Drone - A Sci-Fi Superhero Thriller (The Gift Book 2), page 20
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he then says, seemingly thinking better of invoking him in conversation. “You saved me, so I’ve gotta believe you’re one of the good guys.”
I nod; I want to give him the impression I’m knowledgeable – hell even working with – Forrest without confirming it if I can help it. I want Cassio to think we’re batting on the same team here.
“It’s Robert,” I tell him. He looks over and smiles.
It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t graceful, and I sure rode my luck, but I feel I’m closer to Charles Forrest than ever before.
I just had to follow a trail of blood to get here.
CHAPTER 32
All I can hear is the sound of Cassio’s wheezing, the roar of the engine, and the screeching of tires. I’d be concerned for his health if he wasn’t trying to endanger mine; he flies around corners and overtakes traffic with reckless abandon. I begin to wonder how much blood he’s lost.
Eventually, we make it to what he tells me is a safehouse – a small, beachfront property on the other side of Balanca. He parks the car and we slowly get out before climbing a set of stairs up to the flat.
I feel the sun on my face again and inhale a deep breath of sea air. I try to savor it, knowing it might be one of the last times I get to do this. I’m heading into the deep, dark unknown here.
Cassio fumbles around inside the pocket of his suit pants before pulling out a large set of keys . He awkwardly files through them until he finds the one he wants and unlocks the door with it.
“I used to keep this place for uhh…” he hesitates, seemingly thinking better of telling me what he was going to tell me. “…entertaining guests I didn’t want to bring back to the mansion.”
He opens the door and reveals an apartment inside notable only for its dullness, with none of the extravagance I’d come to expect from the mansion. There’s a couch, a rug, a neat little open-plan kitchen, and a sparkling clean coffee table.
No dead bodies, though, so that’s cool.
Cassio limps through the living area, closing the blinds as he goes. Then he limps over to another room in the flat and disappears behind the closing door.
I look around, and once again take in the supreme tediousness of it all. Something tells me Cassio is the type of man who has a safehouse like this in every city.
I walk over to a bookcase in the corner – one of the few pieces of furniture in here with any character – and begin looking through the books. Most are Spanish language, but there are a few English language books, most of them thrillers or history books. I take a couple out and find them in perfect condition with the price tags still on. They’ve never even been opened let alone read.
“I’m going to get cleaned up,” Cassio’s voice shouts from the other room. Now that he’s not wheezing or pleading for his life, I can hear his real voice: deep, authoritative, with a curiously American accent.
I hear a shower turning on elsewhere and decide to take a seat on the couch. The handgun I robbed from the gangbanger earlier pokes into the small of my back as I sit down; I reach back and grab it, just as I hear a car park outside.
I ignore it until I hear footsteps on the staircase outside – a single set of feet on the metallic steps, the structure booming and clanging with every step.
Did Cassio invite guests? Vega asks.
“I didn’t get a chance to ask,” I say in return.
I jump to my feet, take up a position behind the couch, and aim at the door. The footsteps reach their loudest volume, and then suddenly stop. The handle begins to turn and I take a deep breath and try to steady myself.
“Hold up!” I shout as the door swings open, and a dark figure appears. The sun is shining brightly behind them, and I can only see their silhouette. She’s a woman – 5’8” tall perhaps, with long, flowing black hair. My mind instantly sees a memory of Dina in her shadowy features, but when I blink in disbelief I see that I’m mistaken.
The woman reacts quickly, putting her hand to her waist. I yell out again: “Don’t move!”
“Who are you?” she yells back in an accent I can’t yet identify. Her hair blows across her face in the breeze, obscuring her features slightly.
“I’m a friend of Cassio,” I say, choosing not to mention the fact we met only earlier today.
I hear the door behind me swing open and Cassio’s deep voice fills the air.
“Hey Alessia, it’s okay,” he yells from behind. I don’t take my eyes off her, nor my hands off my gun just yet. “Robert, she’s fine, she’s one of us.”
I begin to lower my gun, and the woman moves her hand away from whatever she’s concealing by her waist. Then she begins to walk into the room, closing the front door to the apartment behind her.
Without the glare of the sunshine outside, I can finally see her face clearly. She has big brown eyes, and a slightly large nose. Her lips are full and red, and her cheekbones are high and sharp. She looks late twenties, but her eyes look much older. She swipes a few strands of black hair away from her face and looks at me with an unmistakable sense of distrust.
“Okay,” she says, in a European accent. “So, again, who are you?”
“My name is Robert Ortiz,” I tell her, thankful that I can still remember my fake name. “I came here to meet with Luis Cassio, I’m a business owner and I used to be a soldier.”
She looks back at Cassio – his hair is wet, and he’s wearing a clean T-shirt and shorts, but his cuts and bruises are all the more apparent for the lack of blood covering them. Then she looks again at me, her eyes betraying a skeptical nature.
“You got ID?”
I look over at Cassio who nods at me. I take my CIA-issued fake driving license out and she strides over to take it from me.
“Alessia is a bodyguard of sorts,” Cassio says. I can’t help myself giving her a dubious stare – partly for her own questioning of my character, and partly for the fact her bodyguarding skills could have come in useful an hour ago. “Robert here saved my life. He shot dead two of the Lopez boys.”
The Lopez boys? I remember Carlos telling me about a certain Galo Lopez: the drug lord who Forrest usurped and replaced as Madrevaria’s number one baddest hombre. Perhaps Cassio is still dealing with his lackeys?
She eventually hands my ID back to me.
“We’ll talk about this later,” she says. Finally, something in my memory clicks; her accent reminds me of the service at the Italian restaurant dad used to insist we eat at. I wish I were more cultured than that, but here we are.
“We should go back to Pima,” Alessia says urgently. “I don’t think anywhere close to the mansion is safe.”
Cassio leans against the doorframe, rubbing that swollen eye socket of his. It’s a horrid mix of yellows and purples, with a dark and red eye hidden beneath.
“Fine,” he finally says with a sigh.
“I’ll have someone take care of the bodies and clean up the mansion,” she then says; I can’t but think she’s said that before. “And you Robert?”
I look up expectantly.
“Thanks for all your help, but we’ll be leaving you here.”
I snort with incredulity. She’s staring through me – rugged, determined, confident – and again I think of Dina.
“What? You can’t leave me here,” I say with impetuous laughter. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Catch up on your reading,” she says dismissively, nodding to the bookcase in the corner.
“I’m the reason your boss here still has all of his body parts intact,” I say, looking to Cassio for affirmation. He seems the same height as Alessia, and I can tell from his tried eyes he’s already bored of this conversation.
“He’s got a point,” Cassio says after a long pause. “He’s pretty handy with a firearm too.”
Alessia looks back at me with defeated annoyance, like I’m really raining on her parade. She furrows her brow, takes a deep breath, and points to the apartment’s front door with her thumb; I guess that’s the only acceptance I’ll get from her right now.
We leave the flat, with Alessia checking the coast is clear on the street below before ushering Cassio into the passenger seat of the 4x4. She closes the door before taking a moment to look me up and down suspiciously.
“Some Yankee soldier, huh?” she asks, biting her lip contemptuously. “I’ll be watching you.”
Yeah, I get that feeling.
CHAPTER 33
It’s an uneventful journey back to Pima. The sun disappears behind the clouds again, and I pass the time by staring out of the window at the passing fields and pastures, and their gradual transformation into apartment buildings and glassy skyscrapers. Thankfully, Alessia is a far better driver than Cassio.
Some four and a bit hours later, the sound of Cassio’s snoring is interrupted by Alessia, announcing our impending arrival.
I watch as we disappear into the dark void of a parking garage underneath one of the largest towers I’ve seen in Pima. Inside is illuminated in sickly orange, and we park in a space between two classic cars; both Cassio’s, I imagine.
“That was quick,” Cassio says, rubbing his eyes and stretching in the front seat.
“You slept the whole way,” Alessia says with a palpable sense of annoyance. Cassio is unmoved and climbs out of the car and we follow him.
We walk to a small, presumably private elevator in the corner. Alessia gives me the suspicious eyes, as I’m used to by now before blocking me from entering.
“Gun,” she finally says.
I look at her – admiring the steeliness about her – before glancing at Cassio, who shrugs at me nonchalantly. I reach behind my back and pick the gun I pilfered from the gangbanger out of my waistband before giving it to Alessia. Only then does she allow me into the elevator.
We take the ride upstairs in an awkward silence; I can almost feel Alessia’s eyes burning through me the whole way up.
When we reach the top, and the elevator doors swing open, I get an instant flashback to the paranoid old man’s penthouse; the bright light from the floor-to-ceiling windows; the great blue beyond of the sky outside, and the majestic marble flooring below our feet.
There’s a living space with plush velvet couches and ostentatious leopard skin rugs; there’s a piano in one corner, and a bunch more bookcases whose contents I bet Cassio has never read. There’s another huge dining table, set with sparkling crystal flutes and silver trays.
“I hate this place,” Cassio says. “It’s soulless.”
I walk over to the window, much like I did in the last penthouse suite I found myself in. It’s midday; windows in the distance shine like gemstones, and – slightly less appealingly – I can see my own partial reflection staring back at me.
“Kris!” a voice shouts, taking me completely out of the moment and striking a fresh bolt of terror into my heart. I spin around in horror to see Cassio grinning awkwardly at a little girl standing in a doorway. She’s young – no older than 12 – with red cheeks and sad, accusatory eyes.
She stands there in silence before she screws her eyes shut, turns, and runs back into the room she came from, slamming the door behind her.
I glance back at Cassio, who for the first time since I saw him bleeding and tied to a chair has an expression approaching sorrow. He follows her into the room, saying something or other in Spanish, and leaves me alone with an unfeeling Alessia.
“Kristina,” she says, drolly. “Mr. Cassio’s daughter.”
I stare back at the closed door and wonder how the hell someone as chaotic as Luis Cassio manages to raise a daughter. I guess he doesn’t.
“We’ve got to talk, Robert.” Alessia is in front of me, square on. For the first time I see her muscular, wiry body. She has small, lean forearms and wide hips, with thick thighs. She’s wearing black pants and a black jumper. All in all, she has the look of a deadly fitness model about her.
“Sit down.” She speaks calmly and with authority; I do as she asks and take a seat on the lavish velvet couch, placing my backpack beside me.
“So, who are you, really?”
She takes a seat and leans into me, making me feel defensive of my personal space. She’s somewhat intimidating, and those eyes – dark brown and large – remind me of only one person.
“You’ve seen my ID, I’m Robert Ortiz. I’m a salesman.”
And that’s where my bluster runs out. Luckily, I have a wingman.
Say you’re from a company named Hallworthy Import Corporation, Vega helpfully suggests. I recall seeing their advertisements back in the city.
I do as he says.
“Why did you go to Mr. Cassio’s home?” Alessia asks, clawing her nails down a stretch of velvet on the couch.
Say you had a meeting booked with Cassio’s company but wanted to speak to him personally. Say you’d heard of his parties and wanted the chance to sell to him directly.
Again, I say what Vega tells me to say.
“You must be pretty bad at your job,” Alessia says with stone-cold dead eyes. “How many sales have you made by turning up at the CEO’s house and waiting around outside?”
“I could say the same thing for you,” I reply, not willing to have Alessia steamroll me into the dirt. “Your boss was tied to a chair and you were nowhere to be found. Your day off, was it?”
She doesn’t say anything, she just keeps staring through me with those cold, stony eyes. After a few more moments, she suddenly springs to her feet and turns her back to me before rashly pacing away in the direction of another blank, anonymous door.
She takes out a cellphone from her pocket and puts it to her ear before looking back at me one more time.
“You’re lying,” she says to me in a monotone. “Sooner or later, I’ll find out why.”
And with that, she disappears into another room, the door gently closing behind her.
“Guess I can’t please everyone,” I mumble to myself.
I take a moment to relax and take in my surroundings again. The couch, although soulless as Cassio claims, is the greatest comfort I’ve experienced in days. I watch the sky and the formations of clouds developing outside. I feel I could nod off when footsteps from across the room sound out.
“Eeesh,” Cassio sighs, trudging across the marble floor like a defeated man. I watch him make his way to a drinks cabinet in the corner; he pours a murky brown liquid into two sparkling clean glasses, and then walks back in my direction holding them both. “Kids, huh?”
“You have a daughter,” I say to Cassio, as he sits alongside me on the couch and hands me a glass of the brown stuff. I take it from him and attempt to appear grateful, even though the prospect of pouring the liquid down my throat is turning my stomach.
“Yeah,” he replies dourly. “Fatherhood, oh it’s just wonderful.”
He downs his drink in one, tipping his head backward like a man dying of thirst.
“Listen Robert,” he leans forward, looking revitalized by the alcohol. I see that huge rock of a wristwatch on his wrist for the first time, almost as noticeable as his giant yellow swollen eye. “You really did me a favor today.”
A favor? That’s the understatement of the century. Just how often does this guy find himself tortured by gangbangers?
“Yeah, sure,” I say in return. “Who were those guys?
“You know how it is,” he replies, as if I really do know how it is. “Sometimes in business you make a decision. You decide to change business partners, change clients, whatever. Sometimes they take it like a man, and sometimes they get upset.”
He stares back into his glass, expecting there to be another sip left. He looks disappointed when he sees it’s empty.
“Well, let’s say an old business partner got upset.” He looks at my glass, and the way I’m subconsciously holding it too far from me. “Are you drinking that?”
He doesn’t give me a chance to answer before snatching it from my hand and downing it in much the same manner as the first one.
“I’ve made business deals,” I say, lying through my teeth. “But I’ve never been tied to a chair and tortured when one goes wrong.”
“Hah,” Cassio belly-laughs, and slaps my knee. “Welcome to Madrevaria!”
He laughs before looking over his shoulder at the drinks cabinet again. I can barely believe this guy; I thought I’d met crazy people in Aljarran, but Luis Cassio is on another level.
“I had a contract with one guy to ship products to the United States and beyond,” he goes on to say, speaking as freely as a man who just downed two glasses of whiskey. “Unfortunately that man sadly passed away, so I found another business partner.”
Is he talking about Charles Forrest taking over from Galo Lopez?
“And my old business partner’s brother, well, he doesn’t agree with my new choice of supplier, let’s just put it that way.”
This is potentially the most casual, low-key description of a deadly drug war anyone will ever hear. I nod with interest, trying to tease even more out of him.
“All that silly tying me to the chair stuff?” he says, shaking his head nonchalantly. “That’s just scare tactics, it’s just how they do business here.”
Somehow, I doubt that. For whatever reason, Cassio’s trying to downplay this whole situation.
“You’re not intimidated by it?” I ask, incredulously. “I mean, they killed your gardener, didn’t they?!”
“Oh, yeah. Manuel,” he pauses, perhaps remembering for the first time the other dead body we came across. “It’s a shame, but that’s just life on the street, isn’t it?”
With that, he rises and saunters over to the drinks cabinet again. I can’t even believe what I’m hearing; I thought I’d gotten worryingly used to the sight of dead bodies, but I’ve got nothing on Cassio.
“We’re working our hardest to smooth this situation over with my former business partner’s brother,” he says as he pours himself another large drink. “But I’d like to tell you how grateful I am to you Robert, you swooped in and saved me, like some…”
