Locked and Loaded Page 18

  “They might have done it even if you hadn't. Didn't you say that your mother was writing some kind of memoir?”

  “Yes. And Adrian…wasn't happy I turned down his offer to work for him.”

  “You didn't tell me about that,” I growled.

  “It was when you were unconscious.”

  “Son of a cock-sucking bitch.”

  “I shot him, though.”

  My mouth twisted. “Where?”

  “I don't know. It was dark.”

  “Well, that explains why they're keeping it quiet. Wouldn't want news to get out that their boss had been taken out of commission by a rookie.”

  I stroked her hair.

  “Good job, baby doll.”

  She made an unhappy noise.

  “Whether it was the IMA or the BN, though, you didn't kill your mother. This is just an excuse.”

  “But—”

  “This is just their fucking excuse to hurt you.”

  I wrapped an arm around her.

  “Don't let them do that. Don't cry. I'll be all right. We'll fix it. We'll make them pay. Anything you want. Just, please, darlin—I don't know what to do when you cry.”

  “Oh, Michael.” Hair got into my mouth when she pressed her face into my neck. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Objective

  Christina

  My mother's death—oh, what a horrible word that was, so final, so static, the ultimate end—weighed heavily upon me. As cruel as Mamá could be in her worst moments, I truly believed she loved me, in her own strange and twisted way.

  Some women are not meant to be mothers. They have children because it is what society demands of them, but that was never their first choice about what to do with their lives. Mamá was one of these women.

  And now, she was gone.

  I was not apologizing for her behavior or saying that she hadn't hurt me, because she had, and badly. Few things in this world hurt as much as a mother's betrayal.

  But I could try to understand. Yes, I could do that much.

  I used Michael's cell phone to call my father; Dad was the only one I thought I might be able to talk to about this. He had been married to Mamá for many years and, I imagined, knew her better than almost anyone.

  “Christina?”

  He sounded more shocked than heartbroken, like her passing hadn't sunken in yet. I felt the same; it was difficult to believe a driving force like Mamá could be wiped clean from the face of the earth, without a trace.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “I thought I might hear from you soon.”

  I wasn't sure what to say to that, so I kept silent.

  “Are you still working for those…er, other fellows?”

  “No,” I said miserably. “Not anymore.”

  “Were they the ones who…?” Dad trailed off, the ellipses leading like an arrow of guilt to the question I'd been tormenting myself with over the last few days.

  “I don't know, Dad. I really don't. I wish I had the answer.”

  “Do you think her memoir was what tipped the scale?”

  I was in the middle of pouring myself a bowl of cereal, but I paused milk in hand. Michael had posited the same thing. “I don't know. I hope not.”

  But secretly, in my heart of hearts, I found this far more palatable than the other possibility.

  I was a wicked person.

  “Maybe I should have tried harder to discourage her.”

  I splashed milk in the cereal bowl and capped it with more force than necessary. “Nobody could stop Mamá from doing what she wanted to do.” I put the milk back in the fridge and sighed, leaning against the cool door. “That was the problem.”

  “Liliana definitely had her own ideas about things.”

  About everything, I thought. About me.

  “She did love you, you know,” he said suddenly.

  I jumped at that, because it was as if my father had read my mind. Some people call that synergy, that moment when everything lines up picture-perfect. I have a different theory, that all brains are rewired to work in exactly the same way when you're hurting. Sadness is universal and misery loves company, and all that. I was certainly feeling miserable.

  I said something in response. I don't remember what, but it wasn't very nice, because whatever it was prompted my father to add, “I know she didn't always show it, but she was very proud of you.”

  Tears stung my eyes. I blinked them away, angrily. Comfort was one thing, but bald-faced lies were quite another. Rather than being appreciative of my dad's attempt to sugarcoat the truth, I was enraged. “Proud of me? She hated me.”

  He tried to protest. I cut him off.

  “Don't get me wrong. I love her—loved her—and I miss her, and I'm sad that she's gone, but let's not sign her up for sainthood just yet. Nothing I did was ever good enough for her. She didn't like me.”

  “Your mother had a hard life.”

  “It must be so hard being beautiful and getting everything you want.” I plopped down in the chair to begin the face off with my cereal. “Wouldn't know what that feels like.”

  “Her life wasn't the fairytale she would have you believe.”

  “What, like she had a jerky boyfriend before she met you, or something? Or a mom who criticized her all the time, as though she was purposely setting out to destroy all her expectations?”

  “Liliana's mother used to beat her. Her father…may have abused her. She only talked about it once, and then later she told me she made the whole thing up, so I'm not sure what to believe. I do know that she was in and out of recovery clinics for bulimia and anorexia for most of her adolescence. She was…sick in some ways, your mother. Mentally, as well as physically.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Why didn't you ever tell me?”

  “You know how she is. Was. She was so paranoid. I was afraid it might make things worse, if she thought that I was going behind her back and spilling her secrets. Worse, I was afraid that if you ever got angry enough, you might use them against her.”

  I bit my lip. Yes, I had been cruel to her in my own way, too, hadn't I? Choosing my father over her and making no secret about where my preferences lay. Taking what cheap digs at her I could, because of the way she made me hurt inside.

  It killed me a little that my dad had not only seen that and recognized it for what it was, but also denied me a crucial aspect of my mother's psyche because he didn't think I was morally mature enough to deal with her illness.

  It killed me even more that, up until very recently, he had been completely, one-hundred-percent correct in his thinking.

  “Why wasn't she on medication?”

  “We tried that. She would take the pills until she felt better, and then she'd stop taking them again. Eventually, that just made things worse than before. It put her body's natural chemistry off-balance, but she insisted she didn't need fixing.”

  “Why did you stay with her if she was so fucked up?”

  “Because I loved her, Sweet Pea. I thought that would be enough. And for a while…I thought it was.”

  I thought of my parents' wedding photo. My dad, back when he still had hair. My mother, film-star-gorgeous, in a white gown with lacework sleeves that looked a lot like what Kate Middleton wore to her royal wedding.

  “I wish you hadn't told me all this.” So many memories. All of them tainted by bitterness—and now, sorrow. “It hurts more, now that I know the full effect of what I said to her. Now that I know that I'll never be able to take it back or say I'm sorry. Ever.”

  “Everyone says things they don't mean. We're lucky if we have the chance later to make amends, but we don't always. You can't beat yourself up over the things that aren't in your power to change, otherwise you'll never get around to fixing what you can.”

  There was some noise in the background. I imagined Em at the stove, brewing a pot of tea, asking who was on the phone. She would be wearing black, of course, even though she h
ated my mother; Em was sensible, and believed in proper mourning.

  “Your mother was one of those things that couldn't be fixed. At least, not by us. The only one who had any power over her illness was your mother, and for whatever reason she didn't want to take the initiative.”

  He sighed.

  “It always broke my heart to see you and your mother fight.”

  “We fought all the time. Practically every day,” I whimpered.

  “The way she treated you was so different from the way she talked about you when you weren't around. I know for a fact she loved you, and I could never for the life of me understand why it was that she refused to show it.”

  “If she didn't show it, then how can you be so sure?”

  “Because she left everything to you.”

  I was in the process of lifting the first spoonful of cereal to my mouth. A tremor seized control of my hand at his words. Corn flakes hit the tabletop. “What do you mean?”

  “She rewrote her will.”

  I no longer felt like eating.

  I felt like throwing up.

  “The royalties from her book, the money from the de Silva fashion label, her house and assets—it all goes to you.”

  “Oh my God…”

  The door to the hotel room opened, then closed just as quietly. There was silence, but I knew he was inside. Knew he could hear me crying. Knew he was listening hard to figure out why, and whether there was an ass on the other end of the line that needed kicking.

  A hysterical giggle wound its way through the tangled maze my throat had become, before bursting past my lips. I pushed the bowl of cereal away and leaned my elbows on the table so that my arms would stop shaking quite so hard.

  “Christina? Are you all right?”

  “My mother just died, Dad. What do you think?”

  I winced at the acerbic tone of my voice. I could almost see him flinch.

  “Sorry—I didn't mean it quite like that. I meant to say—I'll…cope. Isn't that what grieving people are supposed to say? That they'll cope?”

  “You're a strong young woman,” Dad said, “just like your mother. I know that you'll be able to do anything you put your mind to. And now, thanks to your mother, you can.”

  I didn't like thinking in those terms, though. It suggested that the nicest thing my mother had ever done for me was die.

  The door opened and closed again.

  Michael was gone.

  So was my father.

  So was my mother.

  I set the phone aside and crawled down from the chair. Then I curled up into a miserable little ball on the linoleum tile of the kitchenette and cried until my eyes were burning and the salt from my tears had turned to crystals of rime on my cheeks.

  Michael understood pain; he had been on both sides of the equation, and was well familiar with the pain and devastation it could cause on both the emotional and physical levels.

  He gave me the space he thought I needed, which said more about him than it did about me. I didn't want to isolate myself. I wanted assurances that everything was going to be okay.

  He was gone most of the day, but when I heard the stealthy creak of the hinges, I said, “Wait, please—don't leave.”

  For a moment, I thought I was too late. I let out my breath when I heard footsteps enter the room, causing the floors to squeak beneath his weight. “You feeling better?”

  I could tell from the volume of his voice that he was standing in the hallway.

  “No,” I sniffed. “But I don't want to be alone.”

  I heard him enter the room. “Why does it smell like sour milk in here?” Imagined his eyes going to the table, where my cereal lay, forgotten until now. “And what are you doing on the floor?”

  “Being miserable.”

  “I see.” Michael knelt down so he was level with me, wincing a little from the strain it put on his chest. “What can I do?” His voice was a little rough, from pain and concern. “You know I'm no good at this making-people-feel-better shit.”

  “I want a hug.”

  Michael laughed. Then he saw the expression on my face and looked like he felt bad. “Come here.”

  I scooted over, and settled myself between his legs, using his thighs as armrests. He was warm, and that made me feel better, because I'd been feeling cold all day. A bitter, biting cold that lingered inside and out.

  I leaned my head back against the unwounded side of his chest. “This is all Adrian's fault.”

  “Most likely.”

  “Just when I think I've seen the worst he can do—”

  “I know.”

  “I wish there was some way to stop him for good.”

  “There is.”

  Michael spoke so quietly I might have thought I'd imagined it, if not for the way his words rumbled through my spine. I tilted my head back to look at him. “There is?”

  “I have a plan.”

  I pushed away from him. “You mean, you've got a way to get us killed. We barely got away before. Now you want to go back and tangle with him again? We're going to die!”

  “Not if we do this right.”

  At my silence, he said, “Whose idea was it to sign up with the BN in the first place, darlin? If you recall, I thought it was a piss-poor idea. But you insisted, so I relented. Now it's my turn at coming up with new and interesting ways to get us both killed.”

  Michael

  All kidding aside, I had no intention of dying.

  I'd made it through twenty-five years. I thought I should be able to make it past another twenty-five, at least.

  It took me several weeks to do the necessary research. The group dynamics at the IMA were pure politics, and my knowledge of their finer points had grown fuzzy over the years as I had fallen out of favor with the highest circles. I've never been especially gifted with what career counselors are fond of calling “people skills.”

  My rote memory skills, however, were fine. Better than fine. Eidetic, you might say. Putting pen to paper brought half-forgotten knowledge out of the shadows and into the limelight of my conscious mind. Angelica's findings rounded off the data.

  We had worked out a nominal fee—nominal for her—but when she found out what I was up to and why she waived it, saying that Kent would have done the same in her position. He would have. I agreed with her on that one. Maybe the two of them were more alike than I'd thought.

  That brought a bitter smile to my face. Appropriate, considering that this whole project had been inspired by Kent and his research methods. The notebooks he had compiled for me when I believed (correctly, it turned out) that I was being set up for a fall from the inside. I had bitten the bullet, and taken the initiative of coding all the men and women I knew of who wanted Adrian Callaghan dead.

  There were twenty, all told. College ruled. With seventy pages each, filled up both front and back with names and supplementary information, that was no sum to sneeze at.

  Most of the people who wanted Adrian dead did not have the means to do so. That was part of the reason behind why they had landed on his radar in the first place; he preyed on the weak and the helpless, and their crippling lack of power and influence acted as a psychological bull's eye when it came to drawing his attention.

  I highlighted them in pink.

  After the victim mentality group were the opportunists who would have happily hastened Callaghan's death along if they thought it would be worth their while. The trouble was, the vast majority believed the cost outweighed the gain.

  In keeping with what one would expect from information derived from groups that consisted chiefly of mercenaries, this made up the largest proportion of the notebooks.

  I was writing this group off as well. As I said, most of them thought it was too risky to take on the don-wannabe, especially if he paid his men as generously as he claimed. I wouldn't know, not being a beneficiary of this so-called generosity.

  If a small minority could be coaxed to betrayal, group shunning and self-preservation would kick
in—the remaining operatives would be unwilling to put their own necks on the line and risk being placed into the victim group. As a whole, they couldn't be trusted.

  I highlighted them in yellow.

  Next were the people who, while they would be only too happy to see Callaghan eliminated, feared him too much to participate in his elimination, and played toady to him so that he would spare their lives. People like Itachi Watanabe, who aided and abetted the bastard to his heart's content. Since this group was a hybridization of the pink and yellow groups, they got orange, the cowards.

  Lastly, there were the people who had both the means and the will to take him out. Most of these individuals I was already in contact with for one reason or another. Me, of course. Christina. Angelica. Suraya. Cliff.

  Cliff was the only name on that list that had taken me by some surprise. He was the man who had worked in tandem with the Sniper to capture Christina and bring him to the IMA's base in Washington.

  I had noticed him around headquarters, acting as cagily as if he thought he was being watched at every turn. With behavior like that, he would be. I approached him out of curiosity and found out that he had just been informed that he was going to be sent to the same reeducation facility in Scotland that I had.

  Unlike me, their sessions would last at least a year. More, if progress was not deemed satisfactory. I doubted it would be. Cliff gave me the official list of names from the report that branded them as “too soft.” All were part of the old regime.

  Richardson's regime.

  It's not exactly novel, killing off all the previous's leader's men. It ensures that the new ones are all blank slates. Makes brainwashing a helluva lot easier, not having confederates around to tell stories about how much better things were under the last guy.

  I said to him, “I have a business venture you might be interested in, if you're free to discuss it somewhere more private.”

  We met in the botanical gardens, talked it over. Cliff was very interested. He'd heard horror stories about the conditions over in the Inverness facility; I told him all of them were true.

  “You want, I can probe some of those other guys. Get a feel for where they stand with regards to the boss,” he offered.