Chapter 17
NADIA
EIGHT YEARS AGO
“Hello?” Nadia answered. She didn’t remember picking up the phone. She didn’t remember even hearing it ring. She’d been dead asleep.
“Aimee just called me.”
“Who is this?” she asked, her tone thick with sleep. She peeked at the screen and saw that it was Kristen. It was 2:03 a.m.
“It’s me. Now wake up.” She came across panicked. No good phones calls arrived at this hour.
“I’m awake.” Nadia rolled onto her back, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “What’s going on?”
“I just got off the phone with Aimee. She was rambling about James. Nadia, she believes he’s still alive.”
Nadia came fully awake with a sudden hardening in her stomach. “Excuse me?” She didn’t even have to fake her shock. She would have had the same response whether or not she knew about James.
Her mind raced. How did Aimee find out? Who told her?
“She says she has proof of life.”
The dread in Nadia’s stomach thickened. What did Aimee have? Who gave it to her?
“Did she tell you what it is?”
“Something about a painting. She wasn’t that specific. But I got the impression she had other clues. Like I said, she was rambling. Jesus, Nadia. I didn’t realize she thought he was still alive.”
“Neither did I.”
“It all makes sense now, why she’s never moved on. Why she’s kept everything of his. She believes he’s coming back.”
Nadia wished that were true almost as much as she wished she’d never walked in on Thomas with James’s open casket.
But it was her understanding that Thomas didn’t want James to return until his safety was guaranteed.
Until James’s return wouldn’t put other lives in jeopardy, like Aimee’s, or Kristen and Nick’s.
Hers. Where he’d once admitted to her he thought James only needed to remain hidden for a few months, Thomas didn’t just believe he’d never return.
He didn’t want him to return. No matter how much damage federal agencies could do to disrupt their supply lines, cartels never fully disbanded.
Factions were always in line to take over another’s territory.
Someone was always ready to step into a leadership position.
A threat to one’s life never truly disappeared.
Promises were always kept, especially promises to kill anyone who was a threat to the cartel’s operation.
“I’m seriously worried about her, Nadia. She’s flying to Mexico in the morning to find him.”
“She’s what?” Nadia snapped upright, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.
“She’s going to Puerto Escondido. This is insane, right? And I’m not just talking about her thinking he’s still alive. She’s flying to Oaxaca by herself. Not exactly the safest place to go right now.”
Puerto Escondido. Was that where James had been all this time? The opposite coast from where everyone had been told he died?
“Yeah,” she said, the word hanging flat in the air.
It was insane. If Aimee was headed to Puerto Escondido for a vacation, she’d be fine.
But since she was looking for James, all she had to do was ask the right questions with the wrong person and it could be her body washing ashore next, especially with the state’s recent unrest.
A lot had happened since James’s funeral nineteen or so months ago.
In one day, the FBI raided Donato Enterprises along with dozens of other businesses throughout the southwest the Hidalgo Cartel had been using to launder money.
Phil had been arrested. Shortly thereafter, Mexican authorities captured Ernesto Ramirez, the cartel’s chief adviser and second-in-command.
And just the other day, they raided a ranch in Oaxaca and took Fernando Ruiz into custody.
He’d be extradited to the U.S. to go on trial.
They’d all go on trial. It had been all over the news.
And all this time Aimee had been convinced James was still alive.
How did Nadia miss that? Why hadn’t Aimee said anything?
Nobody would have believed her.
And if she’d mentioned anything to Nadia? Nadia would have told her she was out of touch with reality. Delusional with grief. That she needed to move on.
No wonder she’d kept this to herself. Nadia would have.
She had been, she thought with a lurch to her stomach. She’d been keeping James a secret all this time.
“Call her, Nadia. She won’t listen to me.” Her whirling thoughts halted at Kristen’s request.
“And tell her what?”
“Convince her not to go. She’s only going to get hurt.”
“She’s not going to find him.” Nadia didn’t know if he really was in Puerto Escondido.
Thomas not only hadn’t told her, but had said James was hidden deep in Mexico’s witness protection program.
Whatever proof of life Aimee thought she had was bound to send her on a search that would eventually lead exactly where Kristen had said it would: to hurt, as well as disappointment. And quite possibly, her death.
But what if she did find James?
Nadia’s breath caught. She could stop lying.
She could stop pretending. But Aimee’s discovery could bring the danger Thomas had been trying to avoid for all their sakes to their doorsteps.
They’d already lost James to it, even if he was still alive.
She couldn’t risk the lives of anyone else she loved.
Oh, my. She was starting to sound like Thomas.
Nadia stood up to dress, her thoughts narrowing into a solid plan.
“I’ll head over and talk to her,” she told Kristen, taking off her night slip.
“Thank you,” Kristen said with obvious relief. “Call me after. I won’t be able to sleep until you do.”
“I will.” She ended the call and pulled on her pink bedazzled tracksuit and wrapped a wool scarf around her neck. She should call Thomas and warn him about Aimee. But that wasn’t what she did.
Twenty-five minutes later, she was knocking on the door at an address her gallerist friend Wendy Yee had just texted her.
Ian Collins, a landscape photographer Wendy frequently promoted, opened his door wearing a rumpled Yosemite shirt and sleep pants.
His dark sandy hair was sticking up on the side and fell in a playful mess over his forehead.
She couldn’t believe Aimee hadn’t jumped his bones yet.
She’d really been hoping Aimee would get together with him, even if only to assuage her loneliness.
But she’d never gotten over James. In fact, it was worse.
The lines between Ian’s brows deepened at the sight of Nadia at his door at this late of an hour. “Nadia? What are you doing here? Is Aimee—”
“Let me in. We need to talk.”
“Okay,” he said warily when she boldly nudged past him into his apartment.
His place was small, one of several units in a moderately sized complex on the outskirts of downtown Los Gatos.
He was walking distance to Aimee’s Café and Wendy’s gallery.
Large, scenic prints covered the white-washed walls, the only color in the main room.
Everything else, the furniture, carpet, tile, were in monochromatic grays and industrial steel.
Ian closed the door and Nadia swung around to face him. He eyed her warily. “Can I get you a water? I’m too tired to make coffee.”
“No time. Do you love Aimee?” She went straight in with the punch.
His mouth fell open.
“Well, do you? It’s a simple question.” She’d seen the way he looked at Aimee.
What she would give to be on the receiving end of that kind of longing.
Mark, this guy she’d been dating—if she’d even call it that.
He was going through a divorce and had enough baggage for the both of them—never gazed at her with a drop of what Ian had for Aimee.
Just as well. It wasn’t like Nadia intended to ever marry.
Men only ended up leaving like her dad did.
So she’d erected walls, and no man had ever made the effort to get through.
Except one. But that was years ago, and she wasn’t sure it counted. They were only teenagers.
“Hardly.” He folded his arms. “I’m not answering that, not when—” He stopped, his gaze dropping to the floor with a slight shake of his head.
Nadia’s brows lifted. “Good enough for me,” she said with a quick smile. He wouldn’t say it out loud, not when he hadn’t yet told Aimee how he felt.
“That can’t seriously be what brought you over at this hour. Are you drunk?”
“No.”
“Well, whatever this is, can it wait until later?” He yawned and reached for the door. “I have a shoot in a few hours.”
“What do you know of her ex-fiancé, James?”
That got his attention. “I know he died almost two years ago in a boating accident and that it broke Aimee’s heart.”
“Has she mentioned anything else about him?”
His eyes narrowed. “Like what?”
“Like she believes he’s still alive?”
His cheek flexed and the breath rushed from Nadia’s lungs.
Wow. He knew. Her nails dug into her palm as she glanced away.
She didn’t know how she felt about this.
Aimee confided in him before Kristen. She hadn’t even called Nadia.
Hurt, sadness, jealousy. It was all there.
It also wasn’t shocking. She’d intentionally kept her distance since James’s funeral fearing Aimee would see right through her.
She’d only have to look at her and know she’d betrayed her.
Ian shifted his stance, looking a little uncomfortable she’d brought this up. “She might have said something.”
“Well, she’s apparently found proof of life and she’s flying to Puerto Escondido in the morning.”
This time his mouth fell all the way open. “Oaxaca?”
“You know of it?”
“Yeah. Some big surf tournament is happening there this weekend.” He forked his fingers through his hair, further messing his bed head. He looked askance at her. “She’s really going there?”
“Eight a.m. flight out of San Jose according to Kristen.” She’d texted Nadia on her way over here.
“Is that wise with all the unrest happening around there?”
“Exactly why I’m here. You’re coming with me to Aimee’s to help me talk her out of it. You’re the world traveler. She’ll believe you when you tell her it’s not safe.”