Cryptic Curse, page 12
Seriously? He’s asking me that question? “Who the fuck has fixed all of your shit, E? It takes money, and you’d be surprised how many people bow down to the almighty dollar. Besides, whoever this guy is, he was a career criminal. His death was a net positive for the world. Now no more questions. Let’s just get this shit done.”
We step out of the truck and grab the shovels from the back.
The night is quiet, and our boots crunch on the dry earth beneath us as we walk to the barn. Despite the years that have passed, I remember exactly where we buried him.
In the dark it’s harder to see, but I flick my flashlight on and guide us toward a spot in the floorboards marked with an X—a crude grave marker hidden away from prying eyes.
We pull up the boards and start to dig.
We work side by side, sweat trickling down our faces inside the hot barn. The dirt is packed hard and it takes a while before we strike something solid.
A distinctive thud echoes when my shovel hits wood. My heart pounds, the rhythm matching the steady pace of our digging. But it’s only a piece of an old two-by-four.
Eagle pauses and wipes the sweat from his brow, casting me a nervous glance. I give him a nod of encouragement and we keep digging.
After what feels like hours, we come to the bags of cocaine.
Plastic lasts for an eternity, and other than being covered in dirt, the bags are intact.
Great.
We’re now in possession of a boatload of illegal drugs. Fully in reach of my addict brother, who currently has a makeshift weapon in his hands.
Perfect.
We threw them on top of Vega’s body after we tossed him in the ground, so we’re almost there.
I angle my headlamp for a better view and keep digging. I brace myself for what we’re about to encounter.
Human remains.
Human fucking remains.
Will there be an odor? Will his skin be intact or will it have decomposed by now, leaving only clothes and bones?
Fuck.
“Damn,” Eagle says. “How deep did you and Falcon bury him, anyway?”
Not this deep.
But I don’t say the words.
I continue, tossing shovels full of dirt up and out of the pit.
My hands are blistering even under the gloves.
It wasn’t this deep.
Not this far down.
And then I see it.
A piece of red fabric.
I set my shovel down and tug at the material.
It’s a red bandana.
Was Vega wearing a bandana?
I think back. So much of that night is a blur.
But no… He wasn’t wearing a bandana.
He could have had one in his pocket, but…
Nope.
Vega was a drug kingpin. If he carried a handkerchief, it would have been the finest silk.
This bandana came from somewhere else.
Someone who…
“Fuck,” I say.
“What?”
“There’s no body, E. Someone got here before us.”
22
DANIELA
I pull into the driveway at Vinnie and Raven’s and head around to my door. Vinnie insisted, when I moved in, that I take the “mother-in-law” suite on the west wing that has its own entrance. He’s been so good to me, and it is nice to have my own private bedroom suite, bathroom, and kitchenette, though I prefer cooking in the main kitchen.
The private door is tucked between two towering hedges, a narrow arch of brick half-hidden in ivy. Most people wouldn’t even notice it. That’s what I love about it—it feels like a secret, even though everything about this place is open to me.
Beyond it, the lights along the path are low and soft, set to glow just enough to guide the way. No fountain or statues here, nothing meant to impress—just a quiet strip of garden, lined with lavender and polished stepping stones that lead straight to the door. My door.
The lights above the entryway click on as I approach. My reflection wavers in the black glass, just for a second, before I step onto the small porch and face the keypad.
“What?” I say out loud.
A white envelope is taped to my door. It’s sealed with a red heart sticker.
My heart races. It must be from Hawk. I mean, who else would have sent it?
Jordan, maybe, but he doesn’t know where I live.
Right. It has to be from Hawk.
Those kisses with him were amazing, like sinking into something dangerous and delicious at the same time. Like forgetting my own name and not even caring. Every time his mouth touched mine, the world blurred at the edges, and nothing existed but the heat between us and the way he held me.
I stare at the envelope, my fingers hovering just above it. My name’s not written on it, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s his kind of bold move—no return address, no explanation, just that tiny red heart, almost like a dare.
The air feels charged, like a storm’s about to roll in, even though the sky is clear. My pulse thumps in my throat as I gently peel the envelope from the door. The tape crackles. I half-expect someone to be watching from the hedges.
Whatever’s inside, it’s going to change something.
I can feel it.
My fingers tremble as I ease the flap open, careful not to tear the paper. The envelope feels too light, like it’s holding something that shouldn’t weigh anything but somehow does.
Inside is a small cheap valentine—the kind you’d hand out in third grade. A cartoon heart with a face grins up at me, but something’s wrong. The printed words say Be Mine, but someone crossed out Be in sharp strokes and written in ink, You Are.
You Are Mine.
A chill unfurls down my spine.
And when I look closer, I notice that the sender has drawn in trickles of blood coming out of the heart with red permanent marker.
My breath catches as I unfold the card.
Inside, in the same ink, it reads:
You locked the door, but you forgot—I have the key. I always have.
For a second, everything goes still. No wind, no birds, no distant hum of voices from inside the house. Just the whisper of the paper in my hand and the thunder of my heartbeat in my ears.
This isn’t from Hawk.
It’s not from Jordan either. I barely know him, but he wouldn’t do this. Not like this.
I glance at the keypad beside the door. At the perfect, silent hedges. At the lavender brushing my ankles. It all feels wrong now—too quiet, too open, too exposed. My mouth goes dry.
I scan the garden behind me, the path I just walked. Someone was here. Someone close enough to reach my door. Someone who knows about the lock. The key.
Who still has it.
I tighten my fingers around the valentine, crumpling it slightly, and for the first time since I came to the United States, I feel truly, completely afraid.
23
HAWK
Eagle’s eyes go wide, his lips trembling. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t stutter, Eagle. There’s no body.” I tug the bandana out of the dirt. “You recognize this?”
He cocks his head. “It’s a fucking bandana. I’ve got one just like it myself.”
“You might want to keep that to yourself.”
“What you mean?”
I wave the bandana in his face. “What I mean is, Diego Vega—or whoever that dude was that night—didn’t wear anything like this.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. That night is seared into my memory like a fucking brand. And if Diego did have a bandana on him, it would’ve been tucked inside a pocket. But Diego Vega—or whoever that was that night—would have been a big drug kingpin. He might have a silk handkerchief in his pocket, but not something as common as a bandana.”
Eagle wrinkles his forehead. “So?”
“So, someone else was here, Eagle. Someone was here and already dug up this damned body. And whoever it was left his bandana behind.” I widen my eyes. “Or it was planted.”
“So we just need to find whoever is missing a bandana,” Eagle says.
I laugh. A cackling laugh. “Every cowpoke and ranch hand in Texas has a bandana like this.”
Eagle nods. “Yeah, I know.”
“Who the hell got in here and took the body? And why the hell didn’t we know about it?”
“It’s not like we ever came back here,” Eagle says.
My brother’s right. Once in a blue fucking moon he is.
Falcon, Eagle, and I stayed far away from this place. We’ve been back once or twice, but we certainly never looked hard enough. We never would’ve noticed if anything was amiss.
Indeed, nothing was amiss.
Whoever did this covered their tracks perfectly.
“It must’ve been Dad,” I say. Then I shake my head. “But he never knew about it. No one knew. Only Falcon—and he hasn’t been here—me…and you.” I glare at my brother.
He widens his eyes. “Me? Are you serious? You think I did this?”
I sigh. “I don’t want to think it, Eagle. But I’m the only one who knows everything that’s happened to you during the past eight years. I’ve kept it from Mom and everyone else for their own good. Hell, I’m the one who’s cleaned up your messes. And there might’ve been one mess you didn’t come to me about.” I take a step toward him, glowering. “So if anyone should suspect you, it would be me.”
“I suppose I could see that point,” Eagle says, “if I didn’t just spend hours blistering my hands digging up what’s apparently nothing.”
Yeah, he has a point there.
Damn.
Eagle has never been one to get his hands dirty for no reason. He let his own brother go to prison for his crimes.
“All right. Who else knows?”
“Vinnie does,” Eagle says. “And Raven.”
“No way Ray had anything to do with this,” I say. “But we really don’t know Vinnie very well.”
“We know Savannah,” Eagle says. “And we trust her and Falcon.”
“Right, Savannah.” I rub at my forehead. “She knows, too…”
My mind races.
How well do we know Vinnie and Savannah? We know they come from the Bianchi family. But Vinnie had most of them effectively taken out. His grandfather has disappeared, and his rival, Declan McAllister, is dead.
Vinnie was gone for seventeen years, though. Raven loves him, and so does Savannah.
What do we really know about him?
Fuck. I’ve got to give Vinnie the benefit of the doubt. After all, he was as surprised as we were that the EPA was already on this.
The EPA contact. Maybe she would know something. I’ll get Vinnie to check that out.
“Then there were the other two,” Eagle says.
“What other two?”
“You know. The two goons that brought Vega. The ones who escaped to the border. Who were never heard from again.”
“Right.”
This doesn’t sit well with me. None of it does.
As I look at my brother once more, I’m not so sure it wasn’t him.
I grab his shoulders, shake him. “It had to be you, E. There’s nobody else. You’ve been fucking with me all night. That way I wouldn’t think it was you. Who did you sell out? What for? A quick hit? One of those times I bailed you out?”
He tries to wiggle out of my grasp. “Let go of me, Hawk.”
“I’ll let go of you when you tell me the fucking truth,” I grit out.
“I swear to God it wasn’t me. I’ve been clean since my last stint in rehab. I swear to God.” He swallows. “But I could sure use a fucking hit right now.”
“Stop lying to me,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I’m not lying.”
I let him go and push him to the ground.
He’s not lying.
And the reason I know he’s not lying?
It’s because if he had done it, he would’ve gone straight for the drugs. Certainly he wouldn’t have dug up a body and then left the drugs if he was looking for a hit.
No.
Eagle kept his promise.
He stayed far away from this place.
Even when he was gunning for a hit and he knew where a huge-ass stash was.
It wasn’t my brother. It wasn’t Falcon, and I don’t think it was Vinnie.
So who the fuck did this?
Whoever did it wanted to remove the evidence of the fake Diego Vega, but not the evidence of drugs being planted here on Bellamy property.
“Sorry,” I say to Eagle. “It wasn’t you.”
He rolls his eyes. “You think? Did it occur to you that if I wanted a hit that badly I would’ve just unburied the drugs and not the body?”
I nod. “Yeah, I know.”
He scratches his arm. “I’ve got to tell you. Looking at those bags right there. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted a hit more.”
“These are going down the toilet,” I say.
He kicks at the dirt. “I know.”
My cellphone vibrates in my back pocket.
I pull it out.
It’s Daniela.
I haven’t heard from her since the dinner at our house the other night.
Despite the situation Eagle and I are in at the moment, my heart races.
“Hello,” I say into the phone.
“Hawk, hi, it’s Daniela.” Her voice is breathy.
“Yeah? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” she says, “but I just didn’t know where else to turn. I mean, I suppose I could’ve gone to Vinnie. I’m not sure he’s home yet. But he and Raven are so happy right now. I don’t want to—”
“What’s wrong?” I interrupt.
She gulps audibly. “When I got home after cooking school tonight, there was an envelope taped to the door.”
“The front door?” I ask.
“No. To the door to my private entrance. Vinnie calls it the mother-in-law suite. It’s actually at the back of the house. You get there by this little cobblestone path.”
I’m not familiar with Vinnie’s house. It was his parents’ house until his father got sent to prison for life for killing Miles McAllister and his mother died of a heart attack several months ago.
“Okay,” I say.
“It had this really creepy valentine inside. It said Be Mine, but the Be was crossed out and You Are was written in its place. The valentine itself was creepy. The heart was dripping blood.”
“Real blood?” I ask, my stomach dropping.
“No, of course not. It was marker. On the picture.” She pauses a moment. “But when I opened it, it said, You locked the door, but you forgot—I have the key. I always have.”
My heart races.
“You say it was taped to your door?”
“Yeah. When I saw it, I thought it might be from you.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not from me.”
“I know that now. After I read the message.”
“Does someone have a key to your door?”
“My door has a passcode. No key.”
I grab my keys out of my pocket and charge toward my car. “Change your passcode right now. I’m coming over immediately.”
“Hawk, you don’t have to.”
“Daniela, no arguments. You called me for a reason. I don’t want you to be alone right now. I’m coming.”
I end the call and look at Eagle.
Then I start schlepping bags of cocaine into one of the black trash bags, along with the red bandana.
“We’re leaving.”
Eagle bites his lip. “Should we throw dirt back in the hole?”
“No. I don’t have time. If you’re worried about it, you do it.”
“I came with you. Don’t have a car. It’s a day’s walk back to my house.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Then come with me. We’ll come back and deal with this tomorrow. There’s somewhere I need to be.”
We gather our shovels, and I drag the garbage bag full of cocaine and stick everything in the back of my truck.
I drop Eagle off at his place, and then, with a shit load of cocaine in my truck, I drive to Vinnie’s.
24
DANIELA
I don’t talk about it. Not out loud. Not even to myself, not really. But sometimes, in the quiet moments—those strange, hollow stretches of time where nothing’s happening and everything hurts—I feel it.
The absence.
The knowing.
I’ll never have children. Not biologically. Not with my blood, my breath, my DNA tangled up in a tiny, perfect thing that calls me Mama.
Because of him.
He claimed I carried a bad gene. Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. I never saw any paperwork.
Now I see other women hold their babies and I smile, because that’s what you do. But inside, there’s a cold ache. Not jealousy, not even grief. Just emptiness.
Some part of me still wonders what it would’ve felt like—creating something soft and alive. Something that came from love, not control. A daughter I could have named after my grandmother. A son who might’ve had my father’s dark eyes, but without the cold rage behind them.
But he took that from me.
Maybe it sounds strange, but it’s the right to decide that I mourn. The right to hope.
And hope, when stolen young, doesn’t come back easily.
Vinnie and Raven are out. Belinda is with her nanny, Natalie.
I’m still holding the pint of Pink Cadillac ice cream I bought for her.
It’s beginning to melt, so I throw the container in my kitchenette sink.
I’ll buy her more tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Back to culinary school. Back to what has become my life now.
A life that I love.
And now?
I have a lingering suspicion that my past is coming back to haunt me.
I scoff. It’s ridiculous that a woman who’s barely eighteen even has a past. But when you grow up the daughter of Jacinto Agudelo…
Well, my life was never normal.
Not even when my mother was alive.
Even then, looking back, I see she was grooming me. Not in a bad way. I still doubt she would’ve let my father do what he did with his friends and associates.
