Crazed: A Blood Money Novel (19 page)

“Not once in four years.” Then he inclined his head, and hell rained down.

In eerily synchronous movement, each of Pipe’s brigadiers reached beneath the table, withdrew handguns and shot the Orras cartel member next to them in head. A series of quick, deafening bangs echoed in the high-ceilinged room, leaving no chance for protest or defense, save Ciro, whom Pipe cruelly, coldly forced to watch the murders of his fellow men.

Casey was already moving, lunging forward, but he wasn’t fast enough to protect her.

Blood sprayed across Ilda’s face as Pipe neatly executed his rival.

Hooking his arms around her body, Casey yanked her from her chair, blinking against the pink mist drifting down from eleven bodies that had been breathing seconds earlier and now slumped unmoving in their seats, holes in their foreheads still smoking from their point-blank assassinations.

Pipe’s expression was blank when he fixed his gaze on Ilda, who shook in Casey’s hold as he half-dragged, half-carried her to the door. “I told you there’d be peace in Medellín,
querida
.” Carefully, Pipe set his gun on the tabletop. “Now, there is.”

Chapter Sixteen

Her ears wouldn’t stop ringing.

So much gunfire, the shots in such quick succession, echoing off the high ceiling, and it had deafened her. Everything felt off-balance and...and
white
. It was as though she could hear noise, that unsteady shrillness, the buzz that zipped from one temple to the next and had her blinking back tears.

No. Wait. It wasn’t the pain in her ears causing her eyes to sting, but what she’d just witnessed. What Pipe had just done.

Murder. Mass murder. Ilda could barely make sense of it, blinking and gasping, her ears hurting so much she worried briefly, vaguely, if permanent damage had been done. The guns were the least of it, as were the dozen dead men slumped at her pristine dining table. They paled in comparison to what she thought—wondered, feared—had occurred. That sound, before the gunfire, of something like a rocket taking off, followed by a faint boom, and then the ringing. Not in her ears, though.

The phones.

And then there was the screaming, the crying, like a recorded track trapped inside a tin can. The devastation of those voices, pulsing against her senses until terrified emotion choked her, froze her.

As they had died around her, she’d done...nothing. Nothing but sit there, barely breathing, gaze unable to focus on any one entity in the room, her thoughts narrowed down to a single word.

Arlo
.

She had to get to Arlo. Right upstairs, short meters away from this massacre, her baby girl was tucked under the covers and completely oblivious to what had happened beneath her princess bed.

Her body was moving without her volition, into the darkened hall and away from the chamber of death. Steel banded her waist, lifting her feet off the ground in a jostled rush as the light from the dining room doorway dimmed with every step. She blinked again, recognizing the arm around her as Casey’s, the faint, low hum of his voice strangely soothing against her injured ears, for all that she couldn’t make out his exact words. Her hands fell to his forearm, gripping, scratching, despite not truly wanting him to let her go.

Except she had to get to Arlo.

Her legs kicked, the sharp heel of her stiletto connecting with his shin, and she felt him flinch behind her, along with a displeased rumble deep within his chest, vibrating against her bare shoulders. “Arlo,” she told him—perhaps a whisper, perhaps a shout.
“Arlo.”

His hand, heavy and rough, stroked over her throat, warm breath buffeting one aching ear, and she stilled, concentrating on his words.

“...where she is, Ilda. I’ll take you, but you have to tell me
where
.” Again, his fingers stroked, skin on skin over the tension knotting her neck.

A shiver wracked her, unpleasant yet not and having nothing to do with his touch. Only the situation she—they—faced, the terribleness she simply could not yet fully process. For years she’d been living side-by-side with a monster, not a man, had thought she’d known his limitations as a human being and what sort of villain he truly was.

Mother Mary, had she been wrong. “Up the stairs, to the left. Second door.”

At the foot of the stairs, Casey settled her on her feet, his hands steadying on her waist. “You good to walk?”

Not bothering to answer, Ilda turned, reaching for the railing with a white-knuckled grip and hustling up the stairs. She felt more than heard Casey’s heavy boots behind her as she fought to clear her ears. Swallowing, tugging, a few frantic pats.

“It’ll come back, your hearing. Don’t worry.”

I’m not worried
, she wanted to snap at him. Not about her hearing. What did she need that for? No, what Ilda needed was her daughter, in her arms, immediately. And then she needed to get them off the hacienda and...and out of Medellín.

They couldn’t stay. Hell, she’d already known they shouldn’t stay, but now there was no choice to the matter. She had wanted that choice, didn’t want to feel as though her life were out of her control, or that she was dancing to another’s tune. Every other minute, it seemed as though unseen forces were tugging her strings and, by extension, Arlo’s strings. Ilda was willing to tolerate quite a bit to feel safe, but this, downstairs, wasn’t merely a step too far, but ten thousand steps.

Pausing outside the door to the nursery, Ilda exhaled a shuddering breath. “We can’t run yet,” she whispered, not able to look Casey in the eye as he eased to stand next to her. “Adam...there’s no way you could get him out of here tonight. Security is—”

“Tight, yeah. But, Ilda, if you want out, I will get you and Arlo out, right this second.” He reached into a pocket of his utility trousers, removing a black handkerchief and slowly wiping at her face. It was only then that she felt the sticky wetness coating her skin, which could only mean...
blood
. “Adam will understand the delay. Tomorrow night is soon enough for him.”

She shuddered as he cleaned her face, then dabbed at her neck, her clavicle. “Tomorrow.”

“The auction. We’ve got a plan already in place to get him—and you and Arlo—out of here following the auction.” He stuffed the soiled cloth into his pocket, then framed her face with his hands. “Tell me you want me to take you off the hacienda tonight, baby.”

“If you already have a plan,” she swallowed around the lump in her throat, feeling the hoarseness of her voice, as though she were the one who’d been screaming and not...not all of the innocents, “then we can wait.”

“Ilda—”

“We can wait.” Her decision made, she nodded and reached for the doorknob. “One more day, right? If you try to take us now, Pipe will hunt you down. You won’t get within a mile of your brother so long as he’s in Colombia, and we both know that.” She finally met his gaze. “Is your plan a good plan?”

“There’s no such thing as a good plan.” The pads of his thumbs petted over her overheated cheekbones. “But what we have in mind will work in getting all of us out of here, in one piece.”

“Then we wait.” Without another thought, she pushed open the door—and was rushed by a dresser lamp, wielded by the ferocious nanny. “Isobel!”

“Ilda?” The lamp lowered, and Ilda took in Isobel’s frazzled appearance, dark eyes dilated with terror, before glancing to the princess bed across the large room. “What happened?”

But Ilda was already moving to her daughter’s side. “Pipe happened.” Propping her hip on the edge of the mattress, she carefully pulled back the blanket tucked to Arlo’s chin and stared down at her sleeping face bathed in the glow of the elephant nightlight on the side table next to the bed. All the air escaped her lungs in a whoosh as she leaned down to enfold her little girl within the protective circle of her arms, knowing it would wake Arlo and not caring a bit.

And, lo and behold, Arlo squirmed moments later. Behind her, Ilda heard Casey give Isobel a recap of the atrocities that had taken place downstairs, his voice clipped and without any of the emotion she was used to hearing from him.

“Where’s your room?” Casey asked brusquely.

“Off the nursery.” Isobel sounded suspicious. “Why?”

“Go there, lock your door and pack a bag. Necessities only, but don’t plan on ever being able to come back.” Glancing toward Ilda, he nodded, understanding somehow without it being explicitly said that Ilda would want Isobel to come with them when they left the hacienda. “You love Arlo?”

Isobel scowled up at him, fists propped on her hips. “More than you know.”

“Then keep your mouth shut between now and tomorrow night.” He opened the door to her adjoining suite, gesturing her inside. “Goodnight, Isobel.”

She halted on the threshold, spearing him with a dark look. “You’re trouble, Cortez. Always have been.” Without another word, Isobel entered her own room and closed the door firmly behind her.

After checking the locks on both doors, Isobel’s and the door to the hall, Casey turned to face the bed, shoulders pressed to the door as he stared—hungrily, Ilda thought, longingly—at the pair of them. “I thought you said she doesn’t sign.”

So he’d seen her speaking with Arlo, in their own haphazard manner. “Not any official language, just our own words.”

“Some of that looks like actual sign language.”

“LSM. When she first started trying to communicate, I researched
lengua de señas mexicana
because it was the most universal choice for Spanish speakers.” She brushed Arlo’s tangled bangs out of her eyes, smiling at her daughter though her words for Casey remained somber. “I began integrating basic words, to the best of my knowledge, assuming we’d eventually have to take her out of Colombia for help.” Shaking her head when Arlo signed their word for
ice cream
, Ilda glanced to Casey, then shrugged. “I didn’t mean to wait so long to enroll her. I wasn’t trying to stunt her development. I just...it never seemed safe.” But that was when she’d believed wholeheartedly that the hacienda was the safest place they could be in a world filled with blood and bullets.

Casey took a step toward them, then halted, his gray-hazel eyes flicking between her and Arlo. “No one’s blaming you. Certainly not me.” He frowned when Arlo signed again. “What is she saying now?”

“She...wants to know who you are.” A question Ilda never thought she’d need answer. After hesitating briefly, she signed as she mouthed the words.

“And...and what are you telling her?” Oh, his voice. It sounded so nervous, so worried. So absolutely heartbreaking.

“I said you’re the brother of the man in the barn—Yes, with the eyes, princess,” Ilda confirmed when Arlo, quick little Arlo, made that most basic of connections. Fear gripped her once more, because for her three-year-old to recognize a relationship existed between her and Adam meant Pipe had as well. No more pretending they were still safely shrouded in his ignorance, not after tonight. The need to escape pressed on her, suffocating her with an anxious urgency. Her voice caught, broke. “Clever girl.”

“She certainly is.” Cautious wonder lurked in the quiet syllables.

All of a sudden, Arlo pushed Ilda gently away and scrambled off the bed, her blue-and-yellow sunny-sky pajamas a bright spot in the dimly lit space as she scurried for the toy bin that held her outsized collection of plastic animals. Two dinosaurs were procured—the same toys Arlo had brought into Adam’s stall—and then Arlo crossed to the middle of the room, where Casey stood immobile. She held up the dinosaurs in offering.

Casey looked to Ilda, helplessness written in his expression, but Ilda merely watched, barely able to breathe.

Slowly, he sank to the floor, legs folded beneath him as though he’d sat on a rug with a small child countless times before. His intent gaze never left Arlo’s round face, his attention perfectly focused, as though getting this right were of vital importance. Mirroring him, Arlo sat, then handed him one of the plastic dinosaurs, which his big hand with its long fingers nearly swallowed. In silence, he waited for a cue from Arlo.

Arlo didn’t keep him waiting, immediately siccing her toy at his in a mock battle of teeth and claws. Casey held his dinosaur mostly immobile, paying more attention to her than to the playing. “You were right,” he whispered, never taking his eyes from Arlo. “She’s perfect.”

And Ilda’s shattered heart, so abused from tonight, this week, four years of interminable grief, began to repair itself. Deep inside her chest, she felt the ragged pieces stitch together, slow tugs of thread and needle that somehow didn’t pain but comforted.

There, a few feet away, sat her daughter and her daughter’s father, playing together, Arlo’s expression innocent and happy, Casey’s features softening by the second. It was a sight she’d never dreamed possible, and seeing it felt like a fever dream, something she had imagined only in the deepest recesses of her subconscious. It
shouldn’t
have been possible, but here it was, happening. Right before her eyes.

They looked alike, she realized. The longer she saw them side-by-side, the more it became obvious to her. The shape of their eyes, if not the color, and the tips of their ears. The hair so dark a brown it might as well be black. Even their mouths showed promise of being similar, in time. Arlo’s dusky skin remained fair with the freshness of youth, nowhere near as brown as his or Ilda’s, but there was no mistaking the bloodline resemblance between her daughter and the man who was not Casímiro Cortez.

As Arlo went to the bin to collect more toys, Casey glanced around the nursery. Ilda’s legs dangled at the edge of the bed, her tall heels scraping the soft rug, her fists clenching in the quilt. She wondered what he saw when he looked at the well-appointed room, the evidence of Pipe’s excessive spoiling of Arlo. She also wondered why Casey refused to look at her.

“Did you ever love him?” The question seemed torn from Casey, so weighty that Ilda nearly rocked backward from the subtle force of it.

“That’s a complicated question.” Even more complicated now, given what was downstairs. Ilda shivered, her stomach knotting abruptly. “Or maybe it isn’t.”

“Explain.”

They both watched Arlo as she returned to her position in front of Casey—this time with an armload of dinosaurs—instead of taking the hard road and making eye contact with one another. She felt too fragile as she fought to find the words, and to be
right
in those words. “I told you that Pipe was good to me, to us. As good as a man like Pipe could be. But he never loved me the way he did Théa, and we both knew it.”

But Casey was like a dog with a bone. “That doesn’t answer my question.” He picked up another dinosaur when Arlo pushed one toward him, his movements no longer stilted but easy. It was taking him no time at all to fall into daddy mode. “You’ve been resistant to leaving here, and I thought I understood why. I thought it was me—I rose from the dead, and I kept pushing you and pushing you. I’m not a patient man.” Frustration pulsed from him. “But what if it’s not me who’s got you all twisted up and wanting to stay here? What if it’s Pipe? If your heart’s involved, if that’s what is keeping you—”

“My heart is not involved.” Ilda was more than a little surprised to realize it was true. One hundred percent, undeniably true, but something she hadn’t wanted to face in the years in which she’d been with Pipe. And, judging from Pipe’s psychopathic revenge for her sister just now, she would guess that his heart wasn’t hers, either. “I never fell in love with him. He was there, he cared for me, he adored my daughter. He kept us safe. For a while, I loved all of those things—his presence, his care, his safety—but I can tell you with all honesty,
marido
, that I never loved
him
. You don’t snitch to the DEA on someone you love, do you?” Pushing from the bed, Ilda came to kneel next to her daughter on the rug and finally looked Casey in the eye. “No. You don’t. But until you came back, I thought it would be enough, what I was doing to ease my conscience and the relative safety he offered us. I thought my gratitude would be enough.”