Crazed: A Blood Money Novel by Edie Harris Page A

benefit anyone, least of all him.
    For now, however, his head was firmly in the game, the darkness brutally locked down in a sequestered corner of his mind. Sipping the alcoholic beverage he didn’t want but that his cover necessitated, Casey stared up at the woman onstage, a pang thudding through his heart. Perched on a simple stool, wearing an elegant but understated column of royal blue satin, Ilda gripped a microphone and crooned sensual lyrics of love in a time of death.
    Her voice was a miracle. He’d always thought so, but new layers lived in her talent now. She had suffered loss and survived, and still she sang. Low and warm and beautiful and sincere, and not for the first time, he wished he had a better ear, so he could properly appreciate this rare gift of hers.
    She was accompanied by a pianist, a hand drummer and a guitarist, but the spotlight focused solely on her, a jewel on that stage. He couldn’t look away, which was the whole point, he supposed. But looking at her made his eyes sting, his breath catch and his chest ache, and he realized more than her voice was a miracle— Ilda herself was. He’d felt just how miraculous only a few hours earlier.
    His dick hardened, and he shifted in his seat, the booth creaking beneath him as he tore his gaze from the stage and scanned the room. The club was tastefully decorated and incredibly clean, the waitstaff and bartenders in tidy all-black uniforms. He didn’t remember this place from the last time he was in Medellín, but then, he’d not spent much time in the Parque Periodista neighborhood. His days had been tied up in Pipe’s various activities, most of which centered around the hacienda—Pipe’s sprawling estate on the city’s outskirts, tucked into the hilly, wooded landscape and highly guarded. Casey had lived on the grounds while under with the cartel, as did most of the brigadiers, and only once had he spent the whole night away from his bunk.
    The night of Pipe and Théa’s rehearsal dinner. The night Ilda had asked him to stay. The night the Orras cartel had launched an offensive strike and murdered Théa as her escort delivered her to her downtown penthouse, mere hours before she and Pipe were to be married.
    A dark day, leading to the darkest Casey had ever known. He didn’t have all the pieces yet, couldn’t put together the puzzle of his own wedding day and what had happened to Ilda. How she had survived. How he could have possibly left Colombia while she was still alive.
    He’d never forgive himself for that.
    Which explained why he had sent off a frantic request to Della as soon as Ilda had fled his hotel room, demanding satellite footage of the chapel for the twenty-four hours preceding and the forty-eight hours following his marriage. Luckily, his cousin had only treated him to minimal lip over his request and promised that the video would be in his inbox by tomorrow morning.
    Until then, he had a job to do.
    Another sip of beer, and his gaze flitted back to the stage. Ilda had finished the song and smiled softly at the appreciative applause that broke out, but Casey didn’t join in. Not because she didn’t deserve applause, but because clapping didn’t fit with his cover as Cortez.
    Casímiro Cortez had been a thug with a hard-on for machine guns and an inappropriate obsession with the boss’s sister-in-law to-be. He’d proven himself a coward at the outbuilding four years earlier, when the spies were snatched and several brigadiers killed in the firefight ascribed to the Orras cartel. Presumed dead until now, Cortez had come back from the grave with his tail between his legs, and where else should he be but lurking creepily in the periphery of his ex-lover’s place of employment?
    Going in, Casey hadn’t planned on using Ilda—but then, he hadn’t known she was around to use. Being here made a sick kind of sense; Casey banked on the fact that Théa had let slip to Pipe the nature of Ilda’s relationship with him before