. Do you want us to help look for your family?”
“It was so long ago that I saw them. I don’t even know if my parents are still alive.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Fifteen years.”
“Fifteen years? You were in that place for fifteen years?”
Holy cannoli. I’d had more than I could stand after fifteen seconds.