Chapter 11
THOMAS
Nadia startled beside him on the sofa, her head swerving toward the door before turning to look at him, her expression alarmed.
Thomas pushed up from the cushions where they’d been seated since dawn, scrolling through the headlines on their burners and surfing the morning news shows.
They were hungry for updates, so Thomas was glad Kane finally made it.
He touched Nadia’s tense shoulder. He’d told her earlier Kane would stop by on his way from the airport to meet up with the other investigators combing his property. But he couldn’t fault her nervousness. They needed to be hypervigilant of potential threats.
“It’s just Kane.” He showed her the agent’s text.
Rather than sinking back onto the couch, she stood up, stretching her legs. “Let’s go meet him.”
Thomas muted the TV and went to answer the door. Nadia hung back a bit, cautious energy radiating off her.
“I’d say it’s good to see you, Kane, but…” Thomas greeted the agent after verifying it was him through the peephole, letting the obvious trail off.
Kane shook his hand. “Wish it was under better circumstances, Tom.”
“Likewise.”
“Mind if I come in?”
He scanned the street as Kane had once trained him to do and moved aside to let him by.
Kane hadn’t changed much since Thomas had seen him last, which had been during Fernando Ruiz’s trial.
Kane was shorter than Thomas and wider in the chest. Younger by a few years.
And he still wore the same everyday clothes Thomas was used to seeing him in.
Jeans, chambray shirt rolled at the sleeves, badge clipped to his brown leather belt, right next to the holstered SIG Sauer.
Reddish-tan freckles bled together on forearms dusted with wiry wisps of strawberry-blond hair.
“That’s new.” Thomas pointed at the full beard. Unlike him, Kane hadn’t gone gray during the agency’s operation to take down the Hidalgos.
“The wife likes it.” He cupped a hand over his chin and rubbed the beard. “She says it makes me look more intimidating on the job.” His thin smile faltered at the edges, his gaze darting briefly away.
“Kids good?” Thomas forced himself to make small talk for Nadia’s benefit.
Kane was a family man, someone he’d known or worked with for the better part of ten years.
He needed her to trust that Kane had their best interests in mind when the agent advised them of their next steps.
Thomas could only convince Nadia to stay with him for so long.
Sooner or later, she’d return home, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop her.
He wouldn’t be able to keep her at his side where he’d know that she was safe, where the only thing that had ever made sense to him was keeping her safe.
And right now everything was about keeping her safe, the one thing he was least sure he could do. Yet he still had to convince her to stay.
Kane flicked his bottom lip, still cupping his chin. “Uh, yeah… Yeah, kids are great.” He looked around, perspiration glistening on his forehead under the incandescent ceiling light, and he noticed they weren’t alone. “You must be Nadia.”
Nadia came over to them and shook Kane’s hand. “I am. I sure hope you’re here to tell us we can go home.”
Kane warily threw Thomas a glance. “Unfortunately, no.”
Thomas felt a tightness in his chest at the agent’s ominous tone.
Kane shifted his weight. “Look, uh… there’s something I need to tell you.” He directed his announcement at Thomas but Nadia interrupted, stepping between them to get Kane’s attention.
“When can we leave?”
“Not anytime soon, I’m afraid. Tom, you might want to sit for this.”
Thomas transformed into granite, his chest thundering against stone. Kane warily glanced from him to Nadia. “Nadia, do you mind—”
“She stays.” At this point, she was as deep in this as he was. Her life was just as at risk.
“Are you—” Kane shot him a sidewards glance.
“Say what you have to say.”
The agent looked over at the kitchen table.
“Kane.” Thomas’s tone carried an edge to get on with it.
“Your brother has been murdered.”
Shock rippled through him and a gut-wrenching sense of vertigo tilted the room.
His mind immediately flashed to James. They’d only spoken hours ago, his brother’s voice still echoing in his ears.
Nadia’s hands flew to her mouth, covering a gasp.
“James.” He heard her agonized whisper under her hands and their eyes locked.
“Which one?” Thomas demanded, his stance unsettled as he met the agent’s somber gaze.
Kane flicked his upper lip. “Sorry. Phil.”
Thomas briefly closed his eyes. For a moment there, he thought he’d lost James. That his nephews were now orphans. Although, hopefully they would still have Natalya, their stepmother.
Nadia’s breaths grew shallower.
“Tell me what happened,” he asked, moving closer to Nadia.
“I just learned of it this morning on my way over, but what I was told is that a neighbor reported hearing gunshots from his house. She called the police. He was already deceased when law enforcement arrived at the property.”
“The Hidalgos?”
“It was.”
Thomas simmered with rage. “What did they do him?” he asked, recalling the condition the cartel had left James in.
Phil had been a thorn in Thomas’s side since they were kids.
But even after everything he’d done to take down the family, he didn’t deserve anything remotely close to the torture inflicted on James.
“I’d rather not—”
“What did they do to him?” he shouted, losing hold of his control.
Nadia flinched.
Kane retreated a step, patting the air with his hands. “All right, all right. They found him tied to a tree in his backyard with an H carved on his stomach and a bullet hole in his brain.”
“No!” Nadia wailed.
“What else?” Thomas demanded.
Kane’s gaze skittered to Nadia, whose already pale complexion had bleached to a ghostly white. “I’m not going to say—”
“For god’s sake, Kane. What did they do to him?” There had to be more, so much more. The Hidalgos wouldn’t have left with just a carving and a single bullet to the head. That was too easy of a death for one of the most brutal cartels in existence.
“Christ, Tom.” Kane ran an unsteady hand over his head. Sweat beaded along his hairline. “The bastards cut off his hands and feet. He almost bled out before they shot him in the head. They wanted him to suffer.”
A sick, twisting feeling cramped Thomas’s stomach. Nadia whimpered.
“They weren’t at the scene,” the agent solemnly added.
“What weren’t?” Nadia asked before realization sank in. “They took his hands?” Her question held a high, strained quality.
Kane nodded, eyes downcast.
Nadia’s eyes blazed with untamed intensity. “What are they going to do with his hands?”
Thomas shook his head, having reached his own limit. She didn’t need to know that the Hidalgos used body parts as calling cards. One of them—James, Claire, or Thomas—would receive their message. It most likely would be all three of them given the number of parts they’d removed from Phil.
“There’s more,” Kane said.
“More?” Nadia covered her mouth with a trembling hand.
Thomas clasped his fingers behind his head and looked up at the popcorn ceiling and braced himself.
“We’re still trying to locate your mother.”
Thomas reeled. He dropped his arms and abruptly walked away.
“So it’s true, his family is being targeted?” he heard Nadia ask Kane.
“Not just them. The FBI lost one of their agents last night.”
Thomas jerked and whirled around. “Who?”
“Remember Peel?”
“Yeah.” He was the assistant special agent in charge of the raid on Donato.
“They broke into his apartment and knifed him in his sleep.”
A cold front moved through him, turning his spine to ice. He marched back to Kane, struggling to stay composed. “How did Ruiz manage to escape?” It was a question he and Nadia had been asking themselves all night.
“That’s under investigation—”
“Don’t give me the runaround, Mitchell. This is my family we’re talking about.
People’s lives are at stake. People very important to me.
” Thomas glanced purposefully at Nadia. “Even we can see the siege on my house and the murders, my mother’s disappearance, have been deliberate, coordinated attacks that took time and planning. This isn’t coincidence.”
Kane lifted a hand that told Thomas he was pushing him. Thomas knew from experience if he pushed too hard, Kane would shut up. He wouldn’t get any answers.
“You aren’t wrong,” Kane said. “We’re looking into that.”
Desperation clawed at Thomas. The Hidalgos had his mother. He felt that truth deep in his soul. “Use me as bait.”
“What?” Nadia grasped his forearm. “You can’t be serious.”
He met her frightened gaze. “This won’t end until we’re all dead.”
Her mouth flattened into a line. She snatched her fingers from him.
“We’re doing our best to prevent that from happening,” Kane stated. “And no, Tom. We will not use you as bait.”
“Thank you.” Nadia’s exhale was heavy with her relief.
Kane stared at him with a mix of disbelief and exasperation, the freckles around his eyes bunching as he squinted, trying to determine how serious Thomas was. “That’s the worst plan you’ve thrown on the table, and you’ve had some outrageous ones.”
“You agreed with them.”
“In retrospect, I shouldn’t have. Faking your brother’s death was monumentally stupid, and to this day, created the biggest paperwork nightmare I’ve ever had on the job.”
“But he’s still alive.”
“He’s still alive,” Kane agreed. He wiped his damp forehead, his gaze flitting about the narrow room. Thomas sensed they didn’t have Kane’s attention for much longer. He was needed on the field.
“Back to Ruiz,” Thomas prodded.