Before Sabrina could answer, the boy came flying down the steps, face and hands freshly scrubbed, “I wanna go first,” he yelled, blowing past them, his short little legs carrying him down the cobblestone path.
Christina smiled after him, as if she hadn’t just told her that his death warrant was all but signed. “Come on, I’d like to show you something,” she said, snagging her sleeve to turn her to the path Leo had just rocketed down.
They walked for a while, passing by elaborate flowerbeds and under shade trees until they came to an enormous oak that had no business growing on an island off the coast of Colombia. There was a tire swing hanging from a low-slung branch, and for a moment she thought of her grandmother’s house. Not the one she had grown up in, but the house Lucy had shared with Michael—the one she’d died in.
“He built this for me when I was five,” Christina said, watching as Leo threaded himself through the hole in the tire and begin to swing back and forth. Sabrina didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. She knew.
“See, I knew what he did. I knew he killed people—a lot of
people—for my father.” Christina looked at her, her eyes glittering in the early morning sun. “I knew that people were afraid of him. The other guards whispered about him. The maids. They all told stories of the horrible things El Cartero did for money. How merciless and brutal he was.” She shook her head. “But I never knew El Cartero. I knew Michael. He taught me how to ride a bike and built me a tire swing,” she said. “He would push me on that swing and take me to the beach. I loved him, and even if he never said it, I know he loved me.”
Sabrina could hear a million questions trembling behind those words. She didn’t have answers for any of them except one. “He still does.”
“He’ll come for you, won’t he?” Christina said, sounding both hopeful and sad.
Sabrina shook her head. Looking at the swing, she was suddenly sure. “No; he’ll come for us. All of us.”
Seventy-Nine
Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
October 2012
Lydia was right. He needed to get out of here.
It’d been nearly three weeks since his altercation with Estefan, and he still couldn’t stop thinking about it. What he’d said. What he’d done.
His only regret is that he hadn’t sliced that little bastard ear to ear and dropped him into the ocean. Estefan hadn’t given him the chance; he’d left that night—taking one of the boats docked on the beach—and hadn’t returned.
As soon as he’d heard the boat pull away from the dock, Michael made his way to the room where he’d last seen Lydia to find her gone. He’d searched the house from top to bottom—every room behind every locked door—with the same results.
Wherever Estefan had gone, he’d taken Lydia with him.
Michael dropped the book he’d taken from the library onto the floor and stood, making his way to his little window, looking out across the walled compound to the sea beyond it. It was late—in the small hours just before sunrise—and he couldn’t sleep. He found the satellite phone he kept hidden and dialed the only number he knew by heart, not caring that it was too late to call her. He needed to hear her voice. To tell her he was finally coming home.
He stared out the window, listening to the long distance hiss between rings. He wasn’t really worried that Frankie wasn’t answering—it was barely three a.m. her time, and a Monday, so that meant she’d worked a dinner shift at the diner the night before. She’d probably gotten home late and stayed up until God knew when, studying or doing homework. He hung up without leaving a voicemail, tossing the phone on the bed.
Lydia was gone, but Christina was still here.
He’d made her a promise, one that until now, had been easy enough to keep. He’d promised to stay. To take care of her. She wouldn’t understand and she’d be hurt, but there was nothing he could do, was there? He wasn’t her father. He wasn’t anyone. Just some merc her father hired to watch over her.
The phone rang quietly, its volume turned down, and he snatched it up, instantly recognizing the number on the display screen.
“Hey, kiddo. I didn’t mean to wake you up—”
“Who is this?”
The voice on the other end didn’t belong to Frankie, but he recognized it. His Aunt Gina. He almost hung up, silently cursing his sister’s carelessness at leaving the phone where their aunt could find it.
“Please … who is this? Do you know where she is?” his aunt sobbed into the phone, not so much desperate as hysterical. “I’ll give you anything you want, just—please let her come home.”
The level ground beneath his feet shifted, tilting him forward, banging his forehead against the glass he stared through. “Gina. What are you saying? Where’s Frankie? What’s happening?”
His aunt’s sobbing quietly into something that sounded like humming, the line between them crackling. “Mikey.” The moment she said it, he knew. She never called him that—not ever.
“Oh no. No, Gina. Don’t say it. Don’t you fucking—”
“Mikey, you’ve got to come home. Frankie is missing,” she said.
Frankie is missing.
“How long?” She was crying again so he yelled, determined to be heard over the keening sobs that vibrated against his ear. “Damn it, Gina, how long?”
“A week. She didn’t come home from work last Friday night and I thought maybe …” Her words dissolved into another round of sobs. “I thought—”
“I’m coming. Do you hear me? I’m coming.”
A soft breath, like a relieved sigh. “Hurry.”
And then she was gone.
He held the phone, staring at it for what felt like hours. It took him a few minutes to figure out what he hadn’t been able to place before. His aunt hadn’t sounded surprised to hear the voice of her supposedly dead nephew. She knew he was alive. For a moment he allowed himself to believe that it was a trap. That DHS or the CIA or whoever the fuck was looking for him these days had figured out that he’d been in contact with Frankie, and they were using her to lure him home.
It was possible. His Aunt Gina had never been his biggest fan. She’d do just about anything if she thought it meant keeping Frankie safe. He allowed himself to believe it. Let relief wash over him … but only for a moment.
She’d been frantic, teetering on the edge of hysteria. There was no faking that kind of emotion.
Questions like how and how long didn’t matter. Not now.
Michael dropped the phone in his pocket and reached under the bed to pull out his duffle. Yanking drawers open, he threw his clothes inside, wadding and stuffing as fast as he could. Rifling through the books he kept on his shelf, he pulled out a small fortune in cash and a clean passport, tucking both into his boot. Buying his way onto a container ship or smuggling outfit would take time he didn’t have. He’d have to fly direct. That meant international airports. Customs. Almost certain capture. But it didn’t matter; he still had to try.
Home. He needed to get home. To Frankie. He needed—
The little window he’d been staring out of only minutes before started to rattle softly in its frame. He didn’t have to look to understand what it meant. He imagined the modified Black Hawk lowering itself onto the pad, signaling the last thing he needed right now.
Alberto Reyes had returned.
Eighty
Michael stepped off the plane, his boots sinking into the thick, damp Colombian soil, his gaze going directly to the sturdy-looking outbuilding about twenty-five yards south of the runway. Next to it was Ben’s Lear and another plane he’d never seen before. As soon as he was clear of the jet, it turned itself around on the runway and taxied down the strip of dirt, flying back to Spain or wherever it was supposed to go next.
The bay door on the shed rolled up, its sharp metal clang loud enough to scatter a flock of sunbitterns, their l
arge wings lifting them in the air to carry them away.
“You catch any sleep?” Ben said, meeting him halfway between the shed and the airstrip.
“Some,” he said, looking at his watch, doing a quick calculation in his head. It was seven a.m. local time, which meant they had about twelve hours to plan out and execute a full-scale assault on an island fortress fifty miles away. “We should probably get started.”
“We already have,” Ben said, falling into step beside him. Michael was about to ask who we was, but a few steps closer meant he didn’t have to. The kid must’ve read his expression because he started talking—fast. “Look, I know it’s not ideal, but—”
Michael looked at the small group of people clustered around a map they had spread out on a worktable. Lark and Strickland he recognized right away, and the woman too, but the other man he could only vaguely recall. “Ideal? Is that code for we’re all gonna die?”
“Speak for yourself,” the woman he knew as Mary said, straightening her bent posture to give him the once-over. “I happen to enjoy living and have no intention of dying for some broody cop and a snot-nose kid.”
“Yeah, let’s start with you.” He turned to Ben, who was rubbing the back of his neck like it hurt. “Why is she here?”
“I never left,” she said, leaning her hip up against the table. “Someone had to keep an eye on the situation while you were busy cleaning up the mess you made in Spain.”
“Being Livingston Shaw’s personal pet doesn’t make you bullet-proof, Church,” he all but growled at her. “Yeah. I know who you are.”
She laughed, her hand settling on the Glock strapped to her hip. “You kill one chick and suddenly—”
“Both of you need to shut the fuck up,” Strickland said, still bent over the map they’d been studying. “Because neither one of you are helping. Now”—he looked up, aiming his narrowed glare directly at Michael—“why don’t you get your ass over here and tell us the best place to do a night drop on the island.”
Michael approached the table to see that they were studying a map of the island. “Where’d you get this?” he said, recognizing the layout and shape of the beach, the dense jungle between there and the house.
“It was here,” Lark said. “This is Reyes’s private airfield. There’s all kinds of shit here.”
“And he just left it unguarded?” Michael looked around before letting his gaze land on Ben. “That doesn’t sound like Reyes at all.”
“There were six of them when we landed yesterday, but they started getting antsy when we didn’t take off right away,” Church said, distracted by the map.
“So … ”
She looked up at him. “So I killed them,” she said, dropping her finger on the map near the coastline. “What about here? I think it’s a good drop zone, but Officer Friendly here thinks it’s too open.”
Michael looked where she was pointing. “He’s right,” he said, trailing his fingers up the line where water met sand. “Reyes’s compound is less than a mile from here.” He tapped his finger on the spot on the map that marked the house. “I’ll have to drop on the other side of the island and pack it in.”
“We.”
He looked up from the map to see Strickland watching him. “Look. I get that you care about her and I get that—”
“Save it. Your sidekick over there already gave me the we’re gonna kill ’em, not arrest ’em speech and you know what?” Strickland gave him a cool smile. “I’m down with that.”
He studied Sabrina’s partner for a few seconds, trying to find out if this facet of his personality was a new development or if it’d been there all along, buried beneath the rumpled suits and ketchup-stained ties before deciding it really didn’t matter. He was here and he knew what he was asking for. Michael decided to give it to him.
“Then we’ll drop in here,” he said. “It’s about a two-mile jungle hike to the base of the mountain the compound sits on.” He bounced a look between Lark and Church, not liking his choices. Not one fucking bit. Finally he settled on Lark. “You can set up comms—”
“Sorry, partner. Green Mile’s already spoken for,” Ben said, a look passing between him and his former partner. “There’s some shit he’s got to straighten out for me. I’m running comms, so you’ll have to take Super Spy.”
Church must’ve read the fuck that all over his face because she smiled. “I realize I’m not Miss Popularity, but I am on your side.”
“Today,” he said, the word flexing against the hard set of his jaw. “What about yesterday when you handed her over to Reyes? Were you on my side then?”
“Believe it or not, yes.” She stopped smiling, the glint in her eyes dimming just a bit. “But unlike the rest of you fuckwits, I follow orders. I did what I could for her within the parameters I was given. She’s armed and has an approximate mission window; if she’s as bad-
ass as everyone thinks she is, that’s plenty.”
With Ben running comms and Lark working on whatever it was Ben had him doing, his choices were slim. As in, he didn’t have one. “Fine.”
“I have a question …”
They all turned to look at the man who’d so far remained quiet. A quick flash of recognition brought Michael a memory. It was the pilot. The same one who’d medevaced Sabrina out of those woods the day she’d killed Wade. Harrison. His name was Reese Harrison, and he was apparently not rotting away in a hole or enjoying a fat pile of hush money like Michael had envisioned. He was Ben’s pilot. He looked at his partner for confirmation.
Ben shrugged. “I told you I’d take care of it, didn’t I?” he said before looking at Harrison. “What’s your question?”
“How are you going to get in the house?” the pilot said. “We did a flyover on the way here. It looked like security is pretty tight.”
“That’s the easiest part of this whole thing.” Michael rocked back on his heels and smiled. “I’m gonna walk right in.”
Eighty-One
The guard who escorted Sabrina back to her room after dinner kept a wide berth. He wouldn’t even look at her—just kept his slightly panicked gaze aimed down the hall as they walked. She couldn’t blame him.
She’d spent her day with Christina and Leo. Watching them take turns on the tire swing and play tag in the wide stretch of grass that surrounded the trees they played under. It would have been a good day if not for the armed guards on the roof and the turrets that dotted the retaining wall overlooking the ocean below. Everywhere she looked there were guards and guns—security woven together so tight that she was beginning to have serious doubts that even Michael could find his way in. She began to worry that she was on her own here. That it was up to her to save Leo. And Christina.
Somewhere between breakfast and walking down that long stretch of hallway after dinner, she’d decided that if she got out of this mess, she’d be taking the girl with her.
The guard stopped in front of her door and took a step back so she could open it. Shutting it in the man’s face, she leaned against it for a moment, just as relieved as he was that his assignment had not ended with his brains splattered across the lawn in front of her bedroom window. Twenty-four hours had come and gone, and no one had come for her. She was on her own.
We ain’t alone, darlin’.
The warning came seconds before the voice spoke in the dark. “I take it Pablo kept his hands to himself.”
Somewhere a light clicked on, and she turned to find Estefan lounging on the settee, shoulders relaxed, knees parted as if he’d made himself comfortable while waiting for her. As if he’d done this exact thing before.
Careful, now—this one’s got teeth and he’s itchin’ to use ’em.
She listened to the voice inside her head. A predator always recognized their own kind. The gun in her boot was useless; no way she’d be able to get to it in time. She thought of her bracelet, the
one Michael had given her. “What are you doing here?” she said, walking into the room, careful to make sure he didn’t see the apprehension his sudden appearance caused her. A casual glance cast to the corners of the room told her that the security cameras were still active. As long as they were recording, she was relatively safe … and so was he.
“I wanted to make sure that you have everything you needed, Sabrina.” He smiled at her, his eyes flat and dark, tracking her movements across the room. “We are not savages, my father and I. We wish you to be comfortable.”
She stopped in front of the ornate dressing table tucked into the corner near the bathroom door. On its glossy surface lay the heavy silver brush and mirror that had once belonged to Lydia, Christina’s mother.
“Pretty sure my comfort isn’t very high on his list of things he gives a shit about. Your father plans on killing me in front of Michael …” She reached out and rocked the brush on its rounded back like Christina had the night before. Like the night before, something rattled inside its handle. “Just like he killed his wife.”
Estefan draped his arm across the back of the settee and smiled. “Lydia was a fickle whore who got what she deserved.”
“Lydia was twelve when your father married her. How old was she when you started raping her?” She did her best to strain the anger from her voice before she spoke, but it seeped through anyway, and his smile turned into laughter.
“She was nineteen … and I would hardly call it rape.” He shook his head, the picture of exasperated amusement. “Is that what Cartero told you? That I forced myself on his beloved Lydia?” he said with a shrug. “I supposed believing that would make her manner of death easier for him to swallow …”
“You loved her.” She watched him closely, the traces of bitterness and envy that surfaced in the flat pools of his eyes before being pulled under again. “But she hated your guts, didn’t she? You disgusted her.”
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