50 #2
“Hello, Connor. My name is Brandy, and I’m your dad’s friend.”
He tilted his head. “Are you Dad’s girl friend?”
Girlfriend?
What was she? His fiancée ? No.
Rafferty hadn’t asked her to marry him.
Not really. That fake thing didn’t count.
Before she could find the words, Connor asked, “Why are you crying?”
That , at least, was easy. “Because I’m very happy for your dad.”
“Why?”
His small body gave a shiver, and she quickly flipped open a towel, draping it over his thin shoulders and pulling it snug around him.
She sat on the lounger Rafferty had vacated and met the boy’s earnest gaze.
“Because your dad’s been sad for a very long time,” she said softly.
“But now he’s found you and Nadie, and he’s not sad anymore. ”
As if to prove her words, high-pitched laughter from the little girl drifted in, mingling with Rafferty’s deeper rumble. The sound filled the solarium, warm and bright.
“I’m glad Dad found us, too,” Connor said simply.
*
“Want Flopsy,” Nadie said, and Rafferty handed over the floppy-eared bunny, still a bit dazed.
A year ago, he’d been rotting in a shack deep in the unforgiving Amazon jungle, drifting between a drug-induced haze and a spiral of bitter self-loathing and blame.
Yet here he was, tucking in a little girl who called him Daddy for her late-morning nap.
And in the room next door, Brandy-Lyn read to Connor from Charlotte’s Web . Her voice filtered through the open doorway, “ You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. ”
The words “tremendous thing” echoed in his chest like a struck bell. It was a tremendous thing at play in his life. And he hadn’t earned a bit of it. Not after the things he’d done. Not with the weight of his past dragging behind him like a chain.
But fate, or grace, or dumb, unmerited luck had led him here anyway.
To this moment.
These kids.
To Brandy-Lyn .
And now that he had it, he would walk through hell to keep it.
“And ’Appy,” Nadie murmured, more asleep than awake.
Rafferty found the little penguin and tucked it in beside Flopsy.
“Fank you, Daddy,” she whispered.
How can this kid possibly worm her way any deeper into my heart?
“You’re very welcome, Nadiebird,” he whispered back, his voice rough with emotion.
A knock at the outer door of the hotel suite they’d moved into earlier reminded him that all was not well in his world.
There was still a witch to vanquish.
He dropped a light kiss on the now sleeping Nadie’s temple, stood, and crossed into the living area separating the two bedrooms.
Stas and Ruby stood just within the doorway. “We have an update,” he said, inclining his head to the hallway.
Rafferty glanced at Brandy-Lyn and Connor on the sofa and hated to leave them.
“I’ve got this. Go,” Brandy-Lyn murmured.
“And I’ll stay,” Ruby added, shifting past the men.
Rafferty followed Stas across the hallway to the room they’d commandeered as a temporary command center. The television had been removed and a large monitor put in its place. Gunner was talking to a man filling the screen.
“Raff, meet Fox. He’s the operator who confirmed Kamila’s presence in Rio. He’s got further intel for us.”
“ Sim ,” Fox nodded, and got straight to the point. “I firmly believe Kamila Carvalho is back in Manaus. I have footage of her outside an old mansion that once belonged to her mother, Cristina Alves.
“Cristina was born into one of Acre’s oldest and wealthiest families, their fortune built during the height of Brazil’s rubber boom.
At twenty-two, Cristina was married off in a strategic alliance to Francisco Carvalho, a rising businessman.
As a wedding gift, Cristina’s father gave her a large estate north of Manaus.
Though the marriage didn’t last long, she remained on the estate with her daughter.
After Cristina’s death, Kamila went to live with her father.
The mansion eventually fell into disrepair, but it still exists. ”
A memory prickled at Rafferty. “Do you have visuals of that estate.”
“ Sim . Already uploaded.”
“Thanks, Fox,” Stas said. “We’ll comb through the footage and get back to you. Keep watch until you hear from us.”
“Show me,” Rafferty rasped and started pacing. Kamila had fooled them so many times. Was this just another deception? Was she in Brazil — or here? Was the note on the Yukon nothing more than a red herring?
Gunners’ fingers tapped on the laptop, and a video appeared on the monitor.
The camera followed a Land Rover bumping over an overgrown driveway and pull to a stop in front of a crumbling mansion straight out of a gothic novel.
Moss clung to the walls like a second skin, and the windows — those that weren’t boarded — gaped like blind eyes.
A warped balcony sagged above the entryway, where a chandelier of dead vines and broken glass swayed in the sluggish breeze.
The camera zoomed in on the vehicle beneath the crumbling portico.
The passenger door opened. A burly man hopped out and opened the back door.
Rafferty held his breath as the woman got out.
She stopped, her head moving in a slow arc, momentarily pausing to look straight at the camera. Red lips pulled into a smirk.
“It’s her,” he said on the exhale. “And she knows we’re watching.”
And the fucking woman was wearing the exact outfit she had on the day she killed Selena.
Black slacks.
Scarlet blouse.
Elaborate bow.
And red fucking devil shoes.
And he heard the click-clack of her shoes climbing the cracked steps, then vanish through the double doors like she was striding into a palace — not a crumbling mansion on the edge of the fucking jungle.
He recalled where he’d seen that house before.
An oil painting hanging over the fireplace in the destroyed compound. “A happy memory,” she had replied when he’d asked after the place.
“She’s inviting me to join her,” Rafferty stated with utter clarity. And to protect the tremendous thing he’d been blessed with, he would do Kamila Carvalho’s bidding for one last time. He’d go to Brazil. “But that place, the old mansion …that’s a ruse. Kamila always had a plan within a plan.”