“Fear you?” She shook her head, casting a casual glance down at her titanium-wrapped fist. “An hour from now your father will be dead and so will you,” she said, sounding much more confident than she felt.
“Can I tell you a secret, Sabrina?” He leaned in even closer, his breath hot against her face. “Cartero isn’t your savior any more than he was Lydia’s. Cartero is dead… did I happen to mention how angry Pia was with him?”
The words hit her hard. Not because she believed them but because he did. Esteban believed with every fiber of his being that Michael was dead. Panic rose, all sharp teeth and blinding speed and for a moment she was frozen.
You don’t need him, darlin’. Not when you got me…
She hardened herself, shut off the part that wanted to scream. Instead she smiled, dropping the sharp end of the bracelet, the links clicking together as gravity did its job, forming a short metal pike gripped in her fist. A fast glance over his shoulder told her that the cameras were still off. Either Esteban had had them turned off to hide what he’d come here to do to her or Church had kept her promise to bring the cavalry.
Either way, it was time to go.
“It hardly matters, Esteban,” she said, matching his tone perfectly. “Because Michael was never going to be the one to kill you.” She whispered it, soft and quiet, leaning into him like a lover. “That’s my job.”
84
Twenty minutes later they came to the base of the mountain and stopped, Church and Strickland both looking at him expectantly. He clicked his comm. “We’re here.” He didn’t want to say where here was because he wasn’t sure who was listening.
“Killing comms and cameras now… watch your six,” Ben told him and he knew that he had the same reservations about trusting Church as he did. At the end of the day, she belonged to Livingston Shaw and he’d do well to remember it.
“Rodger that,” Michael said before clicking off the comm. He checked the compass again to make sure he had the right coordinates. “It’s there,” he said, pointing the same way as the arrow. “Behind the brush.”
Church drew a wicked looking machete from the sheath strapped to her thigh and started to hack away the dense, overgrown of foliage. It was obvious the entrance hadn’t been used in years. Not since Lydia had used it to sneak down the beach to see her daughter.
“Where does it lead?” Strickland said, standing next to him while they watched Church swing her blade.
“Second-floor laundry room. Reyes had it added into the plans when he built the compound. My guess is it’s his escape route if he’s ever raided.” Michael looked at him. The bumbling detective was gone, leaving the single-minded pit bull in its place. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said impulsively and was instantly sorry he said it when Strickland turned on him, eyebrow arched over his cool brown gaze.
“I love her, you know,” he said, staring him right in the eye. “She’s a pain in my ass. She causes me trouble—the real kind—and she can’t seem to go six months without someone trying to kill her but she’s my partner… so, there’s nowhere else for me to be.”
There was no surge of jealousy at his admission like there had been with Nickels. No grinding need to defend what was his and he knew it was because Strickland’s love was born from something pure. Strickland loved her like he’d loved Lydia and Frankie. There was nothing romantic between them and never would be.
“We’re getting her back. And I promise, neither of you will ever see me again.” It was the best he could offer—all he could do.
Strickland laughed in his face.
“Dude… you really don’t know her at all, do you?” he said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter if you love her or not. She loves you and the best, worst thing about her is that once she decides you’re hers, she hangs on to the bitter end. Leaving her won’t change that and it won’t keep her safe—trust me on that one.”
“You don’t happen to know the combination, do you?” Church said. Both of them looked up to see her standing beside a heavy metal door that had been buried beneath the green. One he’d never seen before. The kind used to seal a bomb shelter or a walk-in safe.
“Well, shit,” Strickland breathed beside him, shoulders slumping when he got a load of the large combination lock that all but promised to keep them out.
“Try 12-16-02.” Christina’s birthday. He said it without looking in Strickland’s direction—unwilling to admit defeat so soon.
He watched the dial spin beneath Church’s competent fingers right, then left and back again. She pulled the lever.
Nothing.
He rattled off another number, the date he’d agreed to work for Reyes and watched her go through the same process as before. Again, it didn’t work.
“I’m not sure how many more times I can try without tripping some sort of alarm, O’Shea,” Church warned him. “The next one better work.”
He was drawing a blank… it had to be something he’d remember. Reyes wanted him here. We wouldn’t make it impossible for him to gain entry into the compound.
“Think… it has to be a date that would mean as much to him as it does to you,” Strickland said, prodding at him quietly. “One he wants you to remember.”
And suddenly he knew. “10-9-12.”
Church worked the dial this way and that, taking a deep breath before levering the handle downward. The door swung open, revealing a small room that was little more than a wide mouth for the steep, narrow staircase that laid beyond it.
He started to move toward it, ready to go. Ready to finally put an end to the misery Reyes had been dealing all these years. Before he took two steps, Strickland reached out an arm, clamping a hand around his shoulder to stop his progress.
“What was it? The date?”
Michael looked at him over his shoulder, jaw set. “October ninth, two-thousand twelve. The day he murdered his wife in front of me.”
He shrugged out from under Strickland’s grip and ventured into the dark.
85
Cofre del Tesoro, Columbia
October ~ 2012
He made it as far as the front lawn before he was stopped.
“Going somewhere, Cartero?” Hector called to him from across the grass, sun creeping up out of the ocean to cast soft gray light between them. Esteban was with him, along with a few of Reyes’ more experienced guards.
Michael, headed for the steep, winding switchback that led down the cliff wall and onto the boat dock, stopped in his tracks. “Yeah—home.”
Hector nodded, smiling. “Home will have to wait. There’s a matter Hefe would like to discuss with you.”
So far Estefan hadn’t said a word. The stitches that must’ve held his face together had been removed to reveal a thick, ugly scar that ran the length of his face, from the corner of his eye to his mouth. Now he smiled, pushing the scar upward until it crinkled and bunched against his skin. “I told you, didn’t I, Cartero? I told you that you’d pay.”
He shifted his duffle, rolling it from one hand to the other so that he could have quick access to his gun. The switchback was a good fifty yards away. He wouldn’t make it. Not without killing these two fucks first. “Is that was you were saying?” He chuckled to mask the mounting desperation he could feel heaping on his chest. “To tell the truth, I couldn’t really understand what you were saying, what with all that blubbering and crying you were doing.”
Estefan flushed, a deep red wash that paled his scar in comparison. He took a step forward but Hector held a restraining arm across his chest. “You will want to look up, Cartero,” Hector said.
Something about his tone turned his neck, had him scaling the walls with his eyes until they settled on a window with pink drapes. They were parted, Christina standing in the bare wedge between them, staring down at him, her face pale with confusion and fear.
A man he didn’t recognize stood behind her. He had a gun in his hand.
“Hefe would like to see you,” Hector repeated his earlier request
. “It won’t take long and then you will be free to go.”
It was a lie and they both knew it but he nodded anyway, dropping the duffle at his feet. He was going to have to move fast when the time came and it would only slow him down.
“The gun too,” Estefan said, jerking his chin at the .40 holstered on his hip.
“Sure thing,” he said, lifting it slowly. “But can we hurry this along? I’ve got more pressing matters.” He dropped it in the grass before going palms up.
Hector nodded, lifting his own gun from his hip, using the barrel of it to motion him along. “Let’s go.”
They didn’t take him into the house. Instead they guided him across the lawn, around the corner of the house until Reye came into view, standing behind a heavily pregnant Lydia.
Michael barely spared her a glance, focusing all his attention on the man behind her. “Cartero... were you going somewhere?” Reyes said in a cheerful cadence that dismissed the gun he had pressed into the space where his wife’s belly rounded away from her hips.
“Yeah,” he said, keeping his tone casual, just tinged with boredom even as the thought of his Aunt Gina’s voice shook his with its broken desperation. “I’ve got some shit to deal with back home. Shouldn’t take more than a week or so...” He flicked a glance at Lydia. Her face was as pale as Christina’s but there was no confusion. She knew exactly what was happening.
“And then you will return?” Reyes cocked his head.
He could see Christina’s face turned up to look at him, her tiny fingers splayed wide to weave between his own. Are you going to leave too?
He promised her he wouldn’t leave her alone but Frankie’s disappearance changed everything. Still… “Well, yeah. That was the plan,” he said carefully.
Reyes chuckled, shaking his head. “Why? Why would you return after what you’ve done? Surely you don’t love her.”
The back of his neck went hot and tight—a surefire sign that shit was about to get critical. “What the fuck are you talking about, Reyes?” he said, letting his eyes wander down to the gun in the other man’s hands. “I really don’t have time for whatever kind of domestic squabble you’ve got—”
“How long?”
He kicked his eyes up to Reyes’ face. “What?”
“How long!” he roared, his face contorted with rage and something else. Something more disturbing than anger. Something fanatical. Almost gleeful. Whatever happened next, there would be no stopping it. No talking Reyes out of whatever choice he’d already made.
“How long what?” He looked at Lydia for help. She knew the answer but all she could do was stare at him, eyes wide and dark, lips moving silently, fumbling over the same words over and over. Let us go, Let us go , Let us go …
Reyes took a deep breath, letting it out on a soft chuckle as he shook his head. “How long have you been fucking my wife?”
He looked at Estefan, who’d moved to flank his father. “I never touched her.”
“My wife is the Virgin Mary, then?” he spat, digging the barrel of his gun into her swollen belly deep enough to cause Lydia to cry out in pain. “The proof is right in front of us both, Cartero. Do you think me a fool?”
There was no reasoning with Reyes. Estefan had been hard at work, tending the lies he’d planted. Even if he did tell him the truth—that it was his son who’d raped his wife, that it was his grandchild and not some bastard that grew in Lydia’s belly—he would never listen. His own conceit would never let him believe that he had been so thoroughly deceived.
“What do you want me to do?” he said, speaking directly to Lydia, eyes trained on her face. “Tell me what to do.”
“What you promised,” she breathed, seconds before her husband pulled the trigger.
Everything stopped. Ground to a halt as he watched her fall, the bright splash of blood across her belly growing even as she fell to the ground. He screamed, the feel of it, raw and clawing at his throat, felt real even though there was no sound.
Reyes leveled the gun at her again, pulling the trigger again and again and he lunged forward—too much space between them for him to stop what was happening but he had to try.
Bullets smacked into the ground, all around him—hitting him in the shoulder, grazing his ribcage. His hip.
Let us go.
He changed direction, heavy boots tearing into the grass as he ran, bullets swarming him like wasps. The retaining wall was low here, so as not to obstruct the view of the ocean from Reyes’ study and he leaped at it, hands gripping the top to pull himself over.
The ledge between the face of the cliff and the wall was negligible—mere inches but it didn’t matter, his feet barely touched it as he flung himself over and into the sea.
86
Sabrina lunged forward, faking with her left in order to draw his attention. He turned his head and lifted his hands to block the attack—leaving the left side of his face vulnerable.
She jabbed fast with her right, burying the pike in his eye, its trajectory cut short but the side of her fist as it punched into his socket. She let go even as he screamed—the kind of scream that told her she’d only managed to wound a rabid animal instead of put it down. There was a sickening popping sound, followed by a gush of something warm and thick against her hand. Leaving the pike, she planted her hands on his chest and shoved, sending him tumbling over the back of the settee he’d been sitting on.
He reached for her as he fell and she stumbled back, hips slamming into the vanity at her back. Her hands skittered along its surface until she found what she was looking for. The hairbrush.
Esteban lay on the floor, between her and the door—hands clutching at the pike she’d driven into his eye, moaning as blood, turned a yellowish orange by the viscous fluid it was mixed with, ran down his face.
She finally managed to unscrew the handle from the paddle of the brush. It was hollow and something was inside. Please… please… please…
Shake a tail feather, darlin’—that ain’t gonna hold ‘im off for long…
Dumping it out with shaking fingers, she closed her fist around what was inside. A key. Lydia’s key.
Run.
She dropped the dismantled brush and moved, skirting around the settee, sights zeroed in on the door. She wasn’t sure if the key would even work but she had to try. Staying here was suicide.
Esteban was stretched out between her and the door. There was no going around him and even as she took the leap she knew what would happen. His hand shot out, and snagged her pant leg and she went down hard, chin clipping the coffee table as she fell. She clamped her teeth together to keep them from braking but even so, she felt them cracking, blood filling her mouth so suddenly she gagged. The key bounced out her hand, spinning across the hardwood floor.
She flipped over, drawing her knee to her chest to hammer him in the face with the heavy sole of her boot but he was still lying flat on his back, his hand an iron clamp around her ankle. The gun she has hidden there bit into it, metal grinding against bone. The moment his hand tightened around her ankle, she knew he’d felt it for what it was.
“Naughty, naughty…” he said, rolling onto his side so that he could grab her with two hands. She could see that he’d pulled the pike from his eye. Feel him grappling with her boot trying to pull it off to get to her gun. He was too far away for her to deliver a kick that would do any real damage so she changed course, bringing her heel down on his hands, breaking his grip on her.
It all happened in a matter of seconds and she scrambled back, the LCP falling from her pant leg onto the floor between them but he was closer and the bloody grin he gave her said he knew it.
Time to get dirty, darlin’.
Wade’s voice sounded strangely composed, a spot of calm in the panic that swirled inside her head and she listened, popping forward to deliver a superman punch to his swollen eye just as his fingers closed around the grip of the gun.
The momentum of the blow stunned him, landing her on top of him and she s
traddled his chest, raining blows down on each and every part of him that she could reach.
He flipped her and she was suddenly on her back staring up at him no more than a moment before she was seeing stars again, delivered by the fist she caught against her temple. Another glancing across her cheekbone but it was enough to stun her. Slow her down.
He was between her legs, saying something—taunting her and she blinked stupidly, trying to clear the buzzing that muddled her brain. He hit her again—a vicious open-handed slap meant to stun and shame her before he wrapped his hands around her neck to squeeze.
She brought her fists down on his forearms, trying to break the hold he had on her throat and it worked for a moment, loosening his grip enough to allow her to take a hurried breath before he re-applied pressure.
Taking it, she used it clear her mind, allowing her to push panic away just enough to remember her training. Kicking her leg straight up, she popped her hip off the ground, angling it enough to hook an ankle around his neck. Using her own body weight as a fulcrum, Sabrina levered herself up and over him until she straddled his chest.
Using the momentum of the switch, she barreled down on him, breaking the hold he had on her throat. She swung hard with heavy fists—feeling things break and bleed beneath her hands, her training and technique giving way to blind rage. She beat him until he stopped moving. Stopped trying to protect himself and she took the chance to roll off of him, fitting the LCP in her hand as she did, coming up with it pointed squarely at his face.
Do it, Melissa.
Wade’s tone had gone dark—no longer playful, no longer serene. It was a command and she felt the momentary tension of her finger as it tightened around the trigger, ready to do as he said.
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 32
