The Edge of Obsession (Black Ops Confidential 2.5)

The phone beeped. Sion looked down, expecting to have to locate the text message on this unfamiliar phone, but what appeared was a map with a blinking red dot. Sion was that dot. How the fuck?

Sion turned over his car, spun around, and drove.

“Juan?”

Oh, bugger. He put the cell back to his ear. “Got it.”

“Do you have a gun?”

Sion’s shoulders drew in. “Aye. Dee left one in the glove compartment.”

“You don’t sound super confident.”

“Never shot a gun before.”

A pause. “What kind of weapon? I can walk you—”

“No, mate. She’s given me instructions before, and you’re not going to make me an expert in—” he looked at his phone “—eight minutes. I’ve got to get to her.”

“Call when you have her safe.”

He hung up. Call when you have her safe. Made it seem inevitable. It felt anything but.

Sion followed the map on the cell, glancing at the glove compartment. Fuck.

Ten minutes later, he parked his car outside an abandoned corner grocery. He reached into the glove box. The weight of the weapon in his hand was immense. He hated guns. Hated the idea of doing to any human body what had been done to his.

Flicking off the safety, he got out of the car. The grocery store wasn’t the only abused looking building. Not a lot going on in the neighborhood.

He heard a gunshot. Sion’s heart pounded and his feet moved fast around the corner.

He hadn’t run full-out run since his injury. He lifted like a madman, cross-trained like a freak, but run? Hurt his soul as much as his leg. Hadn’t even been sure those muscles still worked.

Luckily, they did.

He entered the alley behind the store, not as graceful as he’d been—not by a long shot—but still quick. Reaching the open door, he realized he had another problem. He needed to not just be quick, he needed to be quiet. Fucking leg.

#

Vision blurry, head aching, Dada opened her eyes and saw Armand’s dead body feet from her. And feet from him, arms drawn around her knees, Rosa sat crying.

She searched for her gun. Something tugged on her leg and clanked. Someone had chained her to the wall. Hands shaking, she grasped the metal and yanked.

“Good. You’re awake,” a familiar voice said.

Dada rolled. For a moment her heart jumped with excitement. “Geraldo? Thank God!”

Geraldo laughed. “I wouldn’t be so quick to thank Him.”

His voice. It sounded different. Clear.

“You don’t have a brain injury.”

“Nope. None.”

“You work with Armand.”

“Yep.”

She saw it then, what her mind and time had not allowed her to see, even when Sister Angelica had come out and told her Geraldo wasn’t who he seemed. She’d forgotten the child. “You’re his brother.”

“Yes. Our mother went to prison after your letters alerted the authorities. My brother ran away with me and came here. You stole my life.”

All the pieces fell into place. Armand had never been acting alone. His mother had gone to jail, and he had taken his younger brother and gone to Mexico. He’d given that brother to an older woman, and the whole time had fed him the same poison that was in his mind. He’d made another like himself.

“You killed her,” Dada said. “Your fiancée. Comandante Javier had been right.”

Geraldo moved from the shadows, holding Dada’s gun. “He was getting ready to arrest me, so I made a plan to throw Javier and everyone off the trail. Armand was against it at first because he wanted me to leave the city. But I convinced him it could work.” Geraldo tensed, looked over at Armand’s body. “I think he enjoyed it, beating me. Nearly killed me, but it worked, and no one questioned me after that. A man who had nearly died looking for his fiancée. Someone with a brain injury who was in the hospital for months recovering.”

“You are two monsters,” Rosa said and spat on the ground.

He shifted the gun toward her. “The one who lives decides the history, and I see two whores and a dead man who will make a perfect scapegoat.”

A whisper of sound came from the stairs as a shadow slipped across the floor.

Geraldo’s eyes widened and he spun around.

Sion’s blow slammed against his skull.

Geraldo staggered and slipped to his knees. Blood poured from his skull. His face a mask of fury, he rolled onto his back and lifted his gun.

In a boxer’s stance, feet shoulder-width apart, broad forearms straight out, head level, balance maintained, Sion directed his gun at Geraldo.

Dada gasped. He wouldn’t shoot. He would be shot instead.

With a cry that was part wounded animal and part avenging demon, Sion fired.

The bam, bam, bam filled the room. Dada’s ears rang. The smell of gunpowder clung to her. She stared in horror as Geraldo grabbed at his stomach, groaning in pain.

Sion slid the weapon Geraldo had dropped away, removed a set of keys hanging from his tool belt, and rushed to Dada.

He put a hand on her face. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Help Rosa.”

After unlocking her, Sion slid over to Rosa. He hissed upon seeing the raw skin under the chain that attached her to the wall. “This might hurt.”

“Please hurry and release me,” she said, staring at Geraldo, who moaned on the floor.

Blood leaked from his stomach and spread across the cement, joining with the blood of his brother.

Dada knelt at his side, her knees in his blood. “Lift your hands, and let me see the wound.”

“Stay away.” Geraldo’s bloodied hands swung at her. He responded now as was his conditioning—a lifetime of using anger and force—he just expected both to keep working.

But he was harmless in the end.

“You did this to me,” Geraldo said. His hands pressed against his wound, sending more blood gushing through his fingers. “Destroyed my… home, my… life. Armand told me the truth. If not for you, the letters, my mother would be alive. And you’d be dead.”

Cold washed down her body. “Did you expect me to stay silent? Did you expect me to take the abuse, so that you could go on as you were?”

At her words, Geraldo lashed out with his big, clumsy blood-drenched hands. “I did nothing! It was not me!!”

No. It wasn’t. He had been a child when his mother had kept Dada prisoner, but he had learned the same lessons his mother had taught Armand.

Geraldo’s fists flailed ineffectively, weapons deprived of their power. Dada felt only pity for him. This dying man who, even now, could not see that his benefitting from a system that had imprisoned her was wrong. To hi

s mind, her refusing to be held prisoner, refusing a life where she was raped, had cost him. That was all that mattered.

Her mind worked over these thoughts, but her eyes skimmed him. He was bleeding out. There was nothing that could be done. And nothing she could say would matter to him, make an ounce of difference. But she could do something, offer something.

Tears streaked his face. He grabbed his bleeding stomach. He cried for his mother, blubbered like an infant denied milk.

Dada placed a hand on his head. This was not her son, but could it have been? They were nearly the same age. If her son had lived and she had died. If her son had been given to Armand. If Armand had brought him here, trained his thoughts, his entitlement, his need to be placed above others, his grievances.

Warped by whatever emotional and physical complexities went into creating a stunted human, but still, this man was human.

And she knew what it was to grow cold on the floor of a building, to feel life slipping away. “Shhh,” she soothed. “You are safe. It is okay.”

His eyes widened, rolled to her. He saw her. For a moment something clear and defenseless and peaceful filled his eyes. “It hurts,” he said.

Closing his eyes, he let out a long breath and went silent.

Chapter 23

Back in her room at the convent, aching head propped on a pillow against her headboard, Dada stared into her brother’s eyes. He was seated on a wooden chair by her bed, looking agitated and worried.

Worried enough that, after a call from Sion, he had arranged to come to Mexico.

“I’m pulling you out,” Tony said.

Shaking her head caused Dada’s stomach to turn. She pressed the bandage covering her head wound. “You’re overreacting.”

“The fuck I am. Your cover is blown.”

“No, it’s not. Juan covered for me, and he told the police that he’d followed Geraldo because he’d been acting suspiciously. He even covered for Walid, earning him an in with the man. We have more access to the traffickers now than before.”

“I don’t give a shit about how you covered your tracks. I fucking asked you if someone could be setting a trap.”