Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4)

by Carolyn Crane

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Hugo wanted to kill this asshole Dax. He had the wild feeling that if Zelda were with him, she would feel just as enraged.

  She would come if she could. In his mind he replayed her voice—that angry pitch, that volume. Enraged. Surprised. She was not complicit in this. What had they done to her?

  He had to get free.

  Another phone call. Dax stood, paced as he spoke. Through the haze of the sedative, Hugo spotted the outline of keys in the man’s pocket. If only Dax would pass near enough, he would attack him and take them. But Dax, this was not a stupid man; he was a ruthless man.

  Dax would not draw close enough for an attack. Even if he did, he’d make a poor hostage because his ruthlessness would extend to himself—a man like this would kill himself just to neutralize his value. Hugo had met men like Dax at the farthest reaches of jungles and deserts and battlefields. So extreme as to be barely human.

  Hugo shut his eyes as another male entered—with coffee, from the smell of it. Dax thanked him. They spoke on about the exchange. Transport. Transfers. Wrappers crunched. The scent of spiced meat and warm bread reached Hugo’s nose.

  Another came—this one full of energy. “We’ve lost contact with Riley.”

  “What?” Dax said.

  “GPS shows him still at the overlook. I’ve sent Kendrick out to investigate.”

  “That can’t be right,” Dax said. “He wouldn’t have kept her there.”

  Her?

  “What if he lost control of her?” the first one said. “If she was able to surprise him and disable him—”

  “We’d know about it by now,” Dax said.

  Lost control of her? Disable him? Hugo pulled at his bonds, ready to rip them from the wall, rip his hands from his wrists.

  She wasn’t in on it. He’d always known it. He had to get to her.

  “Zelda can’t overpower Riley. I don’t care what kind of advantage…she’s out of practice and this is Riley.” Dax sounded upset.

  They didn’t know what had happened, but Hugo had a good idea: El Gorrion had arrived. He’d taken out the Associates’ men, and he probably had Zelda now. The whole picture came together suddenly—El Gorrion had connected Zelda to Kabakas. They’d been tracking them through Bumcara. The buildup around the compound was about Kabakas. El Gorrion was looking to square off against Kabakas, somehow.

  And if he was right…if El Gorrion thought Zelda knew who he was, where he was…

  Another man came in. “Riley’s down. Shot, beaten up pretty bad. His vest saved him.”

  Ice filled Hugo’s veins.

  A flurry of activity followed—arguments, calls to people on the ground, calls into traffic surveillance.

  Hugo slit open his eyes, knowing the focus was firmly off him. His heart pounded—he had to get to her. He wanted to shout and rage, but that would not help her.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The jowly sides of El Gorrion’s thick neck vibrated slightly as he sat himself down on the stool he’d placed at the end of the bench Zelda was tied to.

  He arranged a set of scalpels on the cracked red padding on either side of her feet, like a workman arranging his tools. This was part of it, of course, the anticipation. He held each item up, as if to inspect it, but it was really about showing her. Lastly he picked up a small switchblade.

  He addressed her in Spanish. “The great Valencian muralist Sima once said, ‘steal only what belongs to you.’ Have you heard of him?”

  Ah, the mindfuck portion. The torturer making himself the agreeable friend.

  “He was speaking of subject matter. When you see something that belongs to you, you must make it your own. A rock on the hillside. An old man’s expression. Half the key to art is finding what belongs to you.”

  Her blood raced as he flicked open a blade.

  “The answer to my question—where is Kabakas—is trapped inside of you. It is this that belongs to me. You can give it to me, or I will cut it from you. I will not stop cutting until I have it. Do you understand? I will cut as the sculptor cuts the truth from the stone.” He tilted his head and looked into her eyes with his flat, cold gaze. “No?”

  She would give him nothing.

  She cringed as he laid his hand over the top of her right foot with an air of ownership.

  “I am man of honor. I will take only the answer. I would not rape you and degrade you as others might, for example. That is not mine. Personally, I believe rape dishonors a man as well as a woman. Don’t you agree?”

  Yeah, this was the game. He gets her to agree to small easy things as a way to break her for the big things.

  She wouldn’t even give him that.

  “Okay, then.” He took hold of her toes and, with his eyes on hers, he pressed the point of the blade to the tender sole of her right foot, letting her feel it.

  A sick, panicky feeling filled her chest as the bite of the slice came, then he drew the blade along the bottom of her foot. The blood drops tickled. The tickle made the pain worse.

  He paused, but the bite continued. “Must we go on? You understand that I would let you go, given useful information. I would not have to kill you. I am a man of honor, and I have little to fear from the policía.”

  “You’ll get nothing.”

  “I’ll get everything,” he said.

  He began another cut. She focused on Hugo, a strong rock in the cold sea. She told herself she had Hugo’s back, and he had hers. That was their pact.

  The cut went deeper. The pain took her over inside, the shrieking feeling of it, and she could no longer hold onto Hugo; she was back in the farmhouse with the crazy Friar.

  “Kabakas is coming,” she gasped, trying to keep herself focused on him. “He may make it in time to save me, or he’ll come after. Maybe days or weeks after, but he will come, and he will destroy you.” She clenched her teeth, working at her bonds. She didn’t know if she believed it, but it felt good to say. “You’re already dead,” she gritted out.

  “He would save you? He would save the one who hunted him?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. Yes, she’d hunted Hugo. Yes, she’d unwittingly fed him the drugged Jelly Bellies. Yes, Dax had played her perfectly. But she’d given her word and she’d meant it. Surely he knew.

  She had Hugo’s back. She loved him.

  El Gorrion paused midway in his cutting. He’d been making parallel slices and it messed her up that he’d stopped like that, because it would be worse when he started again at the midpoint. She’d been bearing the pain in swaths.

  El Gorrion clicked his tongue twice inside his mouth. Click, click. “Nobody will save you.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Men passed in and out. A team was dispatched. The room emptied. Dax paced, upset, barking orders. Dax wanted to save her; that was clear.

  But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  And soon enough, a distracted Dax, alone for the moment, passed just a bit too close to Hugo’s unconscious form. Hugo shot out his legs and pulled him down onto the carpeted floor with a thud. Dax shouted in surprise, but the room was clearly soundproofed.

  Hugo flipped him around—he’d trained this a million times, dominating and manipulating a man with his legs alone. He quickly had Dax where he wanted him, head and arms pinned between his thighs. He squeezed the man’s neck like a vise, creating a triangle with his knee and thigh, cutting off his blood supply. When he felt Dax go limp, he pulled him closer and ripped at his pocket with his teeth, extracting the keys. Not three minutes later he was free and Dax was chained up.

  Hugo grabbed every firearm he could find. His dexterity was shot to hell. How would he throw like this? He could barely check to see if the weapons were loaded.

  Dax began to rouse. “Where are you going?” he asked casually.

  “To do what you can’t.” His senses were muffled. It wasn’t good.

  Dax gazed at him, watching him with those penetrating eyes. “You think El Gorrion has her, don’t you?�
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  Hugo said nothing.

  “You think he has your Zelda.”

  “You don’t get to say her name,” Hugo said. “You don’t even see her right.”

  “I see everybody right. Even you.”

  He wanted to kick the man’s face in, but he wouldn’t waste the time. A few of the fighters had left coffees in the room and Hugo slammed them, one after another. He needed the caffeine—it was as if the world was swathed in haze.

  “You can’t save her,” Dax said. “It won’t work, what you’re going to do.”

  Hugo slammed another coffee. Too late he felt the presence of other men; he spun around to find a gun barrel pressed against his forehead.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The bottoms of her feet were ribbons. Her pulse was a frenzy of panic, waiting for him to cut again as blood dripped down her heel from the last cut.

  El Gorrion put down the blade. Keeping her off balance. He shifted on his stool and pulled something from a pocket of his green fatigue pants.

  She’d recognize the implement anywhere—clippers used on the nails of very large dogs, the kind that Friar Hovde had used on her toes.

  She felt like throwing up. “Been there, done that,” she said, not caring that he wouldn’t understand her. He placed the cool end on one of her undamaged toes. She closed her eyes. The pain of what he’d already done spiraled into sharp shapes.

  Her eyes flew open and she stared at him, aghast.

  She’d only remembered her capitulation; she hadn’t remembered the intensity of it. The wild pain. It really was extreme, what she’d endured from the Friar. A man cutting on her? After injecting her with drugs that enhanced her fear? And then the way he’d begun to saw at her Achilles heel? She’d lasted hours in that basement with him. How had she lasted that long? She could barely handle it now and it was only minutes in—and she hadn’t been shot full of drugs. How had she endured that night? How could anybody have?

  Something dark passed behind El Gorrion’s eyes, sensing a trick, perhaps. This was no trick, though.

  All these years she’d seen only her failure, hated herself for talking, but God, through the blood, the drugs, the endless hours at the mercy of that psycho Friar, she’d lasted a long time. A very long time.

  The realization was more powerful than any cut El Gorrion could make.

  She’d lasted as long as she could.

  She’d done her best, and she’d do her best now. It was all anybody could do.

  She looked into the eyes of this horrible man with his doughy neck and his empty soul and her heart filled with gratitude.

  Simple, pure gratitude.

  All these years she had never given herself credit for how painful and terrifying it was to be helpless at the hands of a psycho with a table full of terrifying tools.

  She’d felt so worthless for so long, so full of shame for talking. The self-hatred was like poison in her veins. But she’d done her best. It was a hard thing and she’d done her best.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. The tears had nothing to do with fear or pain and everything to do with forgiving herself.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, weeping, now, with the relief of it.

  “Ready to tell me?”

  She emitted a breathy laugh, incredulous. “Fuck you,” she said. “I was thinking about something else.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Hugo rode shotgun, hanging onto the side rail as they sped up the dark jungle trail that led to the back of El Gorrion’s compound. He sucked in the humid night air, hoping it would wake him. The Jeep bounced violently, and now and then a branch whipped his face. He barely felt any of it. All he could feel was a sick twist of his heart at the thought of Zelda in the clutches of that madman.

  He needed to get to her.

  Her eyes got a certain tight look when she was worried or frightened. She would look like that and he wouldn’t be by her side. She’d be alone, bravely enduring whatever El Gorrion would do to her.

  He found it unbearable.

  He had to get to her—whatever it took. In this case, it had taken a promise to Dax that he’d turn himself in to the vice president when it was over. He would let the vice president do what he would. Better him than Zelda.

  The killer in the tailored suit drove—Rio, he was called. Rio hadn’t introduced himself as a killer, but Hugo had gotten it right away from his gravity. You reached a certain body count in a certain way, and it gave you dark gravity that regular fighters didn’t have. Rio drove expertly and relentlessly and Hugo knew that was how he would kill.

  Dax rode in back with Riley, the agent El Gorrion’s men had taken down. The one who was supposed to have kept Zelda with him. Hugo wanted to hit him, but he hadn’t, because the main thing was to get to Zelda. Riley was bloody and injured and pissed as hell and somebody up there would pay, and that would have to be enough.

  Four other guys followed behind in a different vehicle. Eight men they had.

  The Associates had taken him down easily after he had chained Dax up. Drugged like he’d been, Hugo could fight one man, but not several who were all pointing guns at him. You needed lightning reflexes and a wide awareness to take on several armed men at once, and the sedative in the candies had taken those things from him.

  When they’d finally had him subdued, Hugo had told them where he thought Zelda would be, told them about the buildup, which they seemed to know about. They knew, too, that they couldn’t take the compound with a handful of fighters—not keeping Zelda alive, anyway. It was Riley who had come up with the plan to infiltrate the compound in concert with Kabakas.

  Kabakas would spread fear and take out soldiers. El Gorrion’s men would focus on that, allowing the Associates to hit from the sides and back. With Kabakas sowing fear and chaos, they could take the compound.

  Dax made Hugo give his word to turn himself in when it was done—he had made it ironclad and formal. Dax was no fighter, but he was as dangerous as any of them in the way he worked you.

  They stowed the vehicles and went the rest of the way on foot. Hugo had seen the back way to get in while he and Zelda had been out there earlier. It was harder to find the back trail at night, but not impossible. Hugo had always felt at home in the wilderness.

  The small group took down the perimeter guards one by one and stripped them of their weapons and uniforms. El Gorrion liked the uniforms because he saw himself as a general. The uniforms made an infiltration attack easier.

  Hugo would go in with the mask and blades.

  Hugo preferred to attack on neutral territory; men would give up neutral territory. This was their home base, which was almost as dangerous as putting an enemy against a wall. It would not go easy for him, but nothing would go easy for him ever again.

  The only important thing was to get to Zelda. She had changed him deeply and forever—he understood that now. She was his heart, and the idea of her frightened and in pain destroyed him, and it reached into his soul and destroyed that, too.

  In addition to the guards’ uniforms, the Associates took the guards’ radios and used them well, giving reports in Spanish of Kabakas being spotted on different sides of the compound, stoking panic. A few of them could throw knives. Not as well as Hugo could, but knives coming from multiple directions would add to the panic. The one direction they wouldn’t come from was the road out. They would funnel them out.

  It was a decent plan.

  He and Rio split off from the group at the edge. Rio stayed silent as they slipped through the underbrush. At a stop-off in the shadows, Rio offered Hugo a sidearm. It was a white platinum Smith & Wesson—a custom job, from the looks of it. “Slides in and out of your boot like butter and the action is beautiful,” Rio said.

  “I like blades,” Hugo said.

  Rio tipped his head as if to remind him that he was drugged and sluggish. “It’s one of my favorites, this one.” He pressed it into Hugo’s palm, the grip first. “And you’re going after Zelda.”

 
; Hugo took it also because a man like Rio had intuition, and you wanted to heed that when possible. Also, it was more than a weapon; it was a gesture, and Hugo respected a man who spoke like that. It came to Hugo that if he got cut down, Rio could probably do something for Zelda out there.

  “Thank you,” he said, slipping it into his boot.

  The idea was that he and Rio would work as a team at the center, spearing through to get Zelda. Rio would be his invisible partner. Rio could pretend to hold him prisoner if it came to it, and they could do something that way.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Another cut, and then a space of rest. Zelda felt the blood run fast now. She looked away, lightheaded, thinking about savinca flowers, the wild red streak of blooms across the green fields outside Hugo’s home. Cole would get that formula to Julian. Those two men would get along well, actually. Those beautiful flowers would be saved.

  God, she’d had so much beauty in these past days—spending time with her sister, being able to help her. Feeling like a family with Hugo and Paolo. Loving Hugo. She loved him—she really did. Maybe he didn’t love her back, but her love wasn’t conditional. She loved him, and it felt amazing, like something good inside her heart. Being with Hugo made her feel like her old self. Better, really.

  She felt the blood and thought about the Savinca verde.

  “Perhaps we should proceed to the main event.” El Gorrion picked up the blade.

  He touched her just behind the anklebone, cold and sharp on the fleshy indent he meant to slice into.

  “When I sever this muscle, it will pull up into your leg most painfully.”

  He waited, watching her.

  She furrowed her brow, feeling strangely removed from the situation, maybe because she’d lived it over and over in her dreams so many times, and that made it seem less dire. She’d lived through the worst of it already. She was ready.