by Amy Lane
“A young lady?” she asked coyly, and the smile was one of the most charming things Cash had ever seen.
“A young man,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t take offense.
She held her hand up to her mouth and giggled, eyes bright. “Young men were always my favorite too,” she teased, and he laughed back. Next to him Preston said, “Leave it, Colonel, leave it,” and Colonel whined, clearly sensing something he thought Preston should know about.
Cash looked at Preston, whose eyes were glued to their quarry. “Let’s go,” he said quietly, and Preston gave a hard nod. Cash turned back to the weaver woman and smiled. “Thanks, mami. Your work is beautiful.”
She gave that beatific smile again, and Cash and Preston took off.
The hard part was staying out of sight. Cash took point and let Preston and the dogs follow up at a more sedate pace, and Cash had a moment to give thanks for how well-trained Preston’s companions were. Any other dogs would be whining or barking or straining at the lead, but whenever Cash peered behind him, Preston was walking unhurriedly along, the dogs at his heels like soldiers in formation. Colonel would have the occasional moment of flaking out, and Cash knew the small, sharp whistles that brought him back, but the men with the guns didn’t look behind them, so they didn’t seem to sense the tail.
Cash didn’t recognize either of the goons, which was good. He hadn’t been at Tranquilo Paz very long, but he figured if he hadn’t seen them during his stay, they were possibly new—or hadn’t been around the inmates a lot. They dodged down the spice aisle and then made a turn to carts filled with iced produce—heads of lettuce and cabbage, carrots, tomatoes—all of it fresh and dampened with squirt bottles, clean, colorful, and inviting.
He spotted a slightly larger booth, one with a canopy overhead and misters lining the eaves. Taking a chance that Brielle would still have that core of princess in her that would enjoy the cooler air and the shade, he darted around the throng and slipped inside the second entrance as the gunman positioned himself outside the first.
Good, the goons didn’t shop, so that would leave Cash and Brielle alone. This whole thing would be a lot easier with her participation.
“Remember,” Brielle said as she and the other woman entered the tent. “Tranquilo doesn’t like red food—no tomatoes or red bell peppers.”
“I remember,” the girl whispered. Thin and pale as mashed potatoes, the only thing keeping the girl from looking dead was a pink and peeling nose. Her white-blond hair had been butched like Brielle’s, sticking out at odd angles from underneath the wide-brimmed floppy hat.
“I’ll get the green beans and broccoli. You get the carrots and turnips,” Brielle said, turning away from her companion and pulling out thin linen produce bags from under her robe.
“Because you’re allergic to turnips,” Cash murmured, loud enough for her to hear. He was standing on the opposite side of the cart she was rooting through, half hidden by a fold in the tent.
Brielle gasped, the first sign of animation Cash had seen her show, and glanced up, horrified.
“Cash?” she whispered, her voice even quieter than his. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting you out,” he said softly. “I promised, remember?”
Brielle gave a faint moan. “I…. Cash, I can’t. He… he figured out I helped you get away. He… I can’t do those things again.”
“Well, he won’t get you back this time,” Cash said harshly. “This time, I’m here with friends—”
“Friends?” Her forehead bunched. “Who do we know that could get me out of here?”
“Good people,” Cash said. “Smart and trained. Honey, you can come with me willingly or unwillingly, but one way or another, we’re getting you out of here.”
He heard her trembling breath and saw the dusty track of a tear down her face. “I was so glad you got out,” she moaned. “Why did you come back?”
“For you.” He reached out and stroked her hand where it still rested on a bunch of green beans. “Honey, I promised. I got sidetracked—there was an earthquake, remember?”
And her eyes sharpened. She searched him up and down. “Were you hurt?”
“I was trapped,” Cash said, not wanting to remember those moments but shuddering anyway. “A friend of mine was hurt—we had to get him to surgery. By the time I got back to the compound, you were gone. It… it took me months to track you down again, Bri. I’m sorry. I am. But I’m here now. Please? Please come with—”
The voice in his ear was gruff and ugly with menace. “You don’t talk to the women.”
“Okay,” Cash said, swallowing hard when the cold metal of a gun barrel clunked against his temple. “Sorry. She seemed to need help.”
“She doesn’t,” Brielle said, meeting his eyes meaningfully.
“Sure,” Cash said. He shook his head and narrowed his eyes, and he knew she got the idea that this wasn’t over when she tilted her head and mouthed, “No!”
“Later,” he mouthed, holding his hands up over his head.
“Just go.”
Cash turned to the guard with an ingratiating smile. “Sorry—so sorry. My bad.” He kept looking as innocuous as possible as he pulled out of the tent and went walking back the way he’d come, shoulder bumping Preston and heading for a gap between two of the larger tents, somewhere big enough for the dogs to follow—with, of course, an obligatory stop to pee on the tent stakes.
Cash sucked air in through his teeth. “That’s not civilized,” he said, thinking that this was a food booth.
“They’re only hitting tent stakes,” Preston said with a shrug. “This is why you wash produce when you get it home. What’d she say?”
“She’s afraid,” Cash told him. “But I have a plan. They have to go out the way they came in, right?”
Preston nodded. “They’re going to be loaded down with food. The contact said they walk to the boat they keep down there on the beach.”
“Great,” Cash said. “I say we hide between a couple of the tents near the entrance. We either yank the girls away before the guys see us and hide in the tents, hoping they fear the authorities, or we wait until they get down to the beach and sic the dogs on the bad guys.”
Preston’s eyes widened with outrage. “My dogs do not attack!”
Cash pressed his palms to his eyes. “Augh! You’re right. You told us that—and so did Glen.” He glared at Colonel. “You really don’t serve any practical purpose, you know. Even I can tell she’s sedated by looking at her.”
“Yes, but do you know where their supply is?” Preston asked. “That’s really his best thing.”
Cash’s eyes widened. “Wait! That’s it! Those guys are going to be loaded down with produce—what do you want to bet they didn’t bring their drugs up here, particularly since the police have their own narcotic sniffers. They don’t care if it’s Benadryl or heroin. The guys’ll get busted. So let’s go down to the beach—”
“There’s no cover at the beach!” Preston argued.
“We’ll find out which boat they came in—”
“What if there’s another boat there smuggling! Those boats could have anything from cold medicine to hallucinogens in their holds. We won’t know until Colonel really gets cracking.”
Cash drew up short. “Ooh, yeah, that’s a good point. It would be a real shame to hide out in a boat and get shot because we bothered the wrong drug smugglers. Wow, Preston—you’re good at this.”
“I think,” Preston admonished. “And I like your first plan. The dogs won’t attack, but they will search, and if the men’s arms are full, they’ll be occupied while you get the girls. There were tents right at the entrance that could be perfect cover.”
Cash nodded, letting out a breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, wondering where his own common sense had disappeared to.
“You’re worried,” Preston said, and while it wasn’t exactly nursemaiding, it was truthful, and Cash appreciated it. “Nobody thinks well when they’re worried.
Let’s get into position.”
The next half hour was stifling—and interminable. Preston pulled out a canteen and a little portable bowl and let the dogs drink while Cash retrieved his own water bottle and took a swig. That “space” they’d seen between the tents was about eighteen inches wide, and the canvas was musty, seeming to absorb whatever heat the sun put out and projecting it on the helpless inmates stuffed between tent flaps like tamales in their wrappers.
“Do you see them yet?” Preston asked patiently. He hadn’t spoken much—but then, physical unpleasantness seemed to make him withdraw. Cash got that. It made his own brain hard to control.
“Gorilla number one coming up,” Cash whispered. “I’ll take out the guy in the rear.”
“Use this.” Preston pushed a spool of duct tape into Cash’s hands that had apparently been living in the small pack Preston carried on his back, and Cash looked at it, impressed.
“Yeah?”
“Shh!”
Cash was small, but he’d gotten in his fair share of fights running wild in Jalisco. He positioned himself sideways and watched.
The first mercenary passed, arms loaded down with what looked to be a freezer full of meat. He was grunting and sweating, his weapon put away, and Cash looked at Preston, who wiggled between the two tents on the other side, dogs at his heels, with the plan of circling around to take the guy out when Cash got his buddy.
The girls passed next, arms loaded with baskets, and Cash noted that Brielle looked exhausted, and her eyes were red. Oh, sweetheart, help is coming.
Her companion passed too, arms trembling under her load. As the mercenary in the suit drew up alongside him, Cash jumped out from between the two tents and threw his elbow right into the guy’s temple. The man went down with a grunt, his freezer chest falling to his feet with a thump but not opening, and Cash grabbed the duct tape and got the guy’s hands bound as he was flopping sideways to the ground, then his mouth. He left him there, eyes glazed and wild as he tried to figure out what hit him, and grabbed Brielle’s companion’s arm.
“Run,” he told her, taking her things and setting them down.
“But—”
He turned her the opposite direction and growled, “Run!” as Preston rounded the corner and shouted, “Colonel, mark!”
Brielle gave a breathless gasp and Cash shouted, “Brielle, run!”
She stared at him in shock and then watched as the gunman in front squealed in surprise when Colonel ran up to him and started barking angrily.
“Run!” Cash shouted again, and as the gunman dropped his ice chest and reached for his weapon, Cash leaped on him from behind, wrapping his arm around the guy’s neck and choke-holding him to the ground.
The body in his grasp went limp, and Cash had pulled back to fumble for the duct tape when a musty-smelling canvas bag whomped over his head and the world went dark.
He struggled hard, kicking out and using his elbows. He connected with a slender body and heard an outraged shriek, as well as Brielle’s scream of “Trudy, no!”
And then the unmistakable smack of a hand on flesh and Brielle’s moan before a sharp needle jab poked him in the arm and he blacked out.
When he came to, he was in the bottom of a small watercraft, the roar of the engine in his ears and the scent of salt water all around.
Unexpected Package
CLIMBING the rock wall really was easier than killing the snake so they could use the crevice, so that’s what they did.
“I can’t believe that snake is so fucking big,” Glen huffed as he and Spencer pulled up the last bit of the cliff face. Poor Damien—Glen’s shoulder was in better shape than Damien’s leg, and that cliff had been a bear. Damien and Spencer had left pitons in to help make the climb up and down easier too, which meant Damien had done this without ropes.
“Scared the piss out of me,” Spencer admitted, securing the rope at the top. They’d brought enough to make harnesses to help lower people down, because panicky people didn’t jump off of cliffs so much as fall off of them. “Them critters don’t cuddle.”
Glen suppressed a snort. Leave it to Spencer to put it like that.
Once atop the mesa, they practically belly crawled to the edge of the drop to the valley. The foliage was sparse this close up—desert plants, manzanita, brush—but it was enough to provide cover. As Glen and Spencer ran, they unrolled a bolt of gauze camo over their heads, covering nearly a quarter mile. The roll of thin fabric had taken up most of the fishing boat they came in, and Spencer and Damien had apparently argued all the way back to shore to decide which stretch of land they’d most need it on. They’d determined the top half of the hill, where the cover was sparsest. Just as well, since the motherfucker was heavy, and who wanted to carry that through scrub?
The cloth ran out, and they kept going, unencumbered, making good time in their all-terrain boots and camo gear.
Spencer was highly armed, with a semiautomatic strapped to his back, a sidearm in a holster, a bowie knife, and various other weapons packed around his body.
Glen had one knife, one gun, and his quick mouth. Maybe Spencer carried so many weapons because talking people down wasn’t a gift of his, but Glen wasn’t going to ask him as they were hauling ass through the sand and scrub of the desert island.
Spencer slowed to a halt in time to warn Glen he should do the same, and then he dropped to his stomach and sidled to the edge of a clearing.
And there stood the most beautiful, impractical, ecologically stupid house Glen had ever seen in the middle of what should have been pristine wilderness.
“This guy should be shot,” he said in horror. “Forget brainwashing kids and bilking people for his damned fake church and rehab center—this is heinous.”
“There are four fully operational A/C units on that roof,” Spencer said, his laconic tone making that a full agreement. “And that’s a two-story building. Do you know what he could have done with some ceiling fans and some shade?”
“Cut down all the shade,” Glen said, looking at the massacred palm trees and manzanita brush lying where it had been slaughtered. He didn’t want to think about what had been done with the wildlife.
“I’m a fair sniper,” Spencer said soberly. “Me and Elsie flew for the Navy, remember? My CO put me up to be a SEAL but I didn’t want to leave Elsie behind. I could take him out. One bullet. No one would ever know.”
Glen stared at him. “Uh… we, uh, aren’t really, uh, that sort of operation, Spence. Just, you know, get the kids and go, and maybe stand up for ourselves. Just saying.”
Spencer nodded soberly, unoffended. “Let me know. I don’t charge for assholes. Sayin’.”
“Understood,” Glen said, thinking Mercenaries R Us would look very unattractive as a logo. “Okay, do we know where the kids are now?”
“Look out over there.” Spence handed a pair of field glasses to Glen, who scoped out the land on the other side of the house from their vantage point on the hillside. It was soil there—sandy but made more arable with some obviously imported dirt—and there were ten to twelve figures, swathed in white, working like ants to turn what looked to be two acres of garden into a self-sustaining enterprise. It obviously wasn’t ready yet—nothing was completely grown, and Glen wasn’t even sure things were planted for the right season or climate there. Besides if Brielle was going shopping at the farmer’s market, they obviously weren’t ready to harvest yet.
“They’ve got sheep,” Glen observed, panning to the cliffside beyond the garden. “To milk, to shave, to eat? I wonder which.”
“One sheep’ll be eaten in a week,” Spencer said, like he knew. “I’d say to shave. Never heard of sheep milk, but there might be some goats.”
Glen grunted. “Hope not. Goats are mean.”
The smell hit him almost immediately after that. It was like six tons of cat-piss mixed with rotting milk.
“Oh my God, you had to summon it!” Spencer moaned, and they both scrambled to their feet to meet a very ang
ry billy goat—complete with bell.
“The stench,” Glen said, tempted to do the unmanly thing and run away screaming. “It’s… it’s unbelievable.”
Billy looked at them both with benign eyes, chewing rapidly. Glen started to back away, and the goat nyaaaaad loudly, with a shaking of his bell, and Spencer and Glen met eyes.
Spencer swore. “Okay,” he said, bending down and pulling up patchy handfuls of razor grass. “You need to head toward the inmates. I’m gonna calm him down a little.”
Glen tried not to gape. “You’re the billy-goat whisperer?”
Spencer lifted a negligent shoulder. “Someone finds me charming.”
“And doesn’t mind your burrito gas, probably,” Glen retorted. But it was working. Spencer fed the goat tufts of grass, and Glen slowly backed away. “There’s a big patch of grass to your right, Spence,” Glen said, backing up a little more quickly.
“That’s a big help, you bastard. Now move!”
Glen did, heading sideways, now, until he was sidling along the edge of the cover, trying to find a place to get the attention of the people working to see if anyone wanted to be rescued.
He skirted the clearing around the house, keeping the building between himself and the gun towers on general principle, then found some shade under a group of squat palm trees with some sawgrass growing between them. He stayed in their shadow, conscious of the ocean roaring into the cove not far away, and was about to try to catch somebody’s eye when a loud creaking of metal and gears made everybody—farmers, guards, Glen—cringe.
“I hate that,” a young woman whispered, shaking a little.
“God, me too,” said the young man next to her. Both of them made agonized eye contact for a moment until a guard shouted, “Hey! You two! No talking. Meditation only.”
Glen glared from his position behind a tree. Ass. Hole. Then he peered in the direction of the noise.
First he saw the cove, stretching out below the house, big enough for one or two boats—at one time, it had been pristine.
