by Jordan Dane
Familiar aches from the severe beating he took in Cuba came back to punish him. The pain mixed with the horrific flashes of his memory when he discovered the bodies of his wife Elena and baby daughter Ariana after they’d been brutally slain by order of the Borrego drug cartel out of Cuba. If the same people were now responsible for Jacqui’s accident, the guilt of his part in the worsening tragedy would torture him forever.
When would it ever end?
Jolted from his troubling thoughts, Rafael heard the doors to the emergency unit open with a hiss and caught movement in the window’s glass reflection. Athena and Grey had come. He turned as his sister ran into his arms and held him tight, whispering words of comfort into his chest in Spanish.
“Any word?” Grey grabbed his shoulder and squeezed.
“Not yet. She’s still in surgery.” He looked down at Athena, who still clung to him, and said, “If this is about Camila and her father, why would they hurt Jacqui?”
“For the same reason they went after Elena and Ariana.” She pulled from his embrace and ran her hands down his arms. “They punish the innocent, like terrorists.”
She handed him a new cell.
“Here, I brought you a burner phone. Follow protocol. You have to watch your back and Jacqui’s, even here, Rafael. Our whole team is at risk. That’s why we issued the emergency protocol. The feds are—”
Before she could finish, a doctor wearing blue surgical scrubs approached Rafe and extended his hand.
“My name’s Dr. Benjamin Hastings. I understand you’ve been waiting for news regarding Jacqui Lyles. Is that correct?”
“Yes, doctor. My name’s Rafael Madero.” Rafe shook the man’s hand and made quick introductions. “How is she?”
“The surgery went as well as can be expected. She had a compound fracture of the tibia, the shinbone of her left leg, that required a titanium rod and two pins, but the more serious of her injuries was a depressed skull fracture.”
Rafael heard the words MRI and CAT scan, but the doctor’s voice garbled into nothing more than static in Rafe’s mind. He couldn’t get past the words ‘skull fracture.’ He knew a traumatic brain injury could be deadly.
A cop he knew back in Chicago—Karl Burton—had died from a brain injury after he’d crashed his patrol car in hot pursuit of a child abductor. Karl had been Rafe’s training officer. Candace, his TO’s wife of twenty-five years, had to pull the plug on Karl’s body and let him go. Karl wouldn’t have wanted machines to keep him alive. Rafe had been with Candace as she held onto Karl when he took his last breath. Rafael wanted to breathe for him, but that had been impossible.
The voice of Jacqui’s surgeon yanked him from his memories.
“Unfortunately, surgery did not relieve the pressure on her brain,” the doctor said. “The brain swell forced us to induce a coma. We have her in ICU.”
“How long will it take for the swelling to go down?” Athena asked.
“We induced the coma so her body doesn’t perform its natural function of a radical triage to shut off blood flow to the damaged area. We want to relieve the pressure and give her brain time to heal, but there’s no set time for all this to happen. That’s up to Jacqui.”
“Can I see her?” Rafael asked.
The doctor hesitated.
“I know the hospital has policies on what family means, but she has no one else. I’m her family now.” Rafe pointed to Athena and Grey. “We are her family.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The man nodded. “But only one at a time.”
As Rafael watched the surgeon disappear behind the double doors, he braced himself for seeing Jacqui in a coma, kept alive by machines. Would he ever see her open her eyes again? Had he lost any chance of telling her how much he loved her?
He lifted his hand to make the sign of the cross and shut his eyes to pray. Everything would be in God’s hands now.
Chapter 5
Tampa General Hospital
Intensive Care Unit
True to his word, Jacqui’s surgeon had made arrangements for Rafael to see her in the ICU. It had been a blessing and a curse.
It broke his heart to see her in the ICU hooked to machines. Her chest rose and fell because a machine pumped oxygen into her lungs. A monitor marked the beats of her precious heart. He wanted to hate the whirring sounds and beeps or the needle punctured into the bruised skin of her hand, but these things kept her alive.
When he drew closer to her bed, he reached for her lifeless arm. Her fingers were cold. He leaned down and held her hand, kissing each finger.
“It’s me, honey. Rafael.” He spoke only loud enough for her to hear him, as if they were lying next to each other in bed. “Your doctor tells me that you’re in a coma and your body needs time to heal. This might be a good thing, but…I’m scared, mi vida. I can’t lose you, not when we only just found each other.”
A tear drained down his cheeks.
“The nurses say you might hear me, if I talk to you. I pray to God they’re right. I can’t imagine not looking into your eyes again, or hearing your sweet voice, mi amor. But if there is a chance you can hear me, I must try. I can’t bear the thought of you leaving this world without knowing how much I love you.”
Rafe reached for her face and traced a finger down her cheek.
“You were so worried about what I thought of you, when we first met and you came on to me the way you did, but I didn’t deserve you, then or now. You made me want to live again after my wife and baby girl were—” He couldn’t finish. “You have no idea how special you are. You see everyone through the pureness of your heart. You believed in me even when I didn’t.”
Rafael entwined his fingers in hers and squeezed her hand.
“What I came to say is, if God wants you at his side, I understand why. You are an angel, but God forgive me, you are my angel. Please don’t leave me.”
Rafael dropped to his knees and let the tears come—praying for God not to take her.
***
Outside ICU
“Tampa PD hit pay dirt on traffic cams. A former partner of mine sent me these images.”
Athena sat next to Grey in the waiting room of the ICU with a laptop on her knees. She showed him what she’d been sent by her trusted ally within the Tampa police department. Athena hit the button that projected traffic cam photos onto the screen.
The first showed a man behind the wheel of a big rig and the next image captured the face of a man driving a dark sedan through an intersection. The facial clarity was good enough to run against law enforcement databases.
“Facial recognition came up with two names—the hit and run driver of the eighteen-wheeler that crashed into Jacqui and the shooter who killed Clive. Tampa PD did a back-track on the shooter from Clive’s house until they had a good enough image. Both men are Cuban nationals in the U. S. illegally, according to the FBI. The feds and Homeland Security are involved in the search now.”
Athena fixed her gaze on Grey and knew how he felt about sitting on the sidelines of a hunt they should have been a part of. Jacqui and Clive were family. It hurt to stand by and let others search for the men who tore apart their team.
“It should be us, Athena.”
“I know.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “I don’t know how Camila Borrego would’ve found out about the shell casing we retrieved down in Cuba. It was the only evidence that could link Rafael to the death of her father. I destroyed everything, to prevent something like this. I thought it would be enough.”
Athena felt the punch of guilt and suspected it was only a fraction of the pain her half brother Rafael had endured after the brutal slaying of his family.
“Maybe she doesn’t need proof,” Grey said. “People like Camila don’t need courts to dole out their brand of justice. If she even suspects Rafael, that could be enough. She wants blood and it doesn’t matter if her father started everything and killed a young mother and child to send a message.”
Athena hadn’t sl
ept since she’d received the bloody pictures sent to her phone. The gruesome faces of Jacqui and Clive plagued her nights and would always be branded in her memory. She shut her eyes tight to fight back the tears. She didn’t have to be stoic with Grey. He would understand how she felt.
“Do these two assassins have any link to the Borrego cartel?” Grey asked.
“Nothing direct, but they’re known associates. Guns for hire.”
“Is there any way we can tie this to Camila? Maybe we can follow the money she might’ve paid them.”
“The FBI is looking into the money trail. So are our people, but I also called Esteban Ruiz. He’s the Cuban Vice President of the Council of State and the man who had hired us to investigate the cold case murder of Hector Borrego.”
“Yeah, I remember him.”
“He swears he never told Camila anything about our team, even when she pressed him for why he’d paid for us to investigate her father’s murder, but the man’s a real snake. I don’t trust him. He’s a politician with his own agenda and wouldn’t know the truth if it burrowed into him like bad underwear.”
“That’s a visual I didn’t need.”
Something had been gnawing at Athena since the moment she first received the texted pictures on her phone—a question she would’ve known to ask if the images hadn’t shocked her.
“Oh my, God. It’s been staring me in the face.”
“What has?”
“How did they have my cell phone number to text me the pictures? All of us have private numbers.” she asked. “And how did these assassins know where to find Jacqui and Clive…at the exact time they’d be most vulnerable, on the road driving to work and at home, getting ready for a mission?”
It didn’t take Grey long to figure out what she already suspected.
“Camila must’ve had our cell numbers. Her men could’ve tracked us by GPS and known exactly where we were at any time. Damn it.”
“I’m glad we gave the emergency protocol order. Everyone on our team should have ditched their cells and be on burner phones by now, except—”
“Rafferty. Did you ever make contact with him?” Grey asked.
“No. His phone has been out of service and I’m worried. No voice mail. I’ve sent text messages, but he hasn’t answered yet. We can’t lose anyone else, Grey.”
“Send Sam another text to ditch his phone. Even though it’s our only way to get in touch with him, we have to do it and pray he gets the message.”
“I’m on it.”
When Athena couldn’t hide the misery on her face, Grey reached a hand to her shoulder and fixed his eyes on hers.
“I know you want to be here for your brother, but we have an obligation to our team to put an end to this threat. We need to find Camila Borrego. If she’s in Cuba, playing it safe, let the FBI follow the money trail to see if it leads back to her, but I have a feeling this woman has balls, big brass ones. If she’s on U.S. soil—illegally, like her hired guns—we can prove she’s behind this and catch her with her pants down.”
Athena nodded and said, “Yeah, let’s do this, for Clive and Jacqui.”
***
Everglades
Headlights cast ghostly shadows over ravaged and fallen trees. In the dim lights off the dashboard, Sam watched Kate drive with her hands ‘white knuckle’ tight on the steering wheel as she jostled over deep ruts in the dirt road and navigated through flood waters where the river had overrun its banks.
After getting Athena’s earlier text message—knowing the Omega Team had called for immediate emergency protocols—Sam worried what it might mean for Kate. He didn’t think it was likely that an enemy after his team would follow him into a hurricane, but he had Kate with him. It wasn’t just his life on the line any more. Any risk he took now would put her in the crosshairs of a brutal drug cartel with a long memory and no mercy.
As Kate drove, Sam racked his brain to come up with a plan.
But when the blistering wind and rain suddenly stopped, as if they’d driven through a time portal into an eerie stillness, it took Sam only a moment to realize what had happened. His ear drums popped from the pressure of what felt like an air-tight vacuum.
The pitch black of storm clouds battled against an unnatural light that leached through shadows to cast deep purple roots into the dark. At first he thought the strange glow meant morning had come. He’d lost track of time and he hoped that’s all it was, but when the realization hit, he knew something worse would be headed toward them.
The search for his wounded mother had taken a dark turn he hadn’t counted on. He reached for his cell and thumbed the keys, praying he now had service to call for help, but no such luck. When he saw another message from Athena, his worry for Kate sent him into a dismal spiral.
Camila Borrego had acquired the cell phone numbers of his team and could track anyone by GPS. He turned off his cell and shut his eyes tight. It could already be too late.
He had no choice now. He had to bring the fight to Camila and whoever she had with her. Sam had to find his momma and come up with a diversion to allow her and Kate to get to safety. Caught in the eye of the storm, Sam knew time had become his enemy.
“Is your phone working? Maybe we can call for help,” she said.
“No. Service is still out.”
Sam couldn’t tell Kate what he’d learned—that a ruthless drug kingpin had come to the glades to kill him and his mother and she had the GPS capability to hunt him, now that he’d tipped his location to her. Kate would want to stay with him, but he couldn’t put her at risk.
“The rain stopped…and it’s too damned quiet. What is this?” she asked. “Has the hurricane passed?”
Sam heard the tremble in her voice.
“No. We’re in the eye.” He peered into the murky sky and tensed his jaw.
“But that’s good, isn’t it? At least we’re not getting drenched.”
“It only means we have to move fast now. We have to find Momma while the storm is calm. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll hit the backside of the eye. If it comes at the wrong time, it’ll feel like we hit a wall at full speed.”
To keep his mind off the fight ahead, Sam explained to Kate that it was highly unusual to experience the actual eye since most hurricanes were vast and covered miles, with the eye being small and at the center of the destruction. Depending on the speed of the hurricane and the width of the eye, they would have no idea when the worst would hit.
Brutal winds would punish them on the backside of the storm.
“We found the eye of the storm for a reason, Sam. We could use the good karma to find Geneva.”
Sam didn’t have the heart to tell her what he thought—that their luck would be a ticking time bomb.
“Then let’s make every second count, Kate. Step on it.” Sam pointed up ahead. “Take the next right. If the river didn’t wash out the road, it’ll be a short cut.”
“You have an idea where she is?”
“I hope so.”
Kate hit the gas and bounded over runnels of river water and debris with her truck tires spraying water laden with heavy silt. Sam prayed he’d be right about where he thought his mother had gone.
“We’re coming, Momma,” he muttered under his breath. “Hold on.”
***
Gator Lodge
Camila heard the alert signal coming from her laptop and her heart raced. It could only mean one thing.
“Sam Rafferty. He’s triggered his cell phone GPS.”
Camila leaped off the bed, naked, and bounded over to the motel desk to gaze down at her laptop. Adrenaline surged through her veins and made her bare skin tingle with the excitement of the hunt. Her nipples tightened into nubs with the chill in the air as the storm still rumbled outside.
“Tavio. Amadeo. Get up. Now,” she ordered.
She had allowed Tavio to stay in the bed with her. The warmth of his skin and the smell of his blood had aroused her. He had taken her with the force she always
demanded of him with punishing thrusts that made her body ache. The injured twin sat up in bed and flicked on a light on the nightstand. Welts of buckshot had turned swollen but the bite marks on his chest and belly had been her idea of foreplay.
Amadeo had slept on the floor. When he rolled over, she caught the shadow of inflamed teeth marks on his body. Tavio’s brother had taken the brunt of her passion. She’d drawn his blood into her mouth and the taste of him lingered on her lips, but she had rewarded him by giving him her body to do whatever he pleased.
Amadeo had forced her on her belly and mounted her from behind, while his twin brother watched. She writhed under the weight of him, crying out when he pounded into her, and Tavio held her down. Camila had found a new way for the Vega twins to please her.
Camila licked her lips—as the Vega brothers stood naked in front of her—and let her eyes feast on their bodies.
“Get dressed,” she demanded as she glanced down on the computer screen. “Forget the old woman, for now. Today we shall hunt bigger prey and I think I know where he’s going.”
***
Everglades
Sam navigated Kate through a series of dirt road switchbacks, feeling his way through the swamp he’d spent countless hours exploring as a kid. Fallen trees and heaps of rubble from destroyed homes were scattered through a stripped and barren section of the glades.
The creepy stillness of the hurricane’s eye lingered, but the hair on the back of Sam’s neck stood on end, warning him their time would soon run out, one way or another. Adrenaline had him itching to get boots on the ground, but the storm and his unrelenting second thoughts had not made anything easy.
He couldn’t get his mind off the sick, twisted face of Camila, a beautiful woman with a black heart and no soul. He feared for his mother and for Kate, too. Sam couldn’t risk Kate’s life, even if she did carry a gun and knew how to handle herself.
He thought about how powerless and gut wrenched Rafael must’ve felt after seeing the bodies of his innocent wife and child, brutally slain on the orders of Hector Borrego. Sam couldn’t help but put himself in Rafael’s boots. It was bad enough his mother had been drawn into treacherous Omega business.
