“We need to get out of Granada.”
“You be careful,” Rick said as he took her hand, squeezing it to make a point.
He handed Annie a key. “A white Mini Cooper is parked in the lot around the corner.”
“Thanks.” She nodded as he still held on to her hand. There was more than professional courtesy in his gesture.
“And, Annie, remember: fate doesn’t rule your future, you do.”
ANNIE WAS BORN Annabeth Sandoval to Midiva Rajo and Carlos Sandoval, though before her first birthday, her fashion photographer father abandoned his young family and was never spoken of again.
They had lived a glittering life. Her mother was a fashion model whose beautiful face graced the covers of Vogue, Elle, and all the other top magazines of her day. Midiva was stick-thin with dark Mediterranean eyes that were mirrored in her baby daughter’s face. Despite the birth of Annabeth, Midiva kept her figure and her source of income well into her late twenties when Annabeth was all of ten. She would likely have ridden the wave of success for many more years, if she hadn’t fallen victim to what she called her family’s curse.
They spoke of it as a curse—and with all of the evidence at hand it seemed it could be nothing but that. Midiva’s mother had died at the age of twenty-nine, leaving behind twelve-year-old Midiva and her fourteen-year-old sister, Rose. Their grandmother had passed at twenty-eight, and it was believed that their great-grandmother had not lived to see twenty-five. Rose had died as a teenager. Each woman had been struck down in her prime by a different disease, alike only in their swiftness and cruelty. Not one ever knew the other side of thirty.
When Midiva died from pancreatic cancer, four months shy of her thirtieth birthday, there was no one left to care for Annabeth: no sister, no grandmother, no cousins, no father to magically appear and rescue her.
Annabeth fell into the foster care system in New York City, where she had lived for the last six months of her mother’s life. She had spent the first ten years of her life in the glamorous cities of Paris, Milan, and London, eating the finest foods, sleeping in the finest hotels, safe in the warm embrace of her glittering mother. But now, all that became a distant memory, replaced by cold dinners from a can and sleeping in crowded bedrooms where she had to battle for a blanket. She was teased, taunted, and sometimes beaten up by the other foster children. Bouncing from home to home, she became in quick succession a member of two families who plagued the system only for the paycheck it provided, offering no love or kindness to young Annabeth.
That all changed when she arrived at her third foster home. The McGuinns were different; they had two young boys of their own and one foster child by the name of Enrique Vajos, who preferred to be called Rick so as not to stick out in the Irish home. Annabeth was given her own bedroom, the food was warm and comforting, they made her go to school and watched her do her homework. The McGuinns were by no means wealthy, barely eking out a living in the North Bronx as elementary school teachers. They had no intention of shuffling Annabeth off to another family, and they let her know they were committed to seeing her reach her eighteenth birthday and establish a life for herself.
But despite the reassuring comforts of this home, she feared she was preparing herself for a life that would never come to pass, that death would find her at a young age no matter what she did.
She learned the most from Rick. The seventeen-year-old boy was wise beyond his years; he had been a ward of the system since he was six, barely able to remember what his birth mother looked like the day she was arrested, never knowing his father, who was in prison for first-degree murder. With his family history of drugs and criminal activity, he understood how hard it was to fight against fate, especially when society seemed to judge you by your parents’ actions. Like Annabeth, he understood how hard it was to be torn from your childhood reality and thrust into a bureaucratic system, but he was determined to have a different future. He told Annabeth that there was no such thing as fate, some kind of invisible force steering people’s lives. He taught her that they lived in a world where people all too often believed that statistics were destiny, but that was far from the truth. Statistics said that no batter would ever get a hit in the bottom of the ninth with an oh-and-two count on a Friday night in May. Statistics said that if you weren’t married by forty, you stood less than a 10 percent chance of ever saying “I do.” That no airline stock would ever go up in value by more than 8 percent in a year, no matter how well the stock market was doing. It was all bullshit, Rick said. Men hit baseballs, people got married, and stocks rose and fell as a result of people’s own actions, not fate. Statistics didn’t rule her future; the only thing that did was her own actions.
Annabeth took what he said to heart. She was determined to outlive her mother, and every other woman in her family. She devoted herself to becoming as physically and mentally fit as she could be.
But her world crashed once again. She was fifteen when a gang of three broke into their small New York City house. They tied up the McGuinns and their two boys in the living room. They took Annabeth to her bedroom and tied her spread-eagled to her bed and left her there as they ransacked the place. But their goal went beyond a quick snatch and grab. They were gang initiates out to earn their stripes.
She heard the report of a gun four times, each teeth-shattering gun blast preceded by screaming, which finally ceased upon the final shot. She struggled against her binds, her wrists and ankles bleeding with her attempts. Tears flowed down her face as she imagined what had happened.
And then the three entered her room.
RICK ARRIVED HOME late from his after-school job; it was nearly midnight when he found the bodies. He looked upon the scene of the tragedy and ran to Annabeth’s room to find her there naked, tied up, staring at the ceiling. Alive. The police had questioned the two teenage foster children, initially suspecting them of involvement, but they soon understood the true nature of the attack, especially when the evidence of Annabeth’s rape was impossible to ignore. They told Rick and Annabeth that every effort would be made to capture the killers, but they could make no promises.
Rick, being eighteen and designated in the McGuinns’ will as the sole heir to their small estate—all of thirty thousand dollars—assumed guardianship of Annabeth. He had enlisted in the Army and was scheduled to leave for basic training in three weeks, but they gave him an open-ended deferment in light of the circumstances.
Annabeth had become a shell, barely speaking, consumed with silent rage. She slept with the lights on, she triple-locked the doors and windows. She cried on Rick’s shoulder for hours at a time, inconsolable in her grief, lost in her fear of being attacked again.
Rick picked her up one evening, forcing her to leave the house, and took her to a gun range. He put a pistol in her hand and had an instructor give her lessons on how to shoot. Three nights a week they would go to the range. And to Rick’s amazement, as much as her own, she found she had natural talent.
Annabeth could hit a bull’s-eye dead center from fifty yards. Each weapon she tried was like an extension of her arm, of her mind. Her fear slowly subsided as she learned how to protect herself, as she learned she could take charge of her own life. Rick then brought her to a martial arts class, where she learned the basics of self-defense, hand-to-hand combat, the simple moves a woman could use to ward off attack. The ability to protect herself without the use of a weapon. The lessons reminded her that she controlled her destiny, not some gang member, some thug on the street, some twist of fate.
WITH NO BREAK in the triple-homicide case and seemingly no effort on the part of the police to find the McGuinns’ killer, Rick and Annabeth began to drive around at night themselves, hoping they might spot them and report them to the authorities. And one night, on 179th Street, they did. They photographed the killers, followed them, noted where they lived, and turned the information over to the police. But nothing happened: no arrests, no investigation, absolutely nothing.
Despite her newfound
abilities, Annabeth’s dreams were still filled with the horror she had experienced: the sound of the McGuinns being cut down, one by one. The images of the three killers walking into her bedroom that evening nine months earlier still filled her mind. She knew the dreams and the day terrors would never subside until she’d achieved some sort of resolution.
SHE FOUND THEM in a dirty three-bedroom apartment. There were six of them there that day: the three who had raped her and murdered her foster family, and three other gang members. She had watched them for a week, studying their patterns, their arrivals and departures, and noted that around 7:00 a.m. on any day was almost always when these nocturnal creatures finally put their heads down to rest.
She bought a gun off the street, a silencer, two boxes of ammo, and wore gloves when she loaded up. She parked outside the building and waited for sunrise. The three punks arrived home at 5:00 a.m., followed by three others. As the tenement’s activity began to wane, she left her car and entered the building, taking the fire stairs to the second floor. She listened intently for sound or movement. She wore a stocking cap over her black hair, she had dirtied her face in an attempt to mar her beauty, and she dressed in rags, all in the hopes of being ignored by any passersby.
She stood in the hallway, the stench of urine and burnt toast filling her nose. She gave herself a ten count, stepped to the door, and kicked it in.
There were two men asleep on the couch; a single bullet to each split open their heads before they could move. She spun to the first bedroom and fired at the man who was coming out the door, gun in hand, never knowing what happened to him.
She found her three primary marks on the floor in the second bedroom, sleeping on dirty mattresses. She saw their sleeping faces up close, their images filling her with hate, churning her mind.
She paused, allowing the moment to wash over her.
She drew back her leg and kicked the mattress, waking them, watching as the reality of an assassin standing over them registered in their feeble brains.
As they leaped from their beds, reaching for their guns, she pulled the trigger. Without fanfare, without a word, she fired. Three quick shots, taking each of them down. In her mind, she was invincible. She had walked into the lion’s den, stood over thieves, murderers, and rapists, and wiped them from this earth.
She emerged unscathed from the building as if nothing was wrong, climbed into the car, and drove off.
Annabeth had heard people say that revenge left a person with an empty, unsatisfied feeling, but that wasn’t the case for her. She was filled with something she had never felt before. An elation, a freeing of her tethered, overburdened mind. The men who had raped her, who had killed the McGuinns, were dead by her hand, and she wanted to shout to the world of her accomplishment. Her ability, her demeanor, her fearlessness, they had all come to her naturally.
She arrived home to find Rick awake and waiting for her. Without her saying a word, he knew what she had done; he saw the pain was gone from her eyes, saw her new sense of invincibility. He could see what he had created and it scared him.
Annabeth had found her calling. Following Rick’s lead, she enlisted in the Army, quickly rising through the ranks. One of the first female spec ops, she honed her skills in hand-to-hand combat, tae kwon do, aikido. She became adept at using guns, rifles, excelling at whatever weapon she touched. She became an expert in counterintelligence, infiltration, and combat. An unlikely mix in an unlikely world. Her file was classified, and those who were privileged to see it found it redacted, more than 50 percent blacked out.
And in an unlikely congruency, one that proved an excellent cover, Annabeth had grown into a dark beauty like her mother. Cutting her jet-black hair short for convenience only enhanced her allure; her dark eyes and strong cheekbones would have been more at home on a runway than a battlefield. She wasn’t sure if it was the murders of the McGuinns, her brutal rape, or the cruel death of her mother, but every time she killed, she relished it as an elixir that made her feel omnipotent. She felt no shame in her acts, each victim becoming a means to a righteous end and a way toward the restoration of her damaged heart.
But all things aside, her beauty, her childhood, her past, Annabeth was an excellent killer.
“HOW DARE YOU?” KC screamed as the jet door was pulled closed. “You set me up.”
Annie calmly took a seat, finally looking up as KC stormed up the aisle. “As I recall, you were happy to get on my plane, happy to go to Spain.”
“All under false pretenses.”
“Now you understand why I couldn’t possibly have told you what I needed you to do.”
“You put my life in jeopardy!” KC’s voice grew shrill with anger. “You killed those people.”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Let this go?” KC screamed, her face red with rage. “You just involved me in a robbery, a murder—”
“Relax…” Annie pointed at KC’s face. “You’re giving yourself a bloody nose.”
KC wiped a drop of blood from her nose, ignored it, and continued tearing into Annie. “You killed them in cold blood, forced me to commit a major felony—”
“Come now.” Annie smiled. “You can’t possibly think I don’t know everything about you, about everything you have done over the last fifteen years; about all of those thefts, those paintings and boxes and artifacts…”
The jet engines cycled up, the plane lurched forward, and it began to taxi. KC reluctantly sat, strapping herself in, dabbing her nose once more, confirming the trickle of blood had stopped.
“. . . so please don’t give me this phony attitude about what you just did.”
“I never killed a man.”
Annie nodded. “True, but I saw it in your eyes, you could do it.”
“Never.”
The engines’ whine grew into a scream and the jet raced down the runway. KC stared out the window as the ground sped by, and in seconds, the jet leaped into the air, the nose angling upward as they climbed into the sky.
“All those things you did in your past,” Annie said, “it wasn’t just for the money, to support your sister. As much as you want to deny it, it was for something else, the thrill. I saw it in your eyes back in Granada, when you were thinking, opening that safe. It’s your passion, it’s your rush. It’s the most alive I’ve seen you since we met.”
“How do you know all this?”
Annie just smiled coldly.
KC glared at Annie. “Just drop me in London and stay the hell away from me.”
Annie inhaled, unbuckled her seatbelt, walked toward the front of the plane, and entered the cockpit.
KC looked out the window as they climbed over the snow-capped peaks of the Sierras. She didn’t know what to think. But she knew one thing. She’d seen it in Annie’s eyes when she shot that man, she’d seen it as she’d tried to explain herself: Annie’s smile hid her dark soul.
KC realized she was nothing more than a prisoner now. She’d been captured and was now being held at twenty-five thousand feet at the whim of her host. She couldn’t believe any government would authorize the tactics Annie employed, and wondered just how much truth there was to her words. KC reached for and touched the delicate silver necklace around her neck and longed for this day to be over. Michael had given her the necklace when they’d first started dating, when they fell in love, when she was so sure of life and the direction in which she was heading. When she’d trusted Michael and was confident they had a future together.
As the plane leveled off, the late-morning sun in front of them was climbing into the sky. A shiver ran through her. They were not heading toward London. They were heading due east.
CHAPTER 12
Hong Kong was the most densely packed city in the world, but from ten thousand feet on final approach, Michael saw the city as the Chinese wished it to be displayed to the world: grand, spectacular, brightly lit in a rainbow of colors. Enormous skyscrapers reached to heaven, tickling the sky, a concentration o
f towers appearing as if ten cities were crammed together in the space of one. The giant glass structures rose out of the black harbor, silhouetted against the mountains, where the sun was setting behind them. Surrounded on three sides by the South China Sea, the historic metropolis sat at the Pearl River delta, the virtual capital of the Asian continent, the only city in the world on a par with New York.
The Boeing Business Jet touched down at Hong Kong International Airport and taxied to a private terminal in the far-side shipping area. Michael had never been to Hong Kong; in fact, he’d only been to Asia—India and the Himalayas to be exact—once, his leisure and business trips mostly having been confined to the Americas and Europe. He had always been fascinated by the ancient cultures of the Orient, but had learned of them through books, films, and television, where they were simplified and translated for the Western mind. While America was an infant at 235 years of age, European countries prided themselves on their cultures stretching back 500, 800, in some instances 1,200 years, but they all paled next to China, a 4,000-year-old culture with a rich, detailed recorded history from 1,700 years before the birth of Christ.
The jet finally came to a stop. Ground personnel threw chocks under the wheels as a set of gangway stairs was rolled up to the door. When Jon released the exit door with a loud hiss, Michael could feel the pressure release and smell the faint odor of jet exhaust as it invaded the cabin.
Michael and Busch grabbed their bags from the front storage closet and followed Jon down the stairs. They both watched as the coffin was rolled out of the baggage compartment. Two men in military dress uniforms draped a United States flag over it and rolled it over to an adjacent U.S. military cargo plane.
Jon stood next to Michael, his eyes on the coffin as it disappeared up into the belly of the aircraft.
“Where are they taking him?” Michael asked.
“He’ll get a burial with full military honors.”
Michael looked at Jon.
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