“Mañana . . .”
Nalini swore silently and pressed harder on his mind. Not tomorrow. Tell him to call.
Reyes went white around the eyes under the strain of her hold, but his voice was steady as he relayed just that to his second in command. She was pushing her luck, she knew it. But she was going to finish what she started here, and she had to finish dealing with the website, too. All of that took time, and she kept having to stop and reinforce her damn hold on Reyes every time he had a phone call.
They spoke for another few minutes and then the call disconnected. She broke contact with him, but he continued to sit there, a dazed, happy look on his face, almost like he was high.
“If somebody gets to sit around looking all strung out and happy, why can’t it be me?” she muttered as she headed back to the desk.
“Come here, Nala,” Reyes said, his voice low and heated. “I can make you happy.”
She made a face. The only way he’d make her happy was when she left him far, far behind her. She didn’t know if she’d be able to do that without killing him or not. The option was looking less and less likely, too. This fixation he had on the boy wasn’t going to end unless he died, but that would bring about a whole other mess of problems. When men like Reyes died, people noticed, and she hadn’t come in equipped for that. This should have been a simple information-gathering operation. It was proving to be the most screwed-up disaster ever.
But she couldn’t walk away . . . not from that boy.
As she checked the progress on the psychic site, she glanced up at him. “Why the boy, Reyes?”
Something else she’d like while he was feeling cooperative—answers.
“The boy?” he echoed.
Something flickered in his mind. Her hold was slipping. Already. Son of a bitch.
It should have lasted longer than that. Instead of looking at the computer, she remained where she was, staring at Reyes. “Yeah. What’s the deal with the boy?”
“He’s my son,” Reyes said, his voice thick, the words coming reluctantly. “He’s mine.”
“Yours?” she echoed. “So you miss him, then? You love him? Want to bring him home and . . .”
His lip curled. “Love him. No. Until I knew what he could do, he was just useful to keep his cunt-mother happy. A man in my position needs a beautiful woman at his side. She served her purpose. But then I realized what he could do. And he’s my son. He will come home.”
Useful . . .
Nalini gathered up her hair, securing it at her nape as she settled back behind the computer. Well, that solved that riddle. The images of the night the woman died still weren’t clear. This wasn’t the man who killed her, but he was behind the attacks on the boy, was hunting him down like a wild animal. Not out of love, but because the boy was useful.
She tapped at a few keys and finally—she had the information she needed. What she really wanted to do was take the entire website down, see it crash and burn, but Jones might need the information on it to track people down. Too much vigilante shit taking place on it, and that was just bad, bad news. Somebody needed to blow that thing wide open.
But she’d hacked in a mod’s ID with enough clearance to delete that profile. She already knew where it had originated from . . . here. Esteban. The missing Esteban. She’d heard Ignacio ordering his men to find the cabrón and bring him in, but she had a funny feeling they wouldn’t be finding the man. He’d had a desperate look about him when he’d left here . . . how long ago had it been? Almost two weeks ago? She couldn’t even remember. Maybe three? Closer to three, she thought. All the days were running together. But Esteban’s eyes, yeah. That she remembered. He’d had the look of a desperate man, and since he hadn’t found the boy, she had a feeling he’d be doing almost anything to avoid coming back here.
Still, while she was on the inside, she collected as much information as she could. There were others here that had caught her interest. Nobody wanted to catch Nalini’s interest. Ignacio had, and look where it had landed him.
First, screen shots of everything and she saved them, e-mailed them to a personal account. She’d access it later and start researching. Once she was away from here. Then she deleted the job listing, wiping it off the server, as well as any and all responses to it. She couldn’t do anything if it had been cached anywhere on the Net, but if it wasn’t an active job posting, maybe some of the people on his ass would stop. The pragmatic sorts, at least.
After she’d done that, she took care of the protective measures to make sure nobody could get on the computer and find out what she’d been doing. Reyes was no computer genius but he had plenty of them around.
By the time she was done removing all traces from the computer, so much time had passed that Reyes had thrown off all signs of the compulsion, and when she looked up, he was watching her with the soulless, dead eyes of a killer. “Why are you asking about Alejandro?” he asked gently.
“Who?” She smiled at him, the coy, promising smile that had suckered him into bringing her here. Of course, it hadn’t just been a smile. She’d thrown in a few casual touches, a few whispered innuendos, basically getting him all hot and bothered.
Now he was icy and cold, like he was already planning the ways he wanted to kill her.
“My son.”
She blinked at him. “You have a kid?”
“Don’t play the stupid puta with me, Nala. I know what you are, what you can do. Is that why you hunt him? You want him for yourself?”
She studied him for a minute. “You would think something like that, wouldn’t you?”
She shut down her computer and stood up. She needed to find anything and everything she could that had belonged to the boy, or to his mother. Once she had those things, she had to destroy them. He had already figured out what she was, so he’d figure out there were more. Ignacio hadn’t been the brains behind The Psychic Portal move, but since he knew there were others out there, she didn’t want him to have any decent tools within his grasp if he decided to reach out to others to help look for his son.
“How do you know about my son?”
She smiled at him. “Madame Nala sees all, knows all.”
The look in his eyes told her he didn’t know if he believed her or not. She managed not to laugh in his face. If he thought she was some all-seeing, all-knowing thing, it might work to her benefit.
He wasn’t just going to buy it, though. “You don’t think I will just believe that, do you?”
“I don’t care what you believe, Reyes.” Nalini shrugged. “Doesn’t matter jack to me. Why don’t you sit there and mentally jack off as you think about the way his mama cried when you hit her because she said she’d leave?”
Direct hit.
She saw his lashes flicker, the only sign that she’d been right on target. But she knew she had. She’d been living in this hell for too long and she’d picked up enough impressions. From the house. From the jewelry he’d given her. From him.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said after just a few seconds too long.
“No?” She shrugged and started to gather up her things. After she went over the house, she had to get out of here. She had to do this fast, too.
As she strode past him, he jerked against the chair. “Let me loose, Nala. Now. If you don’t . . .”
She paused and looked over at him, smiling a little. “You’ll what? Put your hands on me? Haven’t you seen what happens when you do that?”