“Think about your partner for a moment. Now you tell me how’d she respond to leaving a child on this island. Any child.”
Strickland closed his eyes for a moment before he sighed. “Pink pony. That’s cute,” he said, his tone thick with sarcasm. “Okay, I’ll do it, but you better save her. Do you hear me, asshole? You better save her.”
Michael nodded. “Trust me, saving Sabrina is all that matters.”
Eighty-Five
She was trapped.
Sabrina offered Estefan a cool smile, even as her brain scrambled around looking for a way out. The windows were out; even if they weren’t locked, they were bulletproof. The door was just as solid. Oak veneer over something that felt as heavy as a bank vault. No way was she shooting her way out of here.
Keep ’em talking, darlin’. This one likes the sound of his own voice even better than I do.
“I get it. Lydia rejects you, Michael outpaces you at every turn … they had to be punished.” She shrugged a bit, turning to the side so she faced the vanity she’d backed herself up against. “What I don’t get is your dad.” She cast a quick glance in the mirror to catch his refection. What looked back at her from the mirror hardly looked human, it was so twisted with rage. She kept talking as though she didn’t notice, distracting him while she worked her fingers into the space between her wrist and the bracelet Michael had given her.
“What do you mean?” he said, his tone innocent even as the corner of his mouth lifted in a humorless grin.
“Sergey Filatov.” She found the button on the underside of the bracelet and pushed it, releasing the clasp. “You kidnapped someone very important to him and had him murdered and then left him in that house for me to find.”
“Involving you was Pia’s idea.” He gave a dismissive shrug. “She insisted we dump him on your doorstep so that when you died, Michael would blame himself. She’s very angry with him.”
Pia Cordova. The daughter of the man Michael had killed in Spain. “The two of you are partners?”
Now he smiled at her. “We have similar goals—kill our fathers and make Michael suffer.”
“Who was the boy?” She took another look in the mirror to find him watching her. Something behind him caught her notice; the motion sensor attached to the camera mounted in the corner was dark. The camera itself was still—the blinking red light that announced its presence was off.
Someone had killed the cameras.
Estefan was still talking, and she looked at his reflection. “ … nephew. The son of Viktor, Filatov’s little brother. My father had Viktor killed last year when their negotiations over territories turned sour. When I saw the boy, I knew he would be a stone that would kill many birds.”
She found the release button on the underside of the bracelet and pushed it, its titanium links dropping into her palm. She held it for a moment, heart hammering against her sternum. She would only have one shot. She had to make it count. “Filatov was your plan B. If Michael failed, Filatov would come after your father as soon as he found out that his nephew was found dead in your father’s drop house.”
“The plan was flawless …” Estefan’s gaze flickered downward, trying to catch a glimpse of what she was doing with her hands. “Until I realized that you somehow managed to stop the boy’s identity from being released.”
She turned toward him, facing him instead of his reflection, the end of the bracelet held in her fist while the rest of it lay across the outside, secured by her thumb. She hadn’t noticed him move but he must have. He was standing closer now. Close enough to touch her. “What can I say? I’m a ruiner.”
He gave her another shrug, this one saying that her inference was of little consequence. “What have you got there, Sabrina?” He glanced down at her hand, caught the flash of silver and he reached for it, causing her to flinch away. He smiled. “You fear me,” he said as if the thought pleased him.
“Fear you?” She shook her head, casting a casual glance down at her titanium-wrapped fist. “An hour from now, your father will be dead. As will you,” she said, sounding much more confident than she felt.
“Can I tell you a secret, Sabrina?” He leaned in even closer, his breath hot against her face. “Cartero isn’t your savior any more than he was Lydia’s. Cartero is dead … Did I happen to mention how angry Pia was with him?”
The words hit her hard. Not because she believed them, but because he did. Estefan believed with every fiber of his being that Michael was dead. Panic rose, all sharp teeth and blinding speed, and for a moment she was frozen.
You don’t need him, darlin’. Not when you got me …
She hardened herself, shut off the part that wanted to scream. Instead she smiled, dropping the sharp end of the bracelet, the links clicking together as gravity did its job, forming a short metal pike gripped in her fist. A fast glance over Estefan’s shoulder told her that the cameras were still off. Either he had them turned off to hide what he’d come here to do to her, or Church had kept her promise to bring the cavalry.
Either way, it was time to go.
“It hardly matters, Estefan,” she said, matching his tone perfectly. “Because Michael was never going to be the one to kill you.” She whispered the words, soft and quiet, leaning into him like a lover. “That’s my job.”
Eighty-Six
Twenty minutes after landing, they came to the base of the mountain and stopped, Church and Strickland both looking at him expectantly. He clicked his comm. “We’re here.” He didn’t want to say where here was because he wasn’t sure who was listening.
“Killing comms and cameras now. Watch your six,” Ben told him, and he knew that Ben had the same reservations about trusting Church as he did. At the end of the day, she belonged to Livingston Shaw, and he’d do well to remember it.
“Roger that,” Michael said before clicking off the comm. He checked the compass again to make sure he had the right coordinates. “It’s there,” he said, pointing the same way as the arrow. “Behind the brush.”
Church drew a wicked-looking machete from the sheath strapped to her thigh and started to hack away the dense overgrown foliage. It was obvious the entrance hadn’t been used in years. Not since Lydia had used it to sneak down to the beach to see her daughter.
“Where does it lead?” Strickland said, standing next to him while they watched Church swing her blade.
“Second-floor laundry room. Reyes had it added into the plans when he built the compound. My guess is it’s his escape route if he’s ever raided.” Michael looked at him. The bumbling detective was gone, leaving the single-minded pit bull in its place. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said impulsively and was instantly sorry he said it when Strickland turned on him, eyebrow arched over his cool brown gaze.
“I love her, you know,” he said, staring him right in the eye. “She’s a pain in my ass. She causes me trouble—the real kind—and she can’t seem to go six months without someone trying to kill her, but she’s my partner … so there’s nowhere else for me to be.”
There was no surge of jealousy at his admission like there had been with Nickels. No grinding need to defend what was his, and he knew it was because Strickland’s love was born from something pure. Strickland loved Sabrina like Michael had loved Lydia and Frankie. There was nothing romantic between them, and there never would be.
“We’re getting her back. And I promise, neither of you will ever see me again.” It was the best he could offer.
Strickland laughed in his face.
“Dude, you really don’t know her at all, do you?” he said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter if you love her or not. She loves you and the best and worst thing about her is that once she decides you’re hers, she hangs on to the bitter end. Leaving her won’t change that and it won’t keep her safe—trust me on that one.”
“You don’t happen to know the combination, do you?” Chur
ch said. Both of them looked up to see her standing beside a heavy metal door that had been buried beneath the green. One he’d never seen before. The kind used to seal a bomb shelter or a walk-in safe.
“Well, shit,” Strickland breathed besides him, shoulders slumping when he got a load of the large combination lock that all but promised to keep them out.
“Try 03-16-03.” Christina’s birthday. He said it without looking in Strickland’s direction, unwilling to admit defeat so soon. He watched the dial spin beneath Church’s competent fingers right, then left and back again. She pulled the lever.
Nothing.
He rattled off another number, the date he’d agreed to work for Reyes, and watched her go through the same process as before. Again, it didn’t work.
“I’m not sure how many more times I can try without tripping some sort of alarm, O’Shea,” Church warned him. “The next one better work.”
He was drawing a blank … it had to be something he’d remember. Reyes wanted him here. He wouldn’t make it impossible for him to gain entry into the compound.
“Think … it has to be a date that would mean as much to him as it does to you,” Strickland said, prodding at him quietly. “One he wants you to remember.”
And suddenly he knew. “10-09-12.”
Church worked the dial this way and that, taking a deep breath before levering the handle downward. The door swung open, revealing a small room that was little more than a wide mouth for the steep, narrow staircase beyond it.
He started to move toward it, ready to go. Ready to finally put an end to the misery Reyes had been dealing all these years. Before he took two steps, Strickland reached out an arm, clamping a hand around his shoulder to stop his progress.
“What was it? The date?”
Michael looked at him over his shoulder, jaw set. “October 9th, 2012. The day Alberto Reyes murdered his wife in front of me.”
He shrugged out from under Strickland’s grip and ventured into the dark.
Eighty-Seven
Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
October 9, 2012
He made it as far as the front lawn before he was stopped.
“Going somewhere, Cartero?” Hector called to him from across the grass, sun creeping up out of the ocean to cast soft gray light between them. Estefan was with him, along with a few of Reyes’s more experienced guards.
Michael—headed for the steep, winding switchback that led down the cliff wall and onto the boat dock—stopped in his tracks. “Yeah. Home.”
Hector nodded, smiling. “Home will have to wait. There’s a matter Hefe would like to discuss with you.”
So far Estefan hadn’t said a word. The stitches that must’ve held his face together had been removed to reveal a thick, ugly scar that ran the length of his face, from the corner of his eye to his mouth. Now he smiled, pushing the scar upward until it crinkled and bunched against his skin. “I told you, didn’t I, Cartero? I told you that you’d pay.”
He shifted his duffle, rolling it from one hand to the other so that he could have quick access to his gun. The switchback was a good fifty yards away. He wouldn’t make it. Not without killing these two fucks first. “Is that what you were saying?” He chuckled to mask the mounting desperation he could feel heaping on his chest. “To tell the truth, I couldn’t really understand you, what with all that blubbering and crying you were doing.”
Estefan flushed, a deep red wash that paled his scar in comparison. He took a step forward, but Hector held a restraining arm across his chest. “You will want to look up, Cartero,” Hector said.
Something about his tone turned his neck, had him scaling the walls with his eyes until they settled on a window with pink drapes. They were parted, Christina standing in the bare wedge between them, staring down at him, her face pale with confusion and fear.
A man he didn’t recognize stood behind her. He had a gun in his hand.
“Hefe would like to see you,” Hector repeated his earlier request. “It won’t take long, and then you will be free to go.”
It was a lie and they both knew it, but he nodded anyway, dropping the duffle at his feet. He was going to have to move fast when the time came, and it would only slow him down.
“The gun too,” Estefan said, jerking his chin at the .40 holstered on his hip.
“Sure thing,” he said, lifting it slowly. “But can we hurry this along? I’ve got more pressing matters.” He dropped it in the grass before going palms up.
Hector nodded, lifting his own gun from his hip and using the barrel of it to motion him along. “Let’s go.”
They didn’t take him into the house. Instead they guided him across the lawn, around the corner of the house until Reyes came into view, standing behind a heavily pregnant Lydia. Michael barely spared her a glance, focusing all his attention on the man behind her.
“Cartero, were you going somewhere?” Reyes said in a cheerful cadence that dismissed the gun he had pressed into the space where his wife’s belly rounded away from her hips.
“Yeah,” he said, keeping his tone casual, just tinged with boredom even as the thought of his Aunt Gina’s voice shook him with its broken desperation. “I’ve got some shit to deal with back home. Shouldn’t take more than a week or so …” He flicked a glance at Lydia. Her face was as pale as Christina’s, but there was no confusion. She knew exactly what was happening.
“And then you will return?” Reyes cocked his head.
He could see Christina’s face turned up to look at him, her tiny fingers splayed wide to weave between his own. Are you going to leave too?
He promised her he wouldn’t leave her alone, but Frankie’s disappearance changed everything. Still … “Well, yeah. That was the plan,” he said carefully.
Reyes chuckled, shaking his head. “Why? Why would you return after what you’ve done? Surely you don’t love her.”
The back of his neck went hot and tight—a surefire sign that shit was about to get critical. “What the fuck are you talking about, Reyes?” he said, letting his eyes wonder down to the gun in the other man’s hand. “I really don’t have time for whatever kind of domestic squabble you’ve got—”
“How long?”
He kicked his eyes up to Reyes’s face. “What?”
“How long!” he roared, his face contorted with rage and something else. Something more disturbing than anger. Something fanatical. Almost gleeful. Whatever happened next, there would be no stopping it. No talking Reyes out of whatever choice he’d already made.
“How long what?” He looked at Lydia for help. She knew the answer but all she could do was stare at him, eyes wide and dark, lips moving silently, fumbling over the same words over and over. Let us go, let us go, let us go …
Reyes took a deep breath, letting it out on a soft chuckle as he shook his head. “How long have you been fucking my wife?”
Michael looked at Estefan, who’d moved to flank his father. “I never touched her.”
“My wife is the Virgin Mary, then?” he spat, digging the barrel of his gun into her swollen belly deep enough to cause Lydia to cry out in pain. “The proof is right in front of us both, Cartero. Do you think me a fool?”
There was no reasoning with Reyes. Estefan had been hard at work, tending the lies he’d planted. Even if he did tell him the truth—that it was his son who’d raped his wife, that it was his grandchild and not some bastard that grew in Lydia’s belly—Reyes would never listen. His own conceit would never let him believe that he had been so thoroughly deceived.
“What do you want me to do?” he said, speaking directly to Lydia, eyes trained on her face. “Tell me what to do.”
“What you promised,” she breathed, seconds before her husband pulled the trigger.
Everything stopped. The world ground to a halt as he watched her fall, the bright splash of blood across her be
lly growing even as she fell to the ground. He screamed, the feel of it, raw and clawing at his throat, was real even though there was no sound.
Reyes leveled the gun at her, pulling the trigger again and again, and Michael lunged forward. There was too much space between them for him to stop what was happening, but he had to try.
Bullets smacked into the ground all around him, hitting him in the shoulder, grazing his rib cage.
Let us go.
He changed direction, heavy boots tearing into the grass as he ran, bullets swarming him like wasps. The retaining wall was low here, so as not to obstruct the view of the ocean from Reyes’s study, and he leapt at it, hands gripping the top to pull himself over.
The ledge between the face of the cliff and the wall was negligible, mere inches, but it didn’t matter. His feet barely touched it as he flung himself over and into the sea.
Eighty-Eight
Sabrina lunged forward, faking with her left hand in order to draw his attention. Estefan turned his head and lifted his hands to block the attack, leaving the left side of his face vulnerable.
She jabbed fast with her right hand, burying the pike in his eye, its trajectory cut short by the side of her fist as it punched into his socket. She let go even as he screamed. It was the kind of scream that told her she’d only managed to wound a rabid animal instead of put it down. There was a sickening popping sound, followed by a gush of something warm and thick against her hand. Leaving the pike, she planted her hands on his chest and shoved, sending him tumbling over the back of the settee he’d been sitting on when she arrived.
He reached for her as he fell and she stumbled back, hips slamming into the vanity at her back. Her hands skittered along its surface until she found what she was looking for. The hairbrush.
Estefan lay on the floor between her and the door, hands clutching at the pike she’d driven into his eye, moaning as blood, turned a yellowish orange by the viscous fluid it was mixed with, ran down his face.
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