That was the first good news Natalie had heard in what felt like forever. “That’s wonderful! And the baby’s okay?”
“Apparently.”
From down the hallway came Julian’s voice. “Hey, McBride, I made a copy of the file. I’ll try to crack it at home and give you a call later.”
“Sounds good. Thanks.” Then Zach frowned and glanced toward the window.
Fat raindrops were falling now, the wind whipping the drapes about, dark clouds obscuring the city. A flash of lightning. Thunder.
He stood, crossed the room, and closed the window. “Looks like we’re in for one hell of a storm tonight.”
Natalie shivered.
ARTURO SAT IN the back of the first van, a battered AK-47 in his hands, thinking of ways to kill Wulfe. After all they’d done together, the stupid
chingadero
ought to have welcomed him as a brother. Instead, Wulfe had done nothing but humiliate him since he arrived. And now he’d gone too far.
While Wulfe sat in his new luxury hideout, Arturo was being forced to take part in this pathetic little action as if he were one of Wulfe’s underlings. It was clear that Wulfe wanted to pin the Benoit whore’s death on Arturo and his organization. More than that, he wanted to rub Arturo’s face in his failure.
“You made this mess. You’re going to help clean it up,” Wulfe had said. Then he’d motioned to his men. “You follow their orders, do you understand, Arturo? You still have so much to learn.”
Arturo would avenge this insult. If only he’d had time to speak with José-Luis, but they hadn’t been given a moment alone together, and now his nephew was waiting this out with Wulfe.
“The gate’s coming up.” One of Wulfe’s men pressed his fingers to his earpiece, listening. “It’s a dark blue Chevy Impala. The vehicle has exited the garage. It’s turning the corner.”
They’d parked a couple of blocks away so that the cops who were protecting the Benoit bitch wouldn’t see them and grow suspicious.
“It’s him. He’s alone, and he’s taking the bait. Go!”
The bait was one of Wulfe’s female operatives with a fake belly to make her look
embarazada
—pregnant. The target’s wife was blond and pregnant, and they felt certain the target would stop to help a woman who made him think of her.
Arturo had to admit that part was clever, even if he hated the idea of women carrying guns and pretending to be men. It was unnatural.
The van drove quietly and slowly around the corner, and up ahead, Arturo saw a man with a dark ponytail get out of the Impala and walk over to the woman, who stood beside her own car, hand on her fake belly, staring down at a flat tire.
“Look at that overgrown Boy Scout.”
Wulfe’s men laughed, pulling ski masks down over their faces.
The van drew closer, the target looking over his shoulder once. He saw the van, watched it for a second.
“Easy now.”
Apparently not perceiving it as a danger, the target turned back to the woman and motioned toward the car’s trunk. The blonde waddled to the trunk and opened it. The target bent over, picked up a lug wrench and stood upright again.
Arturo felt the van speed up, his heart beating faster.
It went—how did the
gringos
say?—like clockwork. The target turned around, lug wrench in hand, just as the blonde pointed a suppressed handgun at his chest and fired. Five shots to the chest dropped him onto the pavement, where he lay still.
Their faces covered, their hands in nitrile gloves, Wulfe’s men jerked open the van’s door and jumped out, one of them carrying a pair of bolt cutters. Two of them lifted the man’s big body and shoved it into the trunk, while the third cut off his left thumb. Then they shut the body inside the trunk and climbed into the van, the blonde following them in.
Having no modesty at all, she kicked off her heels, pulled her dress over her head, and unfastened the shoulder straps that held her fake belly in place. It fell to the floor, leaving her wearing a wet tank top and shorts. “I am fucking
never
getting pregnant. That shit is uncomfortable.”
The men laughed.
Puta estupida.
The stupid whore.
She quickly dressed in pants, a shirt, and body armor, sliding a ski mask over her face. Then she grabbed a rifle. She was going in with them? A woman?
The van moved forward, turned the corner, and drove up to the protected entrance of the tall glass building. The man who held the bloody thumb, passed it forward to the driver, who rolled down his window and carefully pressed the pad of it to the scanner.
An electric buzz. A green light. And the garage door began to move.
“We’re in.”
CHAPTER 31
ARTURO FELT HIS heartbeat quicken as they reached the penthouse. But it wasn’t from excitement. It had been many years since he’d taken part in a hit. A man of his standing shouldn’t have to get his own hands bloody. He had others to do wet work. He’d tried to stay down in the van, but Wulfe’s underlings wouldn’t let him. They shoved him from the van, calling him “old man” and “coward.” When he’d asked for a ski mask, they laughed at him.
“Remember to smile for the cameras,” that bitch of a woman had said when they stepped into the elevator.
Arturo hoped she eventually found herself in Mexico. He would enjoy breaking her and watching her cower before the altar of Santa Muerte.
The elevator opened, and they moved out, Arturo keeping to the rear as they quietly got into position around the door to the penthouse, his pulse pounding, but not just from nervousness. Now that he was here, it excited him to think that McBride and Benoit were on the other side of this door. They thought they were safe, that they’d gotten away from him. But they hadn’t.
Oh, how he wanted to watch Benoit suffer! He wanted to see her face twist with fear when she saw him. He wanted to hear her scream and beg. He wanted to look into her eyes the moment she realized Death had found her at last.
“Remember, we need the DUSM alive. Wulfe wants to know what he knows.” The man in the lead drew the bloody thumb from his pocket once more, pressed it against the biometric scanner, then dropped it onto the floor.
A quiet buzz. A click.
The door opened.
¡Protégeme
,
Santa Muerte!
Protect me, Santa Muerte!
Rifles raised, they surged inside, Arturo hanging back. If anyone were going to die today, it would not be him.
He’d expected them to walk in to find the two of them fucking, watching television, or eating food. Instead, the apartment was dark, silent, the only light coming from the big windows to their left, flashes of lightning giving the place a strange, ghostly feel. He squinted, his eyes unprepared for the darkness, his heart beating faster.
Something wasn’t right.
He took a step back, felt something jab him in the back.
“Move it, Grandpa,” a male voice hissed from behind him.
The boy Wulfe had placed in charge of them gave the hand signals for three of them to head to their right through the dark kitchen, while the rest were to follow him up the stairs. They fanned out—just as the room exploded in gunfire.
Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat! Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat! Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat!
Grunts. The thud of bullets hitting flesh. Bodies falling.
Arturo dived behind the sofa, lay flat against the floor, heart slamming. How had that
pendejo
McBride known? How had he known they were coming?
Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat! Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat! Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat!
A woman’s scream. Groans. The coppery scent of blood.
Then came the bang and flare of a flash grenade, followed by the tromp of boots on the stairs as Wulfe’s men attempted to overrun McBride.
Arturo took advantage of the distraction to crawl to the other end of the couch, getting himself out of the line of fire.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Shots fired from a suppressed pistol. Grunts and gasps as men fought hand to hand. A choking sound.
And then . . .
Silence.
A flash of lightning. A peal of thunder. Rain pounding glass.
“Cárdenas, you sick son of a whore, I know you’re hiding down there.”
McBride!
Cárdenas felt his mouth go dry.
This man had survived six days of torture without breaking. He’d killed five of Cárdenas’s best men. He’d escaped every trap Cárdenas had set for him in Mexico. He’d just killed six of Wulfe’s CIA operatives in less than five minutes.
And now Cárdenas was alone with him.
CLUTCHING AN ASSAULT rifle to her side, Natalie lay on her belly on the slick rooftop, soaked through to her skin, strong gusts threatening to push her over the edge. She thought she’d heard gunshots, but it was hard to tell over the roar of the storm, lightning flashing just overhead, thunder seeming to make the building shake. Or maybe that was just her shivering.
Please be safe! Zach and Julian, please be safe!
The moment he’d gotten Julian’s horrifying text message, Zach had jerked open her window and helped her climb onto the roof, tossing a rifle, a spare magazine, and his cell phone up to her, and telling her to call for help, then going back inside to wait for Wulfe’s men alone. She’d called Marc and Gabe immediately, shouting over the storm, and they’d told her they were on their way together with SWAT and an ambulance for Julian. But that had been an eternity ago.
Where were they?
Hurry please! Julian and Zach need you!
She pushed wet hair and water out of her eyes, peering through the rain toward the rooftop patio, keeping an eye out for bad guys.
“I doubt they’ll think to look on the roof, but if they do, they’ll have to step onto the patio to reach you,” Zach had told her. “Shoot to kill.”
And she would, without hesitation.
But no matter how hard she blinked, she couldn’t keep the rain out of her eyes. Teeth chattering, she got to her hands and knees, tried to crawl closer to the patio, gasping and falling flat again as a powerful gust caught her, pushing her across the roof like a hydroplaning car. She lay there for a moment, heart hammering, then she looked up into the gray and sodden sky.
“I-I’m from N-new Orleans!” she shouted, her words vanishing in the gale. “I-I survived H-hurricane Katrina. Ththere’s nothing y-you can throw at m-me that I can’t h-handle! Y-you’re nothing but a puny th-thunderstorm!”
Then she did the only thing she could do.
She held on—and prayed.
HIS GAZE FIXED on the stairs, Zach took a minute to catch his breath, his hand pressed against his aching ribs. Just his luck to get kicked there again. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes, saw streaks of blood on the back of his hand. Shrapnel from the flash grenade must have nicked his face. Well, that wasn’t the only place he was bleeding. His right shoulder had been creased, but it was nothing serious.
You’re good to go, McBride.
Wulfe had sent seven operatives. And now all but one of them—Cárdenas—was dead. Or dying, he corrected himself, as the man whose throat he’d been forced to cut finished bleeding out, his eyes rolling back in his skull, his body convulsing.
Zach wiped the blood off his knife, stuck it back in his ankle rig, then popped a fresh magazine into his M16 and got to his feet, still astonished that Cárdenas was here. The bastard hadn’t set foot on U.S. soil since his days at AMINTAC. He must want Natalie more than Zach had realized. But was he still alive, waiting for a chance to use the AK Zach had seen in his hands, or had a stray round killed him?
And where the hell was the cavalry?
Warned by Darcangelo’s text message, Zach had helped Natalie onto the roof and asked her to call for backup—and an ambulance—the moment she’d gotten to a safe position. Of course, for all Zach knew, there could be a hundred police sirens blaring in the streets below. He couldn’t hear a damned thing over this thunderstorm.
Hang on, angel. It’s almost over.
Zach grabbed a couple of flash grenades off the belt of the man he’d just killed—now officially dead—and made his way carefully toward the stairs.
From down below, he could just make out the sound of someone breathing. Quietly, he moved down the stairs, his back to the wall. When he was near the bottom, he tossed the first grenade, closing his eyes and turning his face away from the blast.
BAM!
A flash of light. Smoke.
He jumped to the bottom of the stairs and rushed at Cárdenas, who held up the AK and fired blindly, one steel-core round grazing Zach’s left thigh, the others going wild. He kicked the weapon out of the bastard’s hands, then drove his boot into Cárdenas’s gut and pressed the barrel of the M16 against his skull.
“Lie flat on your stomach! Do it!” A part of Zach wanted to tear Cárdenas apart, but he was supposed to be one of the good guys. “Arturo César Cárdenas, you are under arrest for the distribution and sale of schedule one narcotics, human trafficking, the murders of U.S. nationals on U.S. soil, the kidnapping and attempted murder of American journalist Natalie Benoit—and a whole lot of other sick shit.”
He said the words in English and in Spanish, then worked quickly, cuffing and Mirandizing Cárdenas, stripping him of his weapons, cell phone, shoes, then double-checking to see whether any of the others in the room were still alive. They weren’t.
He cleared the hallway, the stairwell, and the elevator, stopping when he saw a bloody
something
on the floor near the door.
Darcangelo’s thumb.
He picked it up and carried it inside, where he quickly wrapped it in a paper towel and put it in the refrigerator. In the living room, Cardenas struggled to get to his feet. Zach walked over to him and raised the Glock. “Stay down!”
“So where is my little
puta
?” Cárdenas looked over his shoulder at Zach. “Did you enjoy fucking what was mine?”