Page 31 of Liar

“It’s not the targets, okay,” Diego grinds out. “He announced he’d be away on club business.” He gestures to the hill off to our right. “Yet here he is. He probably wants to be left alone. We should leave.”

“No way did he miss hearing that jet-engine you call a motor.”

Diego shrugs.

“You’re afraid of him.”

He shoots me a look similar to the one I received the time he walked in on me seconds after I discovered a dead scorpion in our kitchen sink. I was standing on a chair and in full freak-out mode. I’m deathly afraid of scorpions, alive and, as it turns out, dead. “Now who’s being ridiculous?”

For a few seconds, I really believe he’s going to drive away. Until he parks his pickup a few spaces away from Hayden’s Jeep then turns to me. “Don’t engage him in conversation.”

“Fine. I’ll ignore him completely.”

But Diego pays me no mind, his focus on the man who has appeared at the top of the small hill that divides the parking lot from the range.

I look up at him as well, my heart skipping a beat at the sight of him. Hands on hips and sunglasses perched on his nose, he evokes a power that’s as frightening as it is intriguing. I wish I could say I was immune to it. That the sight of him didn’t excite me in a way it shouldn’t. That I didn’t spend hours reliving our two encounters, even if during the last one, he warned me away.

Don’t. He broke a promise. Remember that.

“Wait here.” Diego exits the pickup, works his way around the hood and then toward the man on the hill.

A few minutes discussion follows, and then Diego returns.

“What did he say?”

“He said the Murillo de Romero family has a way of showing up uninvited and interrupting him.”

I stiffen. “Let’s go. Come on.” The arrogance of the man. Who does he think he is, the King of the Hill? I turn and offer him my stiff back.

Diego shakes his head at my antics then retrieves our lunch bag and two pistols from the center console. “Do me a favor and keep your engagement to a minimum.”

“That won’t be a problem.” I won’t make a fool of myself over a man, especially one who clearly wants nothing to do with me.

“There are rumors about him. Rumors about how he’s connected back home. To bad motherfuckers, who make the Loreto cartels look like children playing in a park.”

“The mob?”

“Whatever the Spanish equivalent is.”

My eyebrows lift. “Spain ... but—”

“He’s waiting. Just do as I ask, okay?”

As we climb the small hill where Hayden is no longer standing, I wonder why my brother doesn’t know his boss is Italian. Sure, Hayden sounds like a Spaniard and has the dark, good-looks of one. The mistake is an easy one to make.

Unless he confides in you.

Has he shared this information with anyone except me? Did he lie? Do I want it to be a lie?

Because if he is Italian—an Italian with possible mob ties—the man is ten times more dangerous than I believed.

* * *

Hayden doesn’t acknowledge us as he fires a small, sleek pistol at a target. We draw up next to him and I give him a subtle, side-long glance. It’s hard not to look at him, smoking hot with a smoking gun in hand.

He’s dressed casually for a change, a tight, white T-shirt clinging to his muscular frame, blue jeans hanging low on his hips, and sneakers that appear to be new. With dark hair smoothed back and mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes, he’s cool, calm, and collected. And alone, from what I can tell.

Or he was.