She licked her lips, a nervous gesture that told him that this was it. The entire sum of her botched revenge fantasy lay crumpled at his feet. “People know you’re here. If you kill me—”
“Let me guess… Estefan Reyes?” He smiled. “Trust me when I tell you—he doesn’t care about you.” He stood slowly, the extended barrel of the .22 pointed at her chest. “Matter of fact, I’d be willing to be he’s hoping I kill you.”
She must’ve heard the truth in his words because she held up her hands, the cuffs that secured her to the table sliding along her slender wrists. “I’m a defenseless woman, Michael. You couldn’t kill me three days ago and you won’t kill me now.”
“You forget—I’m not the knight in shining armor in your story,” he said, thumbing the safety off. “I’m the dragon and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do—no one I wouldn’t kill—to keep what I love safe.”
73
Cofre del Tesoro, Columbia
September ~ 2012
Michael looked at his watch and swore under his breath. Estefan was late.
Again.
“You shouldn’t curse,” Christina chirped at him from the high stool she perched on, legs swinging in haphazard circles. They’d been waiting in the ballroom that Reyes had turned into an indoor training facility for nearly an hour now and he was seconds away from walking out.
Without warning, one of the floor-to-ceiling doors swung open and Estefan sauntered in.
Michael watched him stroll across the parquet floor to the center of the room where he stood. “And your brother should be more respectful of other people’s time,” he said, barely able to hide his contempt.
Estefan smirked, making a point of reaching down to close his zipper before wiping at the corner of his mouth. “Sorry—I was busy.”
Like father, like son. There were nearly two dozen household staff members on the island—all of them women and none of them over the age of twenty. They wore uniforms and performed the basic functions of housekeepers, laundresses and cooks but to live and work for Alberto Reyes meant you were his for the taking or giving as he saw fit. In the years since Estefan had become a permanent fixture on the island, he’d followed in his father’s footsteps in more ways than one.
Late afternoon rains slashed against the wide windows, the sound of it a ceaseless drumming. “Go to your room and wait for me there, Christina,” he said quietly.
The little girl jumped down from her stool. “But—”
He shot her a look over his shoulder that killed her budding protest. “No buts—just do what I say,” he told her before turning around to look at her brother. “This isn’t gonna take long.”
Christina nodded, moving toward the door at a snail’s pace, casting looks over her shoulder at him as she went. As soon as she was gone and the door was closed behind her, Michael pulled his tactical knife from the sheath strapped to his thigh. He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to five. “Your hour’s almost up,” he said, cocking his chin at the knife Estefan kept in a holster at his hip. “But I think I can still squeeze in a lesson.”
“Nearly two years we’ve been doing this, Cartero…” Estefan said, pulling his knife while he circled slowly to the left. “I think I’ve learned just about all I can from you.”
Michael followed suit, the hilt of his blade held casually. “Oh, I can think of a few things I can still teach you. Common decency, for starters.”
Estefan laughed. “El Cartero wants to teach me decency?” His blade whipped out, slicing an arc through the space between them. He was fast but Michael was faster—the kid caught nothing but air.
“Someone should.” He side-stepped another attack, countering with a downward strike with the tip of his knife, a shallow cut at Estefan’s wrist.
The kid hissed, yanking his wrist back, face twisted with hatred. “And that someone is you? When did you become a hero, Cartero?” He lunged again and Michael stepped into it, taking the wound—a deep slice across his shoulder as if he’d asked for it. The pain cleared his mind—allowed him to focus.
“Refraining from strong-arming the help into giving me a blowjob in the laundry room doesn’t make me a hero,” he said, sidestepping another attack. “It makes me a man who doesn’t have to force women to have sex with me.” Using Estefan’s own momentum against him, Michael jerked his knee upward, crashing it into the kid’s face with enough force to drop him like a sack of dirt.
Estefan rolled onto his back, his face painted with blood, contorted by rage and humiliation. “Whoever said it was maid I’ve been fucking?” He looked at him, sitting up to mop the back of his hand across his face.
The implication of his words rang clear. There was only one woman on the island, who was not a part of the household staff.
Lydia.
He thought of her face the last time he’d seen her—less than a week but it seemed longer than that. How scared she was, hopeless—her hands pressed against her protruding belly. He understood now. That it wasn’t Alberto she was afraid of. Not entirely.
“What did you do?” he said quietly, staring down at the young man on the floor beneath him, a sick feeling slithering around in his belly, so cold he was surprised he couldn’t see his breath.
Estefan looked up at him. “It’s not what I did, Cartero. It’s what I’ve been doing. With her.”
Something shifted inside him. That cold, slithering thing wrapping itself tight. Heating up. Settling in. “Get up.” Michael circled him slowly, shifting his grip on the blade from defensive to an offensive position. “Your lesson’s not over.”
“Sometimes she cries.” Estefan stood, tracking his movements with small, flat eyes. “She thinks I don’t notice but I do,” he said, his tone edged in something ugly. “I know it’s not my father she cries for, so it must be you.” He grinned, blood smeared across his bright-white teeth. “I’ve had her many times, Cartero. I wonder… how many times has my stepmother spread her legs for you?”
A strange sound came out of him, a strangled growl that propelled him forward, directly into the path of Estefan’s attack. The blade slipped into the meat of his left shoulder—scrapping bone. Slicing muscle.
He didn’t even feel it. He just kept coming.
Michael dropped his shoulder before twisting it away, forcing Estefan to relinquish his hold on the knife still embedded in his shoulder. His right hand rocketed past Estefan’s defenses, latching around his throat; thumb pressed into the pocket of nerves nestled behind his ear so hard his eyelids began to flutter.
Dropping his own knife into its sheath, Michael reached over and pulled Estefan’s knife from his shoulder and showed it to him before pressing its tip into the corner of his eye. “I believe,” he said, drawing the razor-sharp edge down the length of his face, the thick, heavy blade exposing the muscle beneath the river of blood that coursed down his cheek. “I made you a promise. Something about laying you open and watching you bleed.”
It took everything Michael had not to angle the blade across his throat. Instead, he dropped Estefan onto the hardwood floor, taking a step back to watch him wail and writhe. Something long and silver slipped out of his pocket, landing quietly on the mat beside him.
A key.
Using the toe of his boot, Michael nudged the still-screaming Estefan to the side so he could crouch down next to him to pick it up. Standing, Michael slipped it into his pocket before he looked down at his watch. “Class dismissed,” he said, stepping over him on his way out the door.
74
Cofre del Tesoro, Columbia
2015
Sabrina cast a glance over Reyes’ shoulder at his son, trying to decide if this had been his plan all along. Trying to formulate a plan of her own if shit went south.
“Why is she bleeding?” Reyes said, casting his glance along with hers. Looking to his son for an explanation.
For a moment she thought he was referring to the bruise and busted lip he’d given her earlier but then she felt the wet trickle
against her neck and she swiped at it. The bullet graze from the hospital. It must’ve re-opened when she and the guard had gone a round in the hallway.
Estefan stood, his insolent manner instantly replaced by one of respect that bordered on reverence. “When I happened upon her, she was in the hallway with Edwardo. They were… fighting.”
“And you thought to bring her into my office?” Reyes spoke to his son while continuing to scrutinize her. Looking for cracks he could dig his fingers into.
“She was visibly upset. I thought a quick drink would calm her,” Estefan said, the lie so smooth she almost believed it herself.
Reyes reached out, cupping her neck to angle her jaw so that he could get a better look. She had to fight to stop herself from jerking out from under his grasp. “Was it Edwardo who injured you, Sabrina?”
He was close—too close. She wasn’t ready. She still had no idea where they were holding Leo. Even if she managed, by some miracle, to kill both Reyes and his son, she’d never find the boy. Not before she was killed.
Now ain’t the time, darlin’. Be cool.
She wiped at her neck again, angling herself away from Reyes. The blood had gone thick, tacky under her fingers. “It’s just a wound that’s re-opened. No big deal.”
“But he touched you, yes?” He smiled at her reluctance to point fingers. “It’s okay—the truth is all that’s required.”
Looking past him, she found the clock perched on his desk. It was 8:45. “I’d like to go back to my room now.”
Reyes chuckled, letting go of her chin to take a step back. “Of course—it’s getting late.” He looked at his son. “You know what to do.”
Estefan nodded. “Yes, father,” he said, his gaze passing over her before he left.
Reyes swept his arm in a grand gesture. “Please, allow me to escort you,” he said, playing the part of perfect gentleman instead of sadistic murderer.
Swallowing the shitty remark that bubbled in her throat, she forced her mouth into a cool smile. “Thank you.”
They walked side-by-side, quiet, while she fought the urge to look at him.
“I spoke with Cartero this evening,” he told her. “It won’t be long until he comes for you.”
“You mean it won’t be long before you kill me, don’t you?” she said, careful to keep her tone conversational.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t behave in a civilized manner until then, does it?” He smiled at her, glancing at his watch. “We have a few minutes left—come to the window, there is something I wish you to see,” he said, turning the knob beneath his hand to usher her inside.
The room was as she’d left it save for the fact that the heavy velvet drapes were drawn away from the windows, the carefully manicured lawn brightly lit beyond it.
Edwardo knelt in the grass facing the window, no more than ten yards away. Close enough that the terror, written on his face, was stark and visible through the glass between them. When he saw her, his mouth began to move rapidly but the window pane was too thick to allow the passing of sound.
Estefan stood behind him, the 9 mm in his hand pressed into the base of the man’s skull.
“Let’s play a game,” Reyes said beside her and for just a moment, it was Wade who stood beside her. Wade who wanted to play.
Don’t go there, darlin’. Stay sharp, now.
“I don’t like games,” she said quietly. “They usually prove too complicated for my tastes.”
“Yes… you are a simple creature, aren’t you?” He brushed his fingertips along her collarbone, smearing blood across her skin. “This game is as simple as they come. It has only one rule: when I ask you a question, you tell the truth,” he said, settling his gaze on her face. “My son said that when he happened upon you and Edwardo in the hall that you were fighting. Is that true?”
She looked up at Estefan. He was watching her.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She flicked her gaze toward the man kneeling on the lawn. “I wanted to use the bathroom before returning to my room. He wanted me to wait.”
“And so you fought?” He all but purred the words into her ear.
Don’t look at him, darlin’.
“Yes.”
“Was it he who put his hands on you first, Sabrina?”
“No,” she said, turning to look him in the eye, despite Wade’s warning echoing inside her head. “You were when you bitch slapped me earlier. Technically, he’s the second.”
He smiled widely as if the memory of it bonded them together. “Let me re-phrase. During your altercation with Edwardo, was it he who decided to use his hands first?”
She remembered how he’d grabbed her arm to try to move her along. “Yes.”
“And you warned him not to touch you but he didn’t listen.” There was an excited edge to his voice. One that unsettled her.
“Yes.” she looked away from him then, unable to stomach another second of eye contact between them.
“And you struck back.” He touched her again, trailed his fingers along the length of her arm until he found her hand, caressing the back of it. “You hit him. Injured him.”
She fought the urge to yank her hand away from his. “Yes.”
“If I were to put my hands on you… if I were to hurt you, would you try to kill me?”
A howling wind took up inside her head, one that rattled her bones and clouded her vision. She curled her hands into fists but kept her head turned straight ahead, staring into the middle space between her and the man who knelt before her on the lawn. “Yes.”
“Even if it meant the death of both you and little Leo?”
God help her… “Yes.”
Reyes laughed, the sound of it obscene as it slithered into her ear. “I believe you.”
Some unseen signal passed through the window between father and son and the trigger was pulled. The 9 mm round rocketed through Edwardo’s skull to burst through his eye socket, spraying blood and brain across the bright green of the grass.
“The only thing I tolerate less than disobedience are lies.” He tightened his grip on her hand until it almost hurt. “What were you doing in my office, Sabrina?”
She kept her eyes trained on some fixed point beyond the window. The LCP tucked into her boot bit hard into her ankle. Reyes thumb brushed against the inside of her wrist, the bracelet Michael had given her shifting against her skin and for a moment she was sure he knew what it really was.
“Your son took me into your office and offered me a drink like he said. I accepted and after used the toilet, flushed and then washed my hands.” She forced herself to look at him again, allowing herself to be caught in the flat, emotionless dark of his eyes. “I was just finishing up when you knocked.”
He smiled. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Reyes leaned into her, pressing his mouth against hers. His tongue snaking out to run itself along the cut his earlier blow had drawn across her lip, the pressure of it igniting a hissing sting against her mouth. Before she had time to react, Reyes pulled away and he was moving toward the door. “Good night, Sabrina,” he said as he pulled it closed.
Seconds later, the auto-lock engaged on her bedroom door, trapping her inside.
75
Ben found a ride.
It’d taken some negotiating and more finesse than he had time for but the outcome had been worth it. He was leaving for Columbia within the hour.
Leaving Nickels and Mandy in charge of what was going on next door, he’d headed to Miss Ettie’s to pack up his gear. No matter the outcome with the Maddox situation, Ben doubted he’d be coming back here for quite some time.
He had other matters to attend to.
His phone rang just as he hit the front walkway and he answered. “Is she dead?” It was his man in Spain, the one he’d ordered to kill the Cordova woman.
“Your boy beat me to it. Worked my way in and found the guard with his neck snapped and the chick with a cluster of bullets in her sternum.”
&
nbsp; He stopped walking for a second, squeezed his eyes shut. “Damn it…” No matter what Michael said, no matter how good he was at his job or how emotionally void he liked to pretend to be, he wasn’t built for this shit. Neither of them were. “Did he get out?”
“When I got there, the whole station was in an uproar, looking for him but yeah—he was gone.” The man on the other end cleared his throat. “Anything else?”
Ben started walking again, up the porch steps to press his thumb against the print scanner. The lock disengaged. “No. If you hear anything, let me know.”
“You got it.” And then the line was dead.
He found Lark in the sunroom, fingers clicking across the keyboard attached to several monitors, endless streams of data flowing his way.
“What are you doing?” he said, not entirely sure that leaving Lark alone for so long was a good idea.
“Where you been? Mikey called your SAT phone while you were gone—he asked me for a full jacket on that Cordova woman. Found some pretty interesting shit,” Lark said without even looking at him. “She and Estefan Reyes have been—”
“Did you know my father was going to have Church take Sabrina?”
The clicking stopped, Lark’s massive head turning slowly to look at him. “Shit…
I admit that she ain’t my favorite white girl but, I swear—I didn’t know that was going to happen,” he said calmly, recognizing that he was suddenly fighting for his life. “You believe me, right?”
Ben stared at him hard. The beads of sweat that popped up along his upper lip. The way he flexed his fingers around empty air—probably wishing for a gun—waiting for him to answer.
“Why did you really do it, Lark?” Ben said quietly, asking the only question that mattered to him right now. “Were you jealous? It was obvious, even then, that Michael had feelings for her. Was she interrupting your little bromance? Changing him into someone you didn’t like? Did you get Lucy killed to punish him for wanting something more than a lifetime of killing?”
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 28
