The sniper-turned-guard keyed his radio and said, “Jaguar is stepping outside. West doors onto back porch. Moreno accompanying.”
“Stay close to the house, Moreno,” Diaz’ voice answered.
“Yes, sir.”
“See, Jaguar is a cool codename, Brent,” Emily said pointedly. “Lots and lots of cool-factor there.”
“What’s the matter, Houdini? Jealous?” he teased.
Just then, Emily’s phone beeped. She took it out of her pocket and showed Brent the screen.
Diaz was getting another phone call from his boss.
Chapter 17
Emily pressed the “record” button, and she and Brent leaned closer to the phone, listening.
The same voice as before spoke rapidly, seriously, Diaz asked a few questions. Emily couldn’t understand what either of them were saying, so she listened to the tones of their voices and watched Brent’s facial expressions instead.
He will translate this for me in a moment, I’m sure.
Brent’s face grew increasingly stern and he furrowed his brows.
“What is it?” Emily asked as the call ended.
“Well,” Brent said, running his hands through his hair. “He said they had credible intel that the assassination attempt is imminent. He gave very specific instructions about where in the house he wanted each guard stationed. He ordered Diaz not to sound the house’s emergency alarm, and he told them to shoot on sight.”
“He doesn’t want him to warn the family?”
“No, he seemed to think it would cause a panic.”
“Hmm... isn’t this kind of thing exactly what the emergency alarm is for?”
“That’s basically what Diaz said, but the boss-man was adamant.”
“He ordered Diaz to get Mr. Gonzalez back inside. He said he was watching the house via satellite and had seen movement in a certain quadrant outside—I’m unfamiliar with their numbering system, so I can’t say for sure which area he was referring to. He wants them to bring Mr. Gonzalez in through the north entrance, around the corner from his current position.”
Emily felt her heart thumping faster and faster. “We have to figure out what is about to happen, Brent! We have to stop this. It’s the whole reason we’re here!”
“I agree,” Brent said grimly. He was adjusting something on his phone. The drone camera pulled up and back just a little, and then began to circle, giving him a view of the entire house and immediately surrounding area.
There was no movement visible.
“I wonder if what he saw was you coming in,” Emily said, suddenly feeling worried for his safety as well.
Brent didn’t answer. He pointed to the TV screen. “Check out the feed of the surveillance room,” he said. Diaz had picked up his radio.
“Diaz speaking. We have a code red. Please assume the following positions.” His voice echoed out across the four other guards’ radios. He consulted notes he’d taken while talking to his boss a moment before.
“Repeat: this is a code red; an assassin may already be on the premises. Your orders are to shoot on sight. Morales, you’ve got the north entrance. Duarte, you have the front door. Lopez, take the back, French doors. I have the surveillance room. Moreno will be on overwatch once he brings Jaguar back inside.”
On the Dot feeds, the other guards immediately sprinted into action, each heading for their assigned position. Emily cocked her head. Something about the next transmission Diaz sent sounded a little off, but she couldn’t quite place why.
“Moreno, please take Jaguar around to the north entrance and enter there. Morales, prepare for their entry through your door.”
As they watched the Dot feed from the surveillance room, Diaz upholstered his pistol and checked that he had a round in the chamber. Then, looking a little conflicted, he reached for a bright red button on the wall.
“He’s going to sound the emergency alarm anyway,” Brent said, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
“Oh, good.” Emily was relieved.
The head guard hesitated just a moment before disobeying orders and punching the button. Emily instinctively covered her ears, ready for the loud, wailing noise.
But nothing happened. There was no sound whatsoever.
Diaz himself looked surprised. He pushed the button again. Still nothing.
“Oh, no,” Brent said. “This is not good.” He backed away from the screen and un-holstered his own pistol. “I was right about the system being hacked.”
In that moment, Emily realized what hadn’t sounded right about the last order Diaz had given.
“Brent,” she said, furrowing her brows, “is it just me or did you only hear three echoes on that last part?”
“What?”
“Diaz transmits, and then we hear it come through on everyone else’s radios, right?”
“Right.”
“When he gave the instructions about which door to take Mr. Gonzalez through, it sounded like less of the radios actually received the transmission.”
Brent frowned, and quickly scanned through all the Dot feeds. Each guard stood at the door assigned to him, weapons at the ready. Moreno and Mr. Gonzalez were just rounding the outside corner of the house at a cautious creep.
“Brent,” Emily swallowed hard and pointed to one of the feeds. “Look at Romeo Morales. He’s on awfully high alert, don’t you think?”
Brent raised his eyebrows as he caught her drift. “Almost like he doesn’t know the man he’s protecting is about to walk through his particular door? Emily, you’re onto something. Someone is pulling the strings from a distance.”
“I have a suspicion who it is.”
“And I suspect you’re right.” Brent crossed Emily’s room in a couple long strides, heading for the window and pulling his black balaclava back over his head and face.
“Brent, you can’t go out there looking like—well, like a freaky ninja-assassin!”
“I can, and that’s actually my plan.”
“You heard Diaz—he said to shoot on sight!” She joined him by the window and grasped at his arm, but he had already raised the glass and was slipping outside.
“I’m counting on it. If Moreno and Mr. Gonzalez walk through that north door, they die. Romeo is primed to shoot anything that comes through there. He’s been set up, Emily.”
She watched as Brent began his descent from her window. “You’re going to delay them? Stop them? Distract them?”
“All of the above.”
“Be careful.”
“Same to you.” She could barely hear his whisper in the darkness outside. “Stay in the house, Houdini.”
Chapter 18
Emily closed the window and leaned against it a moment. “Because the alarm didn’t work, Mrs. Gonzalez still doesn’t know something is going on!” she whispered, suddenly springing into action. Any minute now, the shooting would start—of that she had no doubt. She only hoped the bulky tactical shirt Brent had been wearing included some kind of bullet protection. He had told her to stay in the house, but even Diaz had thought the safety of the Gonzalez family was worth disobeying orders.
She found herself knocking lightly on Mrs. Gonzalez’ bedroom door. The woman answered a moment later.
“Miss Tessier! Are the children well? I didn’t hear anything.”
“They’re fine,” Emily said, speaking quickly. “Listen, I can’t explain everything right now, but there’s an assassination attempt about to be made on your husband. Your guards are trying to prevent it, and so is—well, like I said, I can’t explain everything. Anyway, before it’s all over, there could end up being a lot of shooting, I think. I know a safe place for you and the kids, but we have to go right now.”
Mrs. Gonzalez blinked, trying to process what she had just said. To Emily’s relief, she did ask any questions, but hurried across the wide loft to her children’s rooms.
She woke them, gently but urgently. They emerged into the loft, blinking and rubbing their eyes. Emily quickly helped
the children with their shoes, grateful that Mrs. Gonzalez had insisted on keeping them organized and ready to go in a hurry.
“What we doing, Tessi?” Daniel mumbled.
Emily picked him up and turned to Mrs. Gonzalez who was holding the baby. He was trying to stay asleep, and Emily was glad. She hoped he’d stay that way. “Does this house have emergency ladders to get down from these upper bedrooms in case of fire?” she asked.
“Is there a fire?” Sofia asked, sleepily.
“No, there isn’t,” Mrs. Gonzalez reassured her. “But we’re going to pretend like there is and take the ladder in mama’s and papa’s room.”
Emily nodded. Between the two of them, they got the ladder set up and unfurled down the side of the house.
“It’s a long way down,” Juan said.
“You can do it,” Emily encouraged. “Just like a fireman.”
The boy rubbed his eyes. Mrs. Gonzalez had wrapped a large, woven shawl around Mateo, effectively tying him to her. “I’ll go down first so there's one of us at each end. We can help the children down. You’ll be all right carrying Daniel?”
Emily nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
I’ll make it work.
Once the woman and baby had made it down, Emily helped Sofia out over the windowsill and got her started on descending. Mrs. Gonzalez called quiet encouragement from the ground.
When Sofia was nearly down, a loud gunshot cracked through the night air, startling the girl. She would have fallen the last several feet, but her mother caught hold of her and effectively broke her fall.
Emily had already waved Juan over. “Hurry!” she instructed.
“Who is shooting?” the boy asked, his eyes wide.
“Climb!” Emily urged. “You can ask your mother later.”
She turned and hoisted Daniel into her arms. “Come on, Danielito.” Another shot rang out.
He pulled his thumb from his mouth and said, “You—you said it right!”
Keep him talking. Maybe he won’t notice the height—
More gunfire erupted, two different weapons barking back and forth at each other.
—and maybe he won’t notice that.
She kept one arm around the little boy and used the other to climb down the rope ladder. “Hold on tight,” she told him.
“Okay, Tessi. That’s too loud.”
“You can cover your ears the minute we’re on the ground. Right now, I need you to hold on really tight with both arms, like a baby monkey.”
The descent seemed to take forever, but eventually, Emily stepped down onto the grass. She beckoned to Mrs. Gonzalez and the children and, stooping low with Daniel still in her arms, dashed across the yard where the children normally played soccer.
“This way,” she said in a low voice. She led them through the hedge on the other side. It was scratchy, but she figured it would conceal them well.
“We aren’t even on the same property as the house anymore,” Mrs. Gonzalez said, sounding perplexed. “Where are we going?”
“A friend of mine has a—well—it’s a safe spot not far from here. You’ll see.” Emily wasn’t sure how to explain about Brent’s camper van in a way that sounded non-creepy.
She pictured the terrain as seen from Brent’s drone the other day, and struck off toward the wash, wishing there was just a little more moonlight. In the distance, more shots rumbled and echoed.
Okay, God. I don’t know exactly what Brent’s gotten himself into, but please, please let him be okay. And please don’t let Mr. Gonzalez die tonight; his family needs him.
To her relief, the white van appeared just ahead as they came upon the wash.
“We’re here,” Emily said. “I hope my friend cleaned up his dirty socks,” she added with a smile in her voice for the children’s benefit.
“Eww, dirty socks.” Daniel echoed.
Emily pulled back the door of the van, revealing a space that was more full of surveillance and communications equipment than anything else.
Brent! You said it was like a camper!
She spotted a cot at the back and an odd collection of snack food. “See? Somewhere to sleep and stuff to eat. He’s apparently really into electronics, too.” She shrugged at Mrs. Gonzalez who was eyeing her with a puzzled expression. The children scrambled into the van. “Sorry—” Emily said to their mother, “he led me to believe it was more homey than this. But you’ll be safe here.”
“I have so many questions,” the woman said, joining her children inside Brent’s spy van. “No, don’t touch that!” she interrupted herself to say to one of them. She turned back to Emily. “Where are you going?”
“Back. To help.”
Emily rolled the van’s door shut again, and as she did, she heard Juan say, “She’s my favorite nanny.”
She couldn’t help but smile as she set off at a jog, praying she wouldn’t turn her ankle on anything in the dark. When she was a short distance from the van, she paused a moment to slide Brent’s phone from her pocket.
I’m so glad I thought to grab this.
She found the feed from his drone, still circling the house on silent auto-pilot. The gunfire had ceased, and she was worried about what she would find when she returned. The confrontation seemed to have moved slightly to the front yard. Brent was hunkered behind one of the black SUVs, and Romeo Morales and Moreno were crouched together behind a low, decorative wall.
Emily could see the glint of their guns, still trained on Brent's position. She hoped they were all talking, that Brent was explaining what had just happened. Mr. Gonzalez was nowhere to be seen, and she guessed he was safely inside.
She glanced up and frowned. What was going on?
Something to her left caught her eye—something she hadn’t noticed on the trip to the van. A short distance away, a large, dark object was partially obscured by a low, scruffy desert tree.
She stared hard at it in the darkness.
Another van? A dark one.
Chapter 19
By the time Emily reached the house, she could hear Brent’s voice along with several others. They did seem to be talking it out instead of shooting it out, after all.
She crept along the edge of the house until she was right around the corner from the guards. She took out Brent’s phone again and checked everyone’s positions on the drone feed.
Diaz had joined his men outside, and Brent seemed to be primarily explaining things to him.
“I’m going to slide the phone out into the middle ground, holster my weapon, and then put my hands up above the SUV so you can see I won’t be taking pot-shots at you,” Brent said.
“Do it,” Diaz called back.
Emily remained hidden around the corner, flattened against the wall. After a minute, she heard the phone Brent had mentioned slide across the pavement of the circle drive. She cringed at the scraping sound it made.
Diaz motioned to the other two guards to cover him, and he hurried forward to retrieve the flip phone.
“Call up someone you trust back home,” Brent called, his hands visible above the SUV’s hood. “Call someone with access to the Chief of Security. I think you’ll find evidence to support what I’ve said. He’s been orchestrating this whole thing, he hacked and manipulated your systems, and he intended to make Romeo, there, an unwitting assassin.”
Diaz turned the phone over in his hand a few times.
“Don’t be afraid of it—it’s a burner. I just bought it this morning at the grocery store. Your boss won’t be able to tap or trace the call.”
Diaz apparently decided to do as Brent was urging, for he opened the flip phone and dialed a number. Holding it up to his ear, he waited as it rang.
Please, God, make this work out. Let Brent and I be right about what’s going on. Let Diaz be convinced.
The head guard held a short, terse conversation in Spanish before snapping the phone closed and staring down at the ground for a moment, deep in thought. He rubbed his forehead.
“Stand down,
” he ordered the other guards. “Mr. Peters, you may safely come out from behind the vehicle.” He holstered his own weapon and his men did the same.
The sound of a door opening behind her startled Emily. Mr. Gonzalez came dashing out. “Where’s my family?” he shouted, his flashing eyes demanding an answer from her. “Diaz!” He bellowed the head guard’s name.
I’m so dead.
The three guards charged around the corner of the house.
“Senor Gonzalez, sir! You must go back in the house! You too, Miss Tessier!” Diaz said sternly.
“My family is gone—missing! I cannot find them anywhere!” The man completely ignored his guards and tugged at his hair, distraught. “What is going on?”
Emily relaxed slightly as she made out Brent’s dark-clad form appearing just behind the guards.
“Senor Gonzalez, thanks to the tutor, Mr. Peters, we have just discovered that the assassination threat was orchestrated by none other than Senor Hernandez.”
“My Chief of Security?” Mr. Gonzalez frowned.
“Yes, sir. I have just spoken to the General, and he told me Senor Hernandez left the country suddenly three days ago.”
Emily suddenly felt queasy.
“Um… so I have something to show you all,” she said quietly.
“Is it the location of my family?” Mr. Gonzalez peered at her in the dim landscape lighting.
“Yes,” she said, swallowing hard and praying she wasn’t about to get herself in trouble. “When the shooting started, your wife and I evacuated the children out an upstairs window. I’ve taken them somewhere safe. I—I can lead you to them, if you’d like.”
“Yes! Lead the way!” The man gestured impatiently.
Diaz scrutinized her, but said nothing. They all moved as a group, following Emily through the backyard, off the property to the wash.
“Here,” Emily said, pointing to the van.
Brent rubbed a hand across his face, and she very nearly apologized right then and there for stashing four young children in his fancy surveillance van.
She rolled back the door and smiled at the family huddled inside. “Hi,” she said. “I’m back, and I’ve brought someone who’s very worried about you.” Mr. Gonzalez hurried forward.
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